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My counter question is: how much energy US banks consume? Every now and then a new article comes out about how BTC is wasting energy, it consumes X amount of e

by agilob 5y ago

My counter question is: how much energy US banks consume? Every now and then a new article comes out about how BTC is wasting energy, it consumes X amount of energy comparable to <insert small country>. I email or tweet authors of such study/article if they have any estimates on how much energy and materials US bank offices consume: including AC or heating, computers left on over night, lights left over night, TVs playing ads. I asked that more than 5 times and not once got a response. I believe that running traditional banks in US and CA consume more energy than Bitcoin. Sure, bank produce billions times more transaction per day, but BTC will either be replaced by more efficient networks or will evolve into such. US banks used to send letters and cash in coal powered trains. Anyone got source on that?

tomas 5y ago
So basically you are saying that right now traditional banks are billions of times more efficient than Bitcoin, but you believe that Bitcoin will improve its efficiency in the future? That's quite some improvement that would be needed..
- agilob 5y ago
  >but you believe that Bitcoin will improve its efficiency in the future? No, not at all. I'm quite sure Bitcoin will go down because of its inefficiencies and it only holds trading value because of "cryptocurrency whales" and sentiment. Every time it goes up I'm surprised that people still go this route while there are dozens of better solutions for whatever BTC was promised to be.
liamwestray 5y ago
https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/bank_branches/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/bank_branches/ You can go estimate it yourself pretty easily based on number of branches and some average energy use per square foot (pick the US’s commercial average as a upper bound to be conservative) Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 But to summarize as someone who works in energy related research: All the banks in the world combined do not use as much energy as bitcoin alone now. Cryptocurrencies are inherently non-productive work as their algorithms are designed to solely be computationally expensive to create a means of artificial scarcity. Block chain isn’t the problem, non-productive hashing algorithms are.
- broast 5y ago
  I would love some proof that all the computers that power all the bank and credit transactions, and all the financial derivatives they produce, don't add up to the power consumption of crypto. Then I would take into account how PoS would affect this in the future, as crypto is a technology that is meant to be built on, evolved, upgraded, and replaced by something better. Like money. Then probably ask which system is more democratic in its distribution and transparency of the money, and I would bet that system would finance less legacy climate destroying industries
  - liamwestray 5y ago
    I would like people to be able to do basic math and estimation using publicly available datasets themselves. Get list of 10 largest banks and major credit card companies. Get their ESG reports. Add annual energy and emissions summaries together. Multiply by 2. Stand in awe that it’s still a fraction of Bitcoin. You can then go find some other incredibly ignorant tangent to argue about to promote your belief in a crypto Ponzi scheme.
- agilob 5y ago
  >Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 I don't know much about energy network and power consumption of average Joe in Argentina/Slovenia/Greenland, so this article doesn't tell me much. Is that because 25% of a country doesn't have access to stable electricity, so energy requirements to run a country are small? Are their electric and electronic devices are mostly power efficient? Do they use a lot of geothermal heating without using electricity and gas to produce heat or cold, so energy use of a country isn't the same of another country in a different location? Are their energy providers close to cities, so less energy is lost in transit? Do they have home-based wind/solar power generators skipped from equation due to relaxed regulations? Energy consumption in the UK dropped by 12.9% during COVID pandemic[1]. Is that enough to stop people blaming BTC for everything bad on energy market and pollution? That was _easy_ to fix. I agree hashing and PoW protocols are crap and I even think they should be banned, but let's start adding to this discussion other things, like how bad USD and traditional banking systems are. We talk even less often about international banks money laundering with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Mexican drug cartels, hello all HSBC and Deutsche bank employees! I'm sure we have a lot of easier targets (still talking about ecological damage and pollution) to fix than networks like Bitcoin [2]. