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Perhaps it's more reasonable to compare the energy footprint of cryptocurrency with that of our traditional fiat currencies. Including all computing power used

Perhaps it's more reasonable to compare the energy footprint of cryptocurrency with that of our traditional fiat currencies. Including all computing power used by banks to settle their transactions.

solosoyokaze 6y ago
You really also need to include the entire military budget (and eco damage) as that's what props up the state, which backs the fiat.
- analog31 6y ago
  The military budget also props up the energy supply for bitcoin mining.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    Bitcoin can be mined with any available resource, even by hand (although that's clearly not ideal).
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - minitoar 6y ago
      How many people would use Bitcoin in this scenario? I reckon so few as to render it worthless. Ergo, Bitcoin requires the same expensive infrastructure as our fiat banking.
      - solosoyokaze 6y ago
        "This scenario" being the complete disbanding of the US military? I imagine everyone would be using crypto at that point since there would be no USD.
        deeeeplearning 6y ago
        Yay I can't wait for a trip to the grocery store to take 12 hours because every transaction takes 20 minutes. lol. This is just pure bitcoin hype, there are far better coins to use if you are actually interested in them as currency.
        solosoyokaze 6y ago
        I don't see Bitcoin as currency, it's a store of value. You're correct that there are better coins for currency.
        deeeeplearning 6y ago
        Edit: Could have sworn your comment said BTC and not crypto?
        solosoyokaze 6y ago
        BTC is the foundation of crypto, but other coins play an important role (i.e. high volume transactions). BTC is the value that powers the alt-coins.
        tor11 6y ago
        > trip to the grocery store try sending money to someone in north korea. how many hours does that take? > actually interested in them as currency it is still a currency.
        africanboy 6y ago
        > try sending money to someone in north korea North Korea leader has an army of hackers trained to steal bitcoins and uses them to launder money... probably not the best example
        deeeeplearning 6y ago
        >try sending money to someone in north korea. how many hours does that take? Thats the best defense for Btc you have? >it is still a currency. The only people consistently using BTC as currency are drug dealers or drug buyers.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  This is such a silly counter argument. First of all, countries secure energy because people want energy. Even in a world where we use Bitcoin, people are still going to want HVAC, cars, cell phones, and all the other things that we use/buy that consume energy and damage the environment. The idea that a country will magically stop wanting oil because it's using Bitcoin is just laughable. Second, Bitcoin uses a ton of energy by design. It's literally built to create a competition between miners for hashing power in order to prevent 51% attacks. This structure is why increased hashing efficiency hasn't reduced Bitcoin's energy usage, it only results in spending the same amount of electricity on new hardware rather than old. A country that runs on Bitcoin will need a bit more energy as a fiat country, because maintaining sufficient hashing power will suddenly become a strategic problem. Up until today the risk of a 51% attack on Bitcoin is a private concern; only the miners and those involved in Bitcoin are concerned about it. But if a country used BTC as its main currency, suddenly that is a strategic problem. Does anyone honestly think that the USA wouldn't use its military to secure oil in order to hedge off a 51% attack on its entire financial system? Honestly, it would be dereliction of duty to not do that, given that scenario.
  - viklove 6y ago
    This take is like reacting to the Ford Model T by saying how much energy it uses, how you can't access fuel to put in it, etc. BTC isn't the end-all crypto solution. It's the first attempt. It will continue to evolve and mature into something better like a Ford Fiat you can buy today. I don't really care about the USA, and I want to be in control of my own money. Maybe from your perspective of being able to control the citizens of a country, USD is better. But from my perspective of protecting my own interests, BTC is a compelling solution.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    You have the cause and effect reversed. One of the reasons I want to move from USD to crypto is because I don't want to invade countries for their oil. I'd rather my currency not be tied to imperialistic warmongering.
- the_local_host 6y ago
  People wouldn't stop spending money on weapons in a Bitcoin world. If the global economy is dominated by a small number of people who got in on Bitcoin early, against a vast majority who are born with no Bitcoin and no way to get it except from those who already have it, strife can be expected. To the extent that inequality, competition, and unfairness create tension, that tension doesn't go away just because there's a different set of people at the top.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  If we all used BTC, there'd be no war and no standing armies? Come on. Of all of the cryptocurrency-utopia claims that exist, this is surely the least believable.
Nursie 6y ago
When cryptocurrency provides 1% of the services that the traditional banking system does, let me know and we can do this comparison.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  You can already do many things with crypto that you cannot do with the traditional banking system. Can you open 10,000 bank accounts right now? I can make 10k wallets. There are so many new things we can do with crypto that it's going to take decades for people to discover them.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    The number of times such an activity would be useful to me is zero. However calling my bank and having cash recalled from fraudulent (or even just bankrupt) merchants, that's happened. Who do I call at Bitcoin?
    - viklove 6y ago
      Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The benefit of BTC is that when your bank mismanages their assets a la 2008, resulting in a bank run, you know your assets are safe instead of having to rely on the Fed to bail out your bank. Your money is in your control, not in the control of someone else. If you don't want that, it's easy -- just don't buy bitcoin. But don't discredit it by comparing it to a credit card which it is not trying to be. The strawman is disingenuous and shows how little you understand the topic.
      - Nursie 6y ago
        > Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The point is when we're looking at comparative energy use, you can't just point at the whole banking system and compare it to Bitcoin, as if it's an apples to apples comparison, because the banking system provides an embarassment of services that Bitcoin does not. > The strawman is disingenuous and shows how little you understand the topic. There's no strawman here and if anything this shows how little you understood the thread you're replying to. (Edit: fixed a copy/paste screwup)
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
Bitcoin uses about 1/3 the energy of all datacenters in the world put together. Datacenters use about 205 TWh/year. https://www.networkworld.com/article/3531316/data-center-power-consumption-holds-steady.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/3531316/data-center-pow... Bitcoin uses about 75 TWh/year. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption And that's with everyone on the planet using normal money every day and just about no one using Bitcoin.
- traeregan 6y ago
  There's some overlap there too. Some of the Bitcoin is being mined in some of those datacenters.
  - xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
    I doubt that it's enough to care about. The hardware is specialized and the needs are different from normal servers. Bitcoin miners care almost exclusively about cheap electricity, not uptime or latency or bandwidth or interconnect. Some Bitcoin-related stuff is running in datacenters, no doubt, but it's a rounding error compared to the rest.
simiones 6y ago
We could, and it ends up being much less. Probably less overall for the entire banking system, and most definitely less per transaction than the horror of bitcoin. I've been unable to find any rigorous research on this, but even the pieces defending bitcoin claim that the banking system consumes maybe 5 or 10 times as much energy as the bitcoin network, while neglecting to mention that the traditional banking system handle hundreds of thousands of times more transactions per second than bitcoin (especially funny since the estimates include stuff like the AC costs of bank branches - obvious sophistry).

