5 ms·
They're completely ignoring the concept of magnitude, and realistically their claim is "we use energy for other stuff, so there's nothing wrong with using massi
by Weebs 6y ago
They're completely ignoring the concept of magnitude, and realistically their claim is "we use energy for other stuff, so there's nothing wrong with using massive amounts of energy for X". They're making an implicit premise that using large amounts of energy, which causes harm to humans, is okay. If you accept that premise, okay fine, but I don't.
As another poster here shared, a single transaction uses upwards of hundreds of kwh. That kind of energy that moves thousands of pounds hundreds of miles, or power a typical US household for almost an entire month.
- rawtxapp 6y agoIf you think this creates a financial system that's much more transparent and solid than the current one which is completely broken, than that energy usage is worth it. Also you shouldn't look at it in terms of energy/transaction, the energy consumption isn't a function of transactions.
- Weebs 6y agoA fully trusted and decentralized financial system is great, but it's not going to change the fundamental power relations that cause so much harm in our society. To me that makes the process not worth it I believe the research is useful, but to base an international currency around it with these costs is not
- rawtxapp 6y agoAs long as it stops a few people in the world controlling the money supply, that's a big win from my perspective.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI've never really understood why people ascribe such magical capabilities to Bitcoin. Bitcoin has really bad wealth inequality, arguably worse than the rest of America does.
- ashtonkem 6y ago> If you think this creates a financial system that's much more transparent and solid than the current one which is completely broken, than that energy usage is worth it. Bitcoin is capable of handling 4 transactions a second. If you've created a financial system that consumes more energy than Argentina and can't actually handle the transaction requirements of a decent sized mall, then I'd begin to wonder what definition of "solid" you're using. > Also you shouldn't look at it in terms of energy/transaction, the energy consumption isn't a function of transactions. We can look at energy consumption per block, but there's no way to slice and dice this in a way that doesn't make Bitcoin look like a massive waste of energy compared to competitive systems.