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1021836/Energy_Consumption_in_the_UK_2021.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/qeoyak/jeff_bezos_superyacht_spotted_for_first_time_at/ https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/qeoyak/jeff_bezos_sup...
astoor 5y ago
There was an article[0] which estimated that the entire global banking system (down to lamps on desks in offices) used 100Twh a year, whereas Bitcoin used around 30Twh a year (for a relatively insignificant volume of transactions). I don't know how accurate that is, but despite the unfavourable statistics, the article was still from some pro-Bitcoin person concluding that we should "stop complaining about Bitcoin and start complaining about Xmas lights". Also note that Bitcoin's energy use has since risen to 110Twh a year[1]. [0] https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consumption-fallacy-8cf194987a50 https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consu... [1] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...
mmstan 5y ago
BTC uses 50% energy the banking industry uses, source: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/research%3A-bitcoin-consumes-less-than-half-the-energy-of-the-banking-or-gold-industries https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/research%3A-bitcoin-consumes... BTC daily transactions, below 500k, soruce: https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-bitcoin-transactions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-b... Cash and card (made available by banks) daily transactions are just on another level, more than 1 per person in EU for instance, and the number of people is easy to find, source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/893459/average-number-of-transactions-per-person-per-day-by-method/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/893459/average-number-of...
- agilob 5y ago
  nasdaq is a kind of a biased source for this. I checked the linked article and it still doesn't answer the question. Energy usage was only for green house gases emissions and it was an estimate, and it doesn't include drilling or expanding new mines, like the one that's 4km deep under the surface. The article still says: >Galaxy Digital also showed that a significant part of the world's energy production is wasted — about 2,205 TWh per year which is 19.4 times that of the Bitcoin network. >Cash and card (made available by banks) daily transactions are just on another level, more than 1 per person in EU for instance Totally agree, like I said in another comment, I think BTC holds trading value and sentimental value, but should be replaced by any other from dozens of better adapted networks.
- liamwestray 5y ago
  That “study” is comparing an entire industry including pension plans, atm and card networks, payroll systems, mutual funds, iras/401ks, sarbanes-oxley data retention, etc. etc. to just bitcoin’s network. These systems aren’t replaceable by bitcoin. Bitcoin is a debit banking transaction system equivalent only. It uses several times the energy of the equivalent portions of the banking industry.
rvs-ie 5y ago
Even banks use more energy than bitcoin (which I highly doubt and there are comments here suggesting it's nowhere close), you'd still need banks or analogues of even if the whole humanity suddenly moves to crypto. Crypto energy consumption is just unnecessary waste.
- agilob 5y ago
  >Crypto energy consumption is just unnecessary waste. Not all, but never said otherwise!
alphabettsy 5y ago
> Sure, bank produce billions times more transaction per day, but BTC will either be replaced by more efficient networks or will evolve into such. But it hasn’t yet and I fail to see how using it makes it more likely to happen. Bitcoin doesn’t have the ability as it exists to handle the volume that banks do now. I have some crypto that I bought long ago, but I’m feeling much less enthusiastic about it lately. I love to see the big banks go away and lose the stranglehold they have, but replacing the players with new players doesn’t do that.
zouhair 5y ago
Crypto solved literally nothing. It's just more waste we don't need.

