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Are there any evaluations of cryptocurrency energy consumption as total usage rather than peak usage, A sort of area-under-the-curve comparison? If Bitcoin is

by Lerc 6y ago

Are there any evaluations of cryptocurrency energy consumption as total usage rather than peak usage, A sort of area-under-the-curve comparison? If Bitcoin is a flash in the pan phenomenon and it one-day collapses into nothing then comparisons against countries like Argentina are inaccurate (Argentina is likely to continue existing). To extrapolate into the future you would have to have some assumptions. Some would be fixed, such as Miners would only mine if they could do so profitably, Mining scales with electricity consumption. Some would be tunable such as cost of electricity, value of Bitcoin The long term energy consumption seems intrinsically tied to the long term value. This seems at odds with the surprising correlation between those who dismiss the utility of crypto currency and those who express concerns about the energy consumption

lumost 6y ago
Bitcoin is an interesting asset class. It has a few properties such as 1) You can buy or sell a billion dollars of it in a day without moving the price too much. (current transaction volume is 7.6B per day) 2) Given some level of physical security, it's a very difficult asset to seize or freeze. This is useful for anyone who could be affected by government/non-government asset seizure. 3) As an individual you can literally put your entire net worth into BTC wallet on your cellphone, and walk across any border in the world. 4) Overall, while BTC is volatile - it's been a ridiculously good asset to hold long returning ~2000x over the last 8 years. Considering civil forfeiture laws in the US, politically motivated asset seizures globally, and the general risk of being de-banked and robbed of any savings - we're likely to see more use of BTC as a store of value. It's a useful exercise to understand if we've replaced gold with watts and hashing power.

by Lerc 6y ago

lumost 6y ago

Bitcoin is an interesting asset class. It has a few properties such as 1) You can buy or sell a billion dollars of it in a day without moving the price too much. (current transaction volume is 7.6B per day) 2) Given some level of physical security, it's a very difficult asset to seize or freeze. This is useful for anyone who could be affected by government/non-government asset seizure. 3) As an individual you can literally put your entire net worth into BTC wallet on your cellphone, and walk across any border in the world. 4) Overall, while BTC is volatile - it's been a ridiculously good asset to hold long returning ~2000x over the last 8 years. Considering civil forfeiture laws in the US, politically motivated asset seizures globally, and the general risk of being de-banked and robbed of any savings - we're likely to see more use of BTC as a store of value. It's a useful exercise to understand if we've replaced gold with watts and hashing power.