Perhaps it's more reasonable to compare the energy footprint of cryptocurrency with that of our traditional fiat currencies. Including all computing power used by banks to settle their transactions.

solosoyokaze 6y ago

You really also need to include the entire military budget (and eco damage) as that's what props up the state, which backs the fiat.

analog31 6y ago
The military budget also props up the energy supply for bitcoin mining.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  Bitcoin can be mined with any available resource, even by hand (although that's clearly not ideal).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - minitoar 6y ago
    How many people would use Bitcoin in this scenario? I reckon so few as to render it worthless. Ergo, Bitcoin requires the same expensive infrastructure as our fiat banking.
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      "This scenario" being the complete disbanding of the US military? I imagine everyone would be using crypto at that point since there would be no USD.
      - deeeeplearning 6y ago
        Yay I can't wait for a trip to the grocery store to take 12 hours because every transaction takes 20 minutes. lol. This is just pure bitcoin hype, there are far better coins to use if you are actually interested in them as currency.
        solosoyokaze 6y ago
        I don't see Bitcoin as currency, it's a store of value. You're correct that there are better coins for currency.
        deeeeplearning 6y ago
        Edit: Could have sworn your comment said BTC and not crypto?
        solosoyokaze 6y ago
        BTC is the foundation of crypto, but other coins play an important role (i.e. high volume transactions). BTC is the value that powers the alt-coins.
        tor11 6y ago
        > trip to the grocery store try sending money to someone in north korea. how many hours does that take? > actually interested in them as currency it is still a currency.
        africanboy 6y ago
        > try sending money to someone in north korea North Korea leader has an army of hackers trained to steal bitcoins and uses them to launder money... probably not the best example
        deeeeplearning 6y ago
        >try sending money to someone in north korea. how many hours does that take? Thats the best defense for Btc you have? >it is still a currency. The only people consistently using BTC as currency are drug dealers or drug buyers.
ashtonkem 6y ago
This is such a silly counter argument. First of all, countries secure energy because people want energy. Even in a world where we use Bitcoin, people are still going to want HVAC, cars, cell phones, and all the other things that we use/buy that consume energy and damage the environment. The idea that a country will magically stop wanting oil because it's using Bitcoin is just laughable. Second, Bitcoin uses a ton of energy by design. It's literally built to create a competition between miners for hashing power in order to prevent 51% attacks. This structure is why increased hashing efficiency hasn't reduced Bitcoin's energy usage, it only results in spending the same amount of electricity on new hardware rather than old. A country that runs on Bitcoin will need a bit more energy as a fiat country, because maintaining sufficient hashing power will suddenly become a strategic problem. Up until today the risk of a 51% attack on Bitcoin is a private concern; only the miners and those involved in Bitcoin are concerned about it. But if a country used BTC as its main currency, suddenly that is a strategic problem. Does anyone honestly think that the USA wouldn't use its military to secure oil in order to hedge off a 51% attack on its entire financial system? Honestly, it would be dereliction of duty to not do that, given that scenario.
- viklove 6y ago
  This take is like reacting to the Ford Model T by saying how much energy it uses, how you can't access fuel to put in it, etc. BTC isn't the end-all crypto solution. It's the first attempt. It will continue to evolve and mature into something better like a Ford Fiat you can buy today. I don't really care about the USA, and I want to be in control of my own money. Maybe from your perspective of being able to control the citizens of a country, USD is better. But from my perspective of protecting my own interests, BTC is a compelling solution.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  You have the cause and effect reversed. One of the reasons I want to move from USD to crypto is because I don't want to invade countries for their oil. I'd rather my currency not be tied to imperialistic warmongering.
the_local_host 6y ago
People wouldn't stop spending money on weapons in a Bitcoin world. If the global economy is dominated by a small number of people who got in on Bitcoin early, against a vast majority who are born with no Bitcoin and no way to get it except from those who already have it, strife can be expected. To the extent that inequality, competition, and unfairness create tension, that tension doesn't go away just because there's a different set of people at the top.
UncleMeat 6y ago
If we all used BTC, there'd be no war and no standing armies? Come on. Of all of the cryptocurrency-utopia claims that exist, this is surely the least believable.

