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Bitcoin is not even close to a replacement of banking and debit/credit cards. If bitcoin fulfilled those roles, it would use a lot more energy than the current
by dtech 6y ago
Bitcoin is not even close to a replacement of banking and debit/credit cards. If bitcoin fulfilled those roles, it would use a lot more energy than the current system because of how energy-intensive transactions are due to the required mining.
- moralsupply 6y agoBitcoin can't handle the amount of transactions the banking system can handle at the moment. For it to scale to that level it requires an L2 solution (eg. Lightning), in which case energy consumption is not going to increase.
- Ekaros 6y agoWhy would L2 solutions use less energy than current banking, payment processing and transactions solutions? Or with other services related be at least in same ballpark?
- moralsupply 6y agoL2 doesn't require mining, only channels maintained with relatively low processing capabilities
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoWhat’s the argument for using L2 networks on top of Bitcoin instead of simply using one of the other cryptocurrencies that was designed from the start to handle transaction volume? Why do we need a separate currency for sending money around anyway?
- moralsupply 6y agoThe argument is that Bitcoin work very well as a store of value, and is proven (10+ years in operation with little-to-no incidents, despite a huge amount of attempts to attack the network). It doesn't need to be "perfect" in every front. L2 solutions still transact the same tokens as their L1 counterparts. Other solutions may potentially be "better" technically, but that doesn't mean they are proven in the long run, and the on-ramp, corporate, etc. infrastructure is not in place for them.
- jcranmer 6y ago> (10+ years in operation with little-to-no incidents, despite a huge amount of attempts to attack the network). Shame about all of those hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin that have been stolen. Come to think of it, while I haven't crunched the statistics, it wouldn't surprise me if your money were more likely to be stolen if you kept it in Bitcoin than a boring bank account.
- moralsupply 6y agoIs that because of the Bitcoin protocol or because people are dumb and lost their coins?
- jiveturkey 6y agodoes it matter?
- MrMan 6y agoWhy don't we use dollars
- moralsupply 6y agoWe do use dollars, the last time I checked...
- MrMan 6y agoIf a bitcoin is functionally equivalent to a dollar you still need the entire stack of the financial industry, bitcoin doesn't in any way obviate finance
- xur17 6y agoI keep hearing this repeated in threads about Bitcoin, and it's just flat out wrong. Bitcoin's energy usage does not scale based on the number of transactions. Its energy usage scales based upon the value of the block reward and the efficiency of mining operations.
- lalaland1125 6y agoIt's not wrong. Bitcoin's energy usage does scale based on usage; it scales based on the value of money flowing through the system (in order to secure a certain transaction volume, you need electricity usage that corresponds to the value of those transactions). In order for Bitcoin to replace banks, it would have to consume an incredible amount of electricity.
- xur17 6y agoThat is simply not true. I don't think you understand how Bitcoin works.
- lalaland1125 6y agoIf the electricity usage falls below a certain fraction of the value going through the network then double spending attacks become a significant risk. Bitcoin only works on the assumption that the electricity usage (and hardware usage) is too high to make double spending attacks feasible.