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> made it as energy inefficient as humanly possible in the case of PoW I'd encourage you to broaden your understanding of the purpose of PoW and specifically t

> made it as energy inefficient as humanly possible in the case of PoW I'd encourage you to broaden your understanding of the purpose of PoW and specifically the energy used. The energy used is the cost of securing a PoW blockchain--quite literally, the cost of the energy used is what makes it difficult to mount a successful attack. It is simple and universally accessible. It is not "inefficient"; it is functioning exactly as intended. What I think you are really trying to say is that you think the benefits provided by a PoW blockchain do not merit the economic expense of securely maintaining it. And that's a fine opinion to have. But the only reason you pay attention to the electricity cost is because it is highly visible--you probably have no clue how much electricity is consumed by all the other economic activities that you may consider pointless or wasteful.

mrep 5y ago
I mean, we can compare it to mastercard: 74 billion transactions a year for mastercard vs 100 million a year for bitcoin. Mastercard revenue is 15 billion while bitcoin has 21 billion in annual mining fees. So mastercard processes 740 times as many transactions for 70% of the cost and I would argue the real cost is the revenue - operating income for their actual expenses to operate which is 7 billion so 1/3 the cost. That would make it 2,220 times as efficient.
- jkhdigital 5y ago
  Bitcoin is like physically moving gold bullion between (anonymous) vaults. It is not appropriate to compare it to MasterCard, because it has dramatically different requirements and guarantees. There may be some Bitcoiners who think it should be used for all payments, but I’m not one of them. Centralized payment processors will always be more efficient, especially for the massive flow of low-value casual transactions that the average consumer produces.

mrep 5y ago

I mean, we can compare it to mastercard: 74 billion transactions a year for mastercard vs 100 million a year for bitcoin. Mastercard revenue is 15 billion while bitcoin has 21 billion in annual mining fees. So mastercard processes 740 times as many transactions for 70% of the cost and I would argue the real cost is the revenue - operating income for their actual expenses to operate which is 7 billion so 1/3 the cost. That would make it 2,220 times as efficient.

jkhdigital 5y ago
Bitcoin is like physically moving gold bullion between (anonymous) vaults. It is not appropriate to compare it to MasterCard, because it has dramatically different requirements and guarantees. There may be some Bitcoiners who think it should be used for all payments, but I’m not one of them. Centralized payment processors will always be more efficient, especially for the massive flow of low-value casual transactions that the average consumer produces.