Nursie 6y ago

When cryptocurrency provides 1% of the services that the traditional banking system does, let me know and we can do this comparison.

solosoyokaze 6y ago
You can already do many things with crypto that you cannot do with the traditional banking system. Can you open 10,000 bank accounts right now? I can make 10k wallets. There are so many new things we can do with crypto that it's going to take decades for people to discover them.
- Nursie 6y ago
  The number of times such an activity would be useful to me is zero. However calling my bank and having cash recalled from fraudulent (or even just bankrupt) merchants, that's happened. Who do I call at Bitcoin?
  - viklove 6y ago
    Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The benefit of BTC is that when your bank mismanages their assets a la 2008, resulting in a bank run, you know your assets are safe instead of having to rely on the Fed to bail out your bank. Your money is in your control, not in the control of someone else. If you don't want that, it's easy -- just don't buy bitcoin. But don't discredit it by comparing it to a credit card which it is not trying to be. The strawman is disingenuous and shows how little you understand the topic.
    - Nursie 6y ago
      > Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The point is when we're looking at comparative energy use, you can't just point at the whole banking system and compare it to Bitcoin, as if it's an apples to apples comparison, because the banking system provides an embarassment of services that Bitcoin does not. > The strawman is disingenuous and shows how little you understand the topic. There's no strawman here and if anything this shows how little you understood the thread you're replying to. (Edit: fixed a copy/paste screwup)

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

Bitcoin uses about 1/3 the energy of all datacenters in the world put together. Datacenters use about 205 TWh/year. https://www.networkworld.com/article/3531316/data-center-power-consumption-holds-steady.html https://www.networkworld.com/article/3531316/data-center-pow... Bitcoin uses about 75 TWh/year. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption And that's with everyone on the planet using normal money every day and just about no one using Bitcoin.

traeregan 6y ago
There's some overlap there too. Some of the Bitcoin is being mined in some of those datacenters.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
  I doubt that it's enough to care about. The hardware is specialized and the needs are different from normal servers. Bitcoin miners care almost exclusively about cheap electricity, not uptime or latency or bandwidth or interconnect. Some Bitcoin-related stuff is running in datacenters, no doubt, but it's a rounding error compared to the rest.

simiones 6y ago

We could, and it ends up being much less. Probably less overall for the entire banking system, and most definitely less per transaction than the horror of bitcoin. I've been unable to find any rigorous research on this, but even the pieces defending bitcoin claim that the banking system consumes maybe 5 or 10 times as much energy as the bitcoin network, while neglecting to mention that the traditional banking system handle hundreds of thousands of times more transactions per second than bitcoin (especially funny since the estimates include stuff like the AC costs of bank branches - obvious sophistry).