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This analogy neglects to ask what the environmental impact of ice cream is. Let's say I bought a gallon of ice cream with bitcoin. What is the energy cost of t

This analogy neglects to ask what the environmental impact of ice cream is. Let's say I bought a gallon of ice cream with bitcoin. What is the energy cost of the transaction? How much waste heat did it generate? And on the other side: what is the energy cost of making that ice cream, shipping it to the store I bought it from, and keeping it refrigerated? How much waste heat did that generate? If the bitcoin transaction cost as much energy and generated as much waste heat as the production, storage, and shipping of the gallon of ice cream, then yeah, that's a good start for saying one is legitimate as the other. But if one of them cost a couple of orders of magnitude more energy, and generated three orders of magnitude more waste heat, for something that is theoretically the same monetary value (because they are, given that we paid for that whole supply chain with the bitcoin transaction), then there is a pretty clear imbalance. And for a bit more clarity - what is the energy/heat cost of buying that gallon of ice cream with a debit/credit card? How does that compare to both the production/shipping/storage of that gallon of ice cream, and to the cost of buying it with bitcoin? I am not going to do the research and estimation for this. Some quick lazy searching suggests that one BTC transaction consumes about 3x the energy of 100k transactions via Visa's network, though. And that is the issue: Bitcoin is, by design, incredibly wasteful of resources. Ludicrously so.

cosmotic 5y ago
Not to mention the transaction time. Visa is seconds, bitcoin is at least 30 min and typically an hour and sometimes almost a day. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time And then theres the transaction cost to consider. Visa is a few cents, bitcoin is tens of dollars. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... Then watch out for the purported anonymity where the transactions are recorded forever.
- incrudible 5y ago
  Bitcoin is slower than VISA, but faster than an international bank wire - and comparable in cost. If VISA is so much faster, then why do bank wires exist? There are Layer 2 solutions (Lightning Network) for cheap and instant transfers that do not warrant the security of a full Bitcoin transaction. Anonymity has never been a purported feature of Bitcoin. This is not a downside, it keeps regulatory scrutiny somewhat at bay.
  - janekm 5y ago
    If you're using bitcoin for international money transfers you're using exchanges on either end of the transaction to convert to bitcoin and back. You may as well use an International money transfer service like Transferwise (which essentially is similar to a bitcoin exchange but currency to currency), that performs the same function without the bitcoin in the middle... Transaction costs will be lower and it will be faster.
    - incrudible 5y ago
      > If you're using bitcoin for international money transfers you're using exchanges on either end of the transaction to convert to bitcoin and back. That is not a given. > You may as well use an International money transfer service like Transferwise (which essentially is similar to a bitcoin exchange but currency to currency), that performs the same function without the bitcoin in the middle... Transaction costs will be lower and it will be faster. I could ask the same question: If Transferwise exists, why do we still have international bank wires? It's a different financial instrument with different properties. Transferwise is some company from Finland that you need to register with to send a limited amount of money to a limited amount of countries. Maybe that's better than Bitcoin under some circumstances, but it's a different thing.
  - cosmotic 5y ago
    I don't know a lot about bank wires except for when I put a down payment on a house. There was a flat rate if I recall, close to $90. Few if any have a credit limit approaching a housing down payment and those rates are percent based I believe. I was told it could take days to complete but it took hours. I did not feel safe doing the transfer but had no other option. I believe that's what title insurance is for (at least in part?). I've completed thousands of visa transactions in the same time, so transaction cost and speed are probably why people use visa instead of wire transfer. There are additional perks like warranty extension, fraud prevention, fraud insurance, etc. Anonymity has certainly been a purported feature of bitcoin. Obviously erroneously. It's mentioned in the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#:~:text=anonymity%20encourages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#:~:text=anonymity%20en...
incrudible 5y ago
The incremental cost of a Bitcoin transaction is effectively zero. The rationale is that transactions are a side-effect of mining. Mining may or may not consume a lot of energy, but the amount of transactions remains the same. The mining of Bitcoin only happens once in human history, so all things considered, this should be compared with the mining of all the gold or other precious metals, again, throughout human history. If there must be a comparison to VISA, we must look at the energy expended by every person working not just for VISA, but the entire infrastructure that makes running VISA possible, that is, the banking system as a whole. > Bitcoin is, by design, incredibly wasteful of resources Consider this door: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/WinonaSavingsBankVault.JPG/2880px-WinonaSavingsBankVault.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Wi... Proof of work is "a waste" in the same sense as this elaborate door is a waste.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  > Mining ~~may or may not consume~~ consumes a lot of energy ftfy sweetheart
- salawat 5y ago
  Mining should not cost a damn thing. This is where the entire thing falls apart, and why fiat is the most efficie t basis of currency. Literal scraps of cloth are distributed as physical stores of value. Most of the value in the economy doesn't even have a physical manifestation. Most importantly, it's much more practical securing those pieces of cloth in the physical world in the long run than "securing the Bitcoin network" which consumes more and more energy over time when the cash and fiat handling infrastructure is already relatively mature against everything but nation states, which is arguably working as designed. None of this warrants bringing ice cream into this fight, and to hell with the person so obsessed with cryptoccurrency as to imply that if we don't accept cryptocurrencies, we shouldn't accept ice cream. It also conflates twodifferent industries that synergize well. Part of what makes modern logistics work is that we even have refrigeration capabilities. Those aren't going to disappear just because your cryptocurrency might have a similar energy function. Which arguably it doesn't, seeing as the BitcoinNetworks energy consumption per transaction is high enough to run household energy requirements over extended timesans, and part of those operating is stprage of and consumption of, refrigerated goods. Now we at least know what side of things cryptocurrency people are really on. Nobody looking out for anybody but themselves would get behind getting rid of ice cream.

