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The energy is used to provide security for the value the network stores. The energy consumed by the actual transaction processing is incidental. If bitcoin used
by tippytippytango 6y ago
The energy is used to provide security for the value the network stores. The energy consumed by the actual transaction processing is incidental. If bitcoin used a traditional database to store value it would need physical security (people with guns and/or lawyers) to ensure its integrity. To decide if bitcoin is actually wasteful you'd have to compare it to the energy consumption of the physical security that would be required to protect an equivalent amount of value (getting close to $1T).
- dodobirdlord 6y agoThe Fed building isn't all that well protected, and "stores" essentially an arbitrarily large amount of USD. It helps that it's impossible to steal, since if you somehow "robbed" the Fed all it would take is a court order to retroactively clarify that your robbery never happened. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eccles_Building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eccles_Building I'm happy to call Bitcoin wasteful because we already know what's going to replace it. Proof of work is a dead end and with it all coins that are anchored on PoW and aren't working on migrating to proof of stake. The writing is on the wall that proof of stake is the future.