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There is a meaningful service cost, it's just paid for by mining. Environmentally there's also a massive cost, one that is not offset by the benefits bitcoin br

There is a meaningful service cost, it's just paid for by mining. Environmentally there's also a massive cost, one that is not offset by the benefits bitcoin brings - which is primarily financial speculation and scams. Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory.

cft 5y ago
>Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory. Do you have a source for this fact? It might survive the 50 year old fiat dollar experiment. Until 50 years ago, there has not been a currency that wasn't backed up by something that was beyond the government
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  A source for this fact? It's an opinion.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- root_axis 5y ago
  Bitcoin subsists on the massive electrical and internet infrastructure that is only possible through government.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Because no private enterprise could provide power or internet. Sure, some of the internet technology was invented with government grants, but lets not pretend these inventions were only inevitable due to US government. If US government were gone today the internet, electricity, and bitcoin will still be here but the usefulness of the dollar will massively decrease.
    - Guvante 5y ago
      Are we pretending that the US government is gone without a worldwide depression? (To be clear the US isn't alone, any of the major countries disappearing overnight would shock the economic system too hard to make these style what ifs meaningful) If so it wouldn't stop being valuable for quite a while still, in this hypothetical you would still have years of contracts in terms of USD, not all of which would be renegotiated for tons of reasons. Additionally most foreign trade that historically ran of the USD would want to change to a new world currency but would need to figure out what currency to use. So lets flip it on its head. What if the mining reward disappeared? Would Bitcoin survive?
      - notch656a 5y ago
        >Are we pretending that the US government is gone without a worldwide depression? (To be clear the US isn't alone, any of the major countries disappearing overnight would shock the economic system too hard to make these style what ifs meaningful) Crytpo will march on with or without US government, I don't see them as existential concern for BTC or other crypto. I'm not sure if BTC will survive once there is nothing to mine, but other crypto like XMR has infinite tail emission thus mining never dies. I apologize but here I often use BTC interchangeably to mean PoW cryptos in general. I shouldn't do that.
    - politician 5y ago
      I'd argue the opposite, if the US government ceased to exist, the electrical grids in North America would collapse shortly thereafter, followed by the Internet and Bitcoin. Without the rule of law and threat of prosecution, a massive surge in usage due to theft would overwhelm systems. Without the nuclear status quo and the threat of retaliation, NA would either be glassed or invaded.
      - notch656a 5y ago
        They would probably be collapsed in the short term and eventually be replaced by something, if not decentralized power generation. >Without the rule of law and threat of prosecution, a massive surge in usage due to theft would overwhelm systems. I used both internet and electricity in Northern Syria circa 2015, provided by private providers, and it seemed to work just fine then. Why you think rule of law is so important to internet existing? If the dude running the cell phone towers and cell phone stand points an AK out the window when they see a crook, most people decide not to theft that. You don't need central power grid to have enough electricity to run phones and cryptocurrencies. >Without the nuclear status quo and the threat of retaliation, NA would either be glassed or invaded. Or cooperative militias and private individuals ally with someone with nukes or seize the ones already in existence. Not to mention invading American part of NA is hilariously foolish as there would be a "rifle behind every blade of grass."
- Guvante 5y ago
  Don't believe the lies they say about fiat currencies in crypto circles. Currency is way more complicated than they lead you to believe. After all fractional reserve banking has existed since before currency did. And if you have fractional reserve banking you aren't "back up by something" unless you count the credit of the bank as something. Given that is the literal definition of fiat currency (backed by the full faith and credit of the United States) that means that it is way more complicated than the gold standard. To give a modern example (the gold standard no longer exists anywhere) many countries have a fixed currency backed by the USD. Since fractional reserve banking is a thing there too it isn't like the country is holding onto $1 USD for every $1 USD equivalent of currency. However it isn't like there isn't a relationship so the source of that relationship is government exchange. You can exchange $1 USD equivalent of currency for $1 USD. Now we get to the real wrinkle. How can countries have higher inflation than the USD if they are locked with USD? (Which they objectively have) By simply restricting the amount of currency that can be exchanged for USD. This can be hand waved around pretty easy "we have a shortage" or "it is difficult to obtain that much". Now you have a fiat currency in reality but technically it is a backed currency. To be clear it isn't like ditching the gold standard was without downsides, this is just long enough to point out that broad statements like "backed by anything" fail to account for the reality of backed currencies in a modern financial system.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    >After all fractional reserve banking has existed since before currency did. We don't even have fractional reserve banking. There is no reserve ratio, it's 0. Bernanke's own published book states it is only fractional reserve banking when it is required to keep a fractional reserve.
