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Are they going to halt activity at the legacy financial institutions such as banks, credit unions, brokerages, hedge funds, credit card companies and the like?

Are they going to halt activity at the legacy financial institutions such as banks, credit unions, brokerages, hedge funds, credit card companies and the like? Those things have an environmental impact many times greater than Bitcoin does.

dnautics 5y ago
I would find it hilarious if someone proposed a bill to halt transactions in dollars until its geopolitical impacts are assessed.
ffggvv 5y ago
actually they don’t
- jobigoud 5y ago
  They do, unless you are talking about efficiency and 'per transaction' cost, but environmental impact is measured with absolute numbers.
salawat 5y ago
No it doesn't actually. The a banks electronic clearinghouse and transaction processing system can handle potentially billions of transaction per second. No cryptoshenanigans required aside from that required to secure data at rest. You're making a claim that something predicated on everyone wasting tons of power to do hashing that just gets thrown away when the first person nails it and starts propagating, and all of that per 100 or so transactions, with at max maybe two to three dozen servers per bank, with full capability to reverse, adjust, reconcile, chargeback, so on, and so forth. So no. No, they won't shut down traditional financial processing. They don't need to.
asd4232 5y ago
Your argument is like claiming that a private jet is more economical than a 747 jumbo jet, because it burns less fuel. Energy consumption per transaction is what really matters, and Bitcoin really sucks there.
- spaced-out 5y ago
  Yes, private jets are also wasteful And unnecessary. Yet there's no talk of banning them...
  - valdiorn 5y ago
    yet they're trying to ban cars just about everywhere (if you've lived in urban areas for the last decade).
    - moistbar 5y ago
      HN is particularly rabid about banning cars for some reason. I got absolutely mobbed by cyclists the other day when I said that there are legitimate reasons to use a car in a city, with someone even going as far as claiming my car is too big. When I pointed out that the cars he suggested as smaller alternatives were actually bigger than what I drive...nothing. The anti-car movement is truly insufferable, because, at least online, it seems it's mostly spearheaded by people from Europe who have never seen how spread-out America is. I'm not about to bike 30 miles each way to work every day, rain or shine, and yet I get looked at as the villain for suggesting people stop going outside when the weather sucks. Rant over. I hate people.
  - w0de0 5y ago
    Good point. They are used by extremely powerful people. We better ban Bitcoin before it’s users and environmental impact are similarly socially entrenched!
djdjdjdjdj 5y ago
2000 btc transactions are processed by btc every 10 minutes and the miners get the btc equivalent of 300.000$ for that. That is enormous. All other things you mentioned deliver real value for much much less. And btc is not yet even used practically in any real world scenario in any relevant scale

dnautics 5y ago

I would find it hilarious if someone proposed a bill to halt transactions in dollars until its geopolitical impacts are assessed.

ffggvv 5y ago

actually they don’t

jobigoud 5y ago
They do, unless you are talking about efficiency and 'per transaction' cost, but environmental impact is measured with absolute numbers.

salawat 5y ago

No it doesn't actually. The a banks electronic clearinghouse and transaction processing system can handle potentially billions of transaction per second. No cryptoshenanigans required aside from that required to secure data at rest. You're making a claim that something predicated on everyone wasting tons of power to do hashing that just gets thrown away when the first person nails it and starts propagating, and all of that per 100 or so transactions, with at max maybe two to three dozen servers per bank, with full capability to reverse, adjust, reconcile, chargeback, so on, and so forth. So no. No, they won't shut down traditional financial processing. They don't need to.

asd4232 5y ago

Your argument is like claiming that a private jet is more economical than a 747 jumbo jet, because it burns less fuel. Energy consumption per transaction is what really matters, and Bitcoin really sucks there.

spaced-out 5y ago
Yes, private jets are also wasteful And unnecessary. Yet there's no talk of banning them...
- valdiorn 5y ago
  yet they're trying to ban cars just about everywhere (if you've lived in urban areas for the last decade).
  - moistbar 5y ago
    HN is particularly rabid about banning cars for some reason. I got absolutely mobbed by cyclists the other day when I said that there are legitimate reasons to use a car in a city, with someone even going as far as claiming my car is too big. When I pointed out that the cars he suggested as smaller alternatives were actually bigger than what I drive...nothing. The anti-car movement is truly insufferable, because, at least online, it seems it's mostly spearheaded by people from Europe who have never seen how spread-out America is. I'm not about to bike 30 miles each way to work every day, rain or shine, and yet I get looked at as the villain for suggesting people stop going outside when the weather sucks. Rant over. I hate people.
- w0de0 5y ago
  Good point. They are used by extremely powerful people. We better ban Bitcoin before it’s users and environmental impact are similarly socially entrenched!

djdjdjdjdj 5y ago

2000 btc transactions are processed by btc every 10 minutes and the miners get the btc equivalent of 300.000$ for that. That is enormous. All other things you mentioned deliver real value for much much less. And btc is not yet even used practically in any real world scenario in any relevant scale