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That is a completely useless comparison. If anything, compare energy usage per transaction. If you would hypothetically scale up the transaction volume of the B
by karpour 6y ago
That is a completely useless comparison. If anything, compare energy usage per transaction. If you would hypothetically scale up the transaction volume of the Bitcoin network to the entire USD financial system, you'd quickly find out that it would use more energy than was ever produced on this planet.
- ric2b 6y agoBitcoin's energy usage is not related to the number of transactions in any significant way, it's strictly a defense measure to prevent a nation state from tampering with the ledger.
- karpour 6y agoMaybe you should read up on how Bitcoin actually works before you comment.
- ric2b 6y agoI've read the whitepaper and follow technical developments occasionaly, I know how it works on a high-level. You could make Bitcoin process 1000x more transactions and the energy consumption of mining it wouldn't even change by 1%, all else being equal. Miners are willing to waste as much energy as they get back in rewards from mining blocks, while competing with each other for their share of the rewards. The rewards are newly minted Bitcoins (and some transaction fees, which are a small part of the reward). So the higher the Bitcoin price the larger the rewards miners get and the more energy they are able to spend competing with each other while still turning a profit. If the price is 50k, it doesn't really matter if the network is processing 1 transaction a second or 10 million, the energy consumption will be roughly the same.