    - Guvante 5y ago
      I am talking about the consequence of fractional reserve banking. Specifically that money is made by banks to some amount. Also I think saying "we don't have fractional reserve banking" is needlessly splitting hairs. The requirements are just more complicated than "hold onto X% of deposits".
  - 5y ago
- 8note 5y ago
  Gold isn't backed up by anything. If anything, government is a stronger backing than before
notch656a 5y ago
Quantify the environment cost that has been borne by bitcoin and now compare it to the cost by overheating or cooling houses (except perhaps a few elderly or infants, no one needs a house to stay within 60-80 degree band, you can survive with much less heating/cooling energy usage). Then explain to us how anyone living in a comfortable room temperature heated home that complains about bitcoin isn't a hypocrite, using environmental concerns as propaganda to shame people using computation cycles in some way they deem unfit while simultaneously restraining their outrage for AI training or video games. This comment is unpopular, because it hits too close to the heart of home for many of you sitting in your comfortable home wasting energy on heat and A/C while complaining about environmental consumption of bitcoin.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  "You criticise bitcoin for using more electricity than Ireland while using disproportionately high levels of coal power usage, and yet you live in a house. Hypocrite!" This isn't a cogent argument. Yes, overheating or overcooling houses is also bad. If AI training used as much electricity as Ireland I'd be critical of that too.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    A lot more than Ireland now; that was years ago. It now uses more electricity than Argentina (about 6 Irelands).
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      Oh, wonderful.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    Heating and cooling uses way more electricity than Ireland. This message is for the hypocrites who complain about bitcoin while keeping their house above 60 when it's cold, or those running A/C below 80 when its hot. Y'all are wasting way more energy than bitcoin, while many of you simultaneously complain about bitcoin. >This isn't a cogent argument. Yes, overheating or overcooling houses is also bad. If AI training used as much electricity as Ireland I'd be critical of that too. It's a cogent argument to point out the hypocrisy. If you want to argue we should create a watt-police or ensure externalities of power consumption are better accounted for, that's a different argument.
unobatbayar 5y ago
How is financial speculation and scams an environmental cost?
- wombat-man 5y ago
  driving up the price of bitcoin increases the motivation to run even more bitcoin miners which use more and more electricity. Depending on where it's generated that can come at the cost of the environment.
- blackshaw 5y ago
  It's not the speculation and scams that are an environmental cost, it's the fact that the Bitcoin network uses more energy than a medium-sized country.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
There's no benefits to mining bitcoin specifically. You're right about that, it buys us nothing. Wouldn't mind even more energy being spent to secure the Monero blockchain though. Also, scams are only common in the smart contract networks. People create useless shitcoins and spam telegram groups in order to generate some quick hype and exit with as much money as possible. I'd certainly like to believe nobody would be dumb enough to actually invest massive amounts of capital into these scams but that's exactly what they do.
- theturtletalks 5y ago
  The cost users are paying is the cost of decentralization. One single entity will always be cheaper than blockchain decentralization, but the cost can be spread across millions or billions of users. Now if the cost is worth it remains to be seen.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Bitcoin is not decentralized. You need specialized hardware to mine bitcoin and the entry costs are enormous. One CPU one vote is history. As a result there are relatively few miners. Just look at how much bitcoin suffered when countries started banning mining activities. A truly decentralized coin would simply shrug off attempts at regulation because there are so many independent nodes no single country could possibly ban them all. What happened instead is one country banning BTC put a stop to a huge chunk of the network.
    - theturtletalks 5y ago
      I mean decentralization in the "proving ownership" way. Right now, a bank can be the central authority on how much money you have in your account. With Bitcoin, people collectively determine how much each person has through the blockchain. A bank doing it will always be cheaper, but then the bank has too much control. How much are people willing to pay to make sure one entity does not have too much control or power?