cosmotic 5y ago

Not to mention the transaction time. Visa is seconds, bitcoin is at least 30 min and typically an hour and sometimes almost a day. https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-confirmation-time And then theres the transaction cost to consider. Visa is a few cents, bitcoin is tens of dollars. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... Then watch out for the purported anonymity where the transactions are recorded forever.

incrudible 5y ago
Bitcoin is slower than VISA, but faster than an international bank wire - and comparable in cost. If VISA is so much faster, then why do bank wires exist? There are Layer 2 solutions (Lightning Network) for cheap and instant transfers that do not warrant the security of a full Bitcoin transaction. Anonymity has never been a purported feature of Bitcoin. This is not a downside, it keeps regulatory scrutiny somewhat at bay.
- janekm 5y ago
  If you're using bitcoin for international money transfers you're using exchanges on either end of the transaction to convert to bitcoin and back. You may as well use an International money transfer service like Transferwise (which essentially is similar to a bitcoin exchange but currency to currency), that performs the same function without the bitcoin in the middle... Transaction costs will be lower and it will be faster.
  - incrudible 5y ago
    > If you're using bitcoin for international money transfers you're using exchanges on either end of the transaction to convert to bitcoin and back. That is not a given. > You may as well use an International money transfer service like Transferwise (which essentially is similar to a bitcoin exchange but currency to currency), that performs the same function without the bitcoin in the middle... Transaction costs will be lower and it will be faster. I could ask the same question: If Transferwise exists, why do we still have international bank wires? It's a different financial instrument with different properties. Transferwise is some company from Finland that you need to register with to send a limited amount of money to a limited amount of countries. Maybe that's better than Bitcoin under some circumstances, but it's a different thing.
- cosmotic 5y ago
  I don't know a lot about bank wires except for when I put a down payment on a house. There was a flat rate if I recall, close to $90. Few if any have a credit limit approaching a housing down payment and those rates are percent based I believe. I was told it could take days to complete but it took hours. I did not feel safe doing the transfer but had no other option. I believe that's what title insurance is for (at least in part?). I've completed thousands of visa transactions in the same time, so transaction cost and speed are probably why people use visa instead of wire transfer. There are additional perks like warranty extension, fraud prevention, fraud insurance, etc. Anonymity has certainly been a purported feature of bitcoin. Obviously erroneously. It's mentioned in the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#:~:text=anonymity%20encourages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin#:~:text=anonymity%20en...

incrudible 5y ago

The incremental cost of a Bitcoin transaction is effectively zero. The rationale is that transactions are a side-effect of mining. Mining may or may not consume a lot of energy, but the amount of transactions remains the same. The mining of Bitcoin only happens once in human history, so all things considered, this should be compared with the mining of all the gold or other precious metals, again, throughout human history. If there must be a comparison to VISA, we must look at the energy expended by every person working not just for VISA, but the entire infrastructure that makes running VISA possible, that is, the banking system as a whole. > Bitcoin is, by design, incredibly wasteful of resources Consider this door: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/WinonaSavingsBankVault.JPG/2880px-WinonaSavingsBankVault.JPG https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/87/Wi... Proof of work is "a waste" in the same sense as this elaborate door is a waste.

egypturnash 5y ago
> Mining ~~may or may not consume~~ consumes a lot of energy ftfy sweetheart
salawat 5y ago
Mining should not cost a damn thing. This is where the entire thing falls apart, and why fiat is the most efficie t basis of currency. Literal scraps of cloth are distributed as physical stores of value. Most of the value in the economy doesn't even have a physical manifestation. Most importantly, it's much more practical securing those pieces of cloth in the physical world in the long run than "securing the Bitcoin network" which consumes more and more energy over time when the cash and fiat handling infrastructure is already relatively mature against everything but nation states, which is arguably working as designed. None of this warrants bringing ice cream into this fight, and to hell with the person so obsessed with cryptoccurrency as to imply that if we don't accept cryptocurrencies, we shouldn't accept ice cream. It also conflates twodifferent industries that synergize well. Part of what makes modern logistics work is that we even have refrigeration capabilities. Those aren't going to disappear just because your cryptocurrency might have a similar energy function. Which arguably it doesn't, seeing as the BitcoinNetworks energy consumption per transaction is high enough to run household energy requirements over extended timesans, and part of those operating is stprage of and consumption of, refrigerated goods. Now we at least know what side of things cryptocurrency people are really on. Nobody looking out for anybody but themselves would get behind getting rid of ice cream.