by agilob 5y ago

tomas 5y ago

So basically you are saying that right now traditional banks are billions of times more efficient than Bitcoin, but you believe that Bitcoin will improve its efficiency in the future? That's quite some improvement that would be needed..

agilob 5y ago
>but you believe that Bitcoin will improve its efficiency in the future? No, not at all. I'm quite sure Bitcoin will go down because of its inefficiencies and it only holds trading value because of "cryptocurrency whales" and sentiment. Every time it goes up I'm surprised that people still go this route while there are dozens of better solutions for whatever BTC was promised to be.

liamwestray 5y ago

https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/bank_branches/ https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/bank_branches/ You can go estimate it yourself pretty easily based on number of branches and some average energy use per square foot (pick the US’s commercial average as a upper bound to be conservative) Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 But to summarize as someone who works in energy related research: All the banks in the world combined do not use as much energy as bitcoin alone now. Cryptocurrencies are inherently non-productive work as their algorithms are designed to solely be computationally expensive to create a means of artificial scarcity. Block chain isn’t the problem, non-productive hashing algorithms are.

broast 5y ago
I would love some proof that all the computers that power all the bank and credit transactions, and all the financial derivatives they produce, don't add up to the power consumption of crypto. Then I would take into account how PoS would affect this in the future, as crypto is a technology that is meant to be built on, evolved, upgraded, and replaced by something better. Like money. Then probably ask which system is more democratic in its distribution and transparency of the money, and I would bet that system would finance less legacy climate destroying industries
- liamwestray 5y ago
  I would like people to be able to do basic math and estimation using publicly available datasets themselves. Get list of 10 largest banks and major credit card companies. Get their ESG reports. Add annual energy and emissions summaries together. Multiply by 2. Stand in awe that it’s still a fraction of Bitcoin. You can then go find some other incredibly ignorant tangent to argue about to promote your belief in a crypto Ponzi scheme.
agilob 5y ago
>Bitcoin consumes 'more electricity than Argentina' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56012952 I don't know much about energy network and power consumption of average Joe in Argentina/Slovenia/Greenland, so this article doesn't tell me much. Is that because 25% of a country doesn't have access to stable electricity, so energy requirements to run a country are small? Are their electric and electronic devices are mostly power efficient? Do they use a lot of geothermal heating without using electricity and gas to produce heat or cold, so energy use of a country isn't the same of another country in a different location? Are their energy providers close to cities, so less energy is lost in transit? Do they have home-based wind/solar power generators skipped from equation due to relaxed regulations? Energy consumption in the UK dropped by 12.9% during COVID pandemic[1]. Is that enough to stop people blaming BTC for everything bad on energy market and pollution? That was _easy_ to fix. I agree hashing and PoW protocols are crap and I even think they should be banned, but let's start adding to this discussion other things, like how bad USD and traditional banking systems are. We talk even less often about international banks money laundering with ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Mexican drug cartels, hello all HSBC and Deutsche bank employees! I'm sure we have a lot of easier targets (still talking about ecological damage and pollution) to fix than networks like Bitcoin [2]. [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1021836/Energy_Consumption_in_the_UK_2021.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/qeoyak/jeff_bezos_superyacht_spotted_for_first_time_at/ https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/qeoyak/jeff_bezos_sup...

astoor 5y ago

There was an article[0] which estimated that the entire global banking system (down to lamps on desks in offices) used 100Twh a year, whereas Bitcoin used around 30Twh a year (for a relatively insignificant volume of transactions). I don't know how accurate that is, but despite the unfavourable statistics, the article was still from some pro-Bitcoin person concluding that we should "stop complaining about Bitcoin and start complaining about Xmas lights". Also note that Bitcoin's energy use has since risen to 110Twh a year[1]. [0] https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consumption-fallacy-8cf194987a50 https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consu... [1] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actually-consume https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...

mmstan 5y ago

BTC uses 50% energy the banking industry uses, source: https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/research%3A-bitcoin-consumes-less-than-half-the-energy-of-the-banking-or-gold-industries https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/research%3A-bitcoin-consumes... BTC daily transactions, below 500k, soruce: https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-bitcoin-transactions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-b... Cash and card (made available by banks) daily transactions are just on another level, more than 1 per person in EU for instance, and the number of people is easy to find, source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/893459/average-number-of-transactions-per-person-per-day-by-method/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/893459/average-number-of...

agilob 5y ago
nasdaq is a kind of a biased source for this. I checked the linked article and it still doesn't answer the question. Energy usage was only for green house gases emissions and it was an estimate, and it doesn't include drilling or expanding new mines, like the one that's 4km deep under the surface. The article still says: >Galaxy Digital also showed that a significant part of the world's energy production is wasted — about 2,205 TWh per year which is 19.4 times that of the Bitcoin network. >Cash and card (made available by banks) daily transactions are just on another level, more than 1 per person in EU for instance Totally agree, like I said in another comment, I think BTC holds trading value and sentimental value, but should be replaced by any other from dozens of better adapted networks.
liamwestray 5y ago
That “study” is comparing an entire industry including pension plans, atm and card networks, payroll systems, mutual funds, iras/401ks, sarbanes-oxley data retention, etc. etc. to just bitcoin’s network. These systems aren’t replaceable by bitcoin. Bitcoin is a debit banking transaction system equivalent only. It uses several times the energy of the equivalent portions of the banking industry.

rvs-ie 5y ago

Even banks use more energy than bitcoin (which I highly doubt and there are comments here suggesting it's nowhere close), you'd still need banks or analogues of even if the whole humanity suddenly moves to crypto. Crypto energy consumption is just unnecessary waste.

agilob 5y ago
>Crypto energy consumption is just unnecessary waste. Not all, but never said otherwise!

alphabettsy 5y ago

> Sure, bank produce billions times more transaction per day, but BTC will either be replaced by more efficient networks or will evolve into such. But it hasn’t yet and I fail to see how using it makes it more likely to happen. Bitcoin doesn’t have the ability as it exists to handle the volume that banks do now. I have some crypto that I bought long ago, but I’m feeling much less enthusiastic about it lately. I love to see the big banks go away and lose the stranglehold they have, but replacing the players with new players doesn’t do that.

zouhair 5y ago

Crypto solved literally nothing. It's just more waste we don't need.