      - 5y ago
spinny 5y ago
correct. the cost of the Bitcoin network, at least in terms of energy is the sum of all the energy spent mining so far. this is also what values the network and makes it secure. it's a very efficient method to convert raw energy into a digital token
anderber 5y ago
> Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory Keep in mind that not all Cryptocurrency use mining. Nano, for example, is zero fee, environmentally friendly coin that is incredibly fast. Bitcoin gets all the talk but there are some great and interesting tech out there. Get yourself a wallet (https://natrium.io/ https://natrium.io/) and I'll send you some so you can try it out. https://nano.org/ https://nano.org/
- hartator 5y ago
  I am curious as well. I’ve created a wallet: nano_1g6bkdkp9h6y4594sa3kiyu4xdmfz3nbj9z4zeptrdatcztpprcdsno5p6nr How is it secure if it’s not doing any wasteful mining though?
  - nojster 5y ago
    The general answer is: through proof of stake. Since this is HN, you might enjoy this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2815 https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2815 originating from a project called Cardano, which has published dozens of peer reviewed papers (not only on arxiv), presented continuously at EuroCRYPT and works with great academics from “boring” fields (at least to most CS students) such as formal verification. The main gist in pos (to which Cardano showed the first viable solution that does not have extensive unbonding periods or requires centralized coordination) is that stake pool operators (similar but different to miners in Bitcoin) are chosen randomly to validate the next block based on how much tokens are staked with them. The incentive system to keep these SPOs truthful is outlined in detail in the above mentioned paper. You basically do not let everyone hunt one complex problem (where all but one miner waste their energy to secure the network) but build a system to chose one to then perform a validation. This decreases energy consumption of the overall network substantially.
  - anderber 5y ago
    This article (https://www.kraken.com/en-us/learn/what-is-nano https://www.kraken.com/en-us/learn/what-is-nano) goes into how it keeps the network secure. But Proof of Stake is the basics of it. I sent you one Nano to play with. Let me know what you think! For me, I think Nano is a great replacement to cash. You can give and receive without fees. It makes a great way to donate or pay for things.
kebman 5y ago
Do you have a measure against the banking system? If you do, then I'd love to see how Bitcoin is worse.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  Bitcoin hasn't replaced the banking system though, nor could it (or should it). A crypto backed finance industry would be a libertarian hellscape of consumer abuse.
- kentonv 5y ago
  According to this: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/cost-per-transaction https://www.blockchain.com/charts/cost-per-transaction Bitcoin costs $150-$300 per transaction. Unless I'm misunderstanding something? Needless to say, nothing in the regular banking system comes anywhere near those kinds of costs.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    Money laundering millions costs more than that. Hiding illgotten gains in swiss bank accounts costs more.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Let's take an article [0] produced by a big Bitcoin miner at face value. They claim the banking system consumes 263.72 TWh globally, twice the power consumption of the Bitcoin network at that time, 113.89 TWh. Now, Bitcoin is processing 4.6 transactions/second [1]. VISA alone is processing 1700 transactions/second on average, with peak transaction rates claimed in the 24000/second [2]. Mastercard is similar, as are other payment processors. Even worse, the claimed energy usage is for the entire banking system. This easily amounts to billions of daily transactions, but also many other services that Bitcoin doesn't even come close to offering: insurance, mortgages, credits, risk evaluations, escrow and many others. All this for a mere 2x the total energy expenditure. [0] https://cointelegraph.com/news/banking-system-consumes-two-times-more-energy-than-bitcoin-research https://cointelegraph.com/news/banking-system-consumes-two-t... [1] https://towardsdatascience.com/the-blockchain-scalability-problem-the-race-for-visa-like-transaction-speed-5cce48f9d44 https://towardsdatascience.com/the-blockchain-scalability-pr... [2] https://news.bitcoin.com/no-visa-doesnt-handle-24000-tps-and-neither-does-your-pet-blockchain/ https://news.bitcoin.com/no-visa-doesnt-handle-24000-tps-and...
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
If bitcoin's benefits do not offset the "massive costs" for you (because you're likely coming from a first-world country), it doesn't mean that these benefits do not exist for people who were not so lucky as you are.
