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How about all the people work for Visa etc and their commutes and all the other things that come with it. If you think about it Bitcoin is completely autonomous

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> Bitcoin is completely autonomous If we're counting the footprint of Visa's 19,500 employees [1], we'd have to start counting the footprint of every Bitcoin miner and ASIC manufacturer. Which is (a) silly and (b) unlikely to affect a difference of orders of magnitude. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc.
- obilgic 6y ago
  > the footprint of every Bitcoin miner Do they have 1000s of office all around the world with 100s of thousands working in offices and branches like banking industry?
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    > Do they have 1000s of office all around the world with 100s of thousands working in offices and branches like banking industry? Banking does a lot more than payments. Most people working at banks do not work on payments.
  - Rebelgecko 6y ago
    Based off of current GPU availability (which isnt mining bitcoin per se but is) does cover coins which are comparable) I would say no, Bitcoin probably has more physical locations and more people involved
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- 627467 6y ago
  But visa doesn't provide most of the functions of bitcoin infrastructure. Visa does need to hold the balance of my account. Visa does need or make available all of my equity worth of assets for me to transfer. Visa does not custody my assets. This is literally apple to oranges (or visa to bitcoin)
CryptoPunk 6y ago
I don't agree that PoW's massive energy consumption is excused by your argument, but it is true that for every employee an enterprise has to employ to provide its goods/services, there's massive associated energy consumption. I remember reading that the extra food that a cyclist consumes, and the energy required to grow and transport it, far exceeds the energy that is used by a bus per passenger. Humans are high maintenance machines, and cryptocurrency, in automating previously manual processes done by humans, could potentially result in major energy savings. But not in Bitcoin's iteration, where it's consuming as much energy as whole countries, to process only 300,000 transactions a day.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago

> Bitcoin is completely autonomous If we're counting the footprint of Visa's 19,500 employees [1], we'd have to start counting the footprint of every Bitcoin miner and ASIC manufacturer. Which is (a) silly and (b) unlikely to affect a difference of orders of magnitude. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc.

obilgic 6y ago
> the footprint of every Bitcoin miner Do they have 1000s of office all around the world with 100s of thousands working in offices and branches like banking industry?
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > Do they have 1000s of office all around the world with 100s of thousands working in offices and branches like banking industry? Banking does a lot more than payments. Most people working at banks do not work on payments.
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  Based off of current GPU availability (which isnt mining bitcoin per se but is) does cover coins which are comparable) I would say no, Bitcoin probably has more physical locations and more people involved
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
627467 6y ago
But visa doesn't provide most of the functions of bitcoin infrastructure. Visa does need to hold the balance of my account. Visa does need or make available all of my equity worth of assets for me to transfer. Visa does not custody my assets. This is literally apple to oranges (or visa to bitcoin)

CryptoPunk 6y ago

I don't agree that PoW's massive energy consumption is excused by your argument, but it is true that for every employee an enterprise has to employ to provide its goods/services, there's massive associated energy consumption. I remember reading that the extra food that a cyclist consumes, and the energy required to grow and transport it, far exceeds the energy that is used by a bus per passenger. Humans are high maintenance machines, and cryptocurrency, in automating previously manual processes done by humans, could potentially result in major energy savings. But not in Bitcoin's iteration, where it's consuming as much energy as whole countries, to process only 300,000 transactions a day.