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  Carbon pollution is not just a one-time cost, it is a debt that carries a massive interest rate with it that will be paid for generations. So whatever benefits someone else might reap from Bitcoin, it certainly isn't worth it to me.
  - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
    People use way more energy for dumb heating. In my region humans can't survive in winter without it. There is no reason why mining rigs can't be used for 'smart' heating, heat being a byproduct of mining. It is not done currently only because the energy use of bitcoin is so miniscule compared to other uses, that it's not even worthy to bother yet. Down the road, it'll likely change, but currently complaints about 'massive costs to the environment' are mostly virtue signalling.
    - SantalBlush 5y ago
      If the energy use of bitcoin was minuscule while heating a building, and it could generate mining rewards while doing so, then people would be using it for that purpose. They aren't.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        People absolutely do use bitcoin mining for heating. It's just not yet popular enough, and it makes sense only in certain climates.
        SantalBlush 5y ago
lowkey 5y ago
Tell me you don’t understand the problem Bitcoin solves without telling me.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  "it's not bad you just don't understand it" Good one
- SantalBlush 5y ago
  Bitcoin does solve a problem, but it's a theoretical problem, not a practical one.
iso1210 5y ago
Bitcoin takes 200kWh per transaction. At current US energy pries of 13 cents, that's $26 per transaction.
- notch656a 5y ago
  The average transaction value made in bitcoin is $80k. A financial service cost of $26 on an $80k international transaction is amazingly good. And with something like litecoin goes down to $0.02
  - iso1210 5y ago
    Just showing that bitcoin is more about international money laundering than a realistic currency

cft 5y ago

>Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory. Do you have a source for this fact? It might survive the 50 year old fiat dollar experiment. Until 50 years ago, there has not been a currency that wasn't backed up by something that was beyond the government

beaconstudios 5y ago
A source for this fact? It's an opinion.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
root_axis 5y ago
Bitcoin subsists on the massive electrical and internet infrastructure that is only possible through government.
- notch656a 5y ago
  Because no private enterprise could provide power or internet. Sure, some of the internet technology was invented with government grants, but lets not pretend these inventions were only inevitable due to US government. If US government were gone today the internet, electricity, and bitcoin will still be here but the usefulness of the dollar will massively decrease.
  - Guvante 5y ago
    Are we pretending that the US government is gone without a worldwide depression? (To be clear the US isn't alone, any of the major countries disappearing overnight would shock the economic system too hard to make these style what ifs meaningful) If so it wouldn't stop being valuable for quite a while still, in this hypothetical you would still have years of contracts in terms of USD, not all of which would be renegotiated for tons of reasons. Additionally most foreign trade that historically ran of the USD would want to change to a new world currency but would need to figure out what currency to use. So lets flip it on its head. What if the mining reward disappeared? Would Bitcoin survive?
    - notch656a 5y ago
      >Are we pretending that the US government is gone without a worldwide depression? (To be clear the US isn't alone, any of the major countries disappearing overnight would shock the economic system too hard to make these style what ifs meaningful) Crytpo will march on with or without US government, I don't see them as existential concern for BTC or other crypto. I'm not sure if BTC will survive once there is nothing to mine, but other crypto like XMR has infinite tail emission thus mining never dies. I apologize but here I often use BTC interchangeably to mean PoW cryptos in general. I shouldn't do that.
  - politician 5y ago
    I'd argue the opposite, if the US government ceased to exist, the electrical grids in North America would collapse shortly thereafter, followed by the Internet and Bitcoin. Without the rule of law and threat of prosecution, a massive surge in usage due to theft would overwhelm systems. Without the nuclear status quo and the threat of retaliation, NA would either be glassed or invaded.
    - notch656a 5y ago
      They would probably be collapsed in the short term and eventually be replaced by something, if not decentralized power generation. >Without the rule of law and threat of prosecution, a massive surge in usage due to theft would overwhelm systems. I used both internet and electricity in Northern Syria circa 2015, provided by private providers, and it seemed to work just fine then. Why you think rule of law is so important to internet existing? If the dude running the cell phone towers and cell phone stand points an AK out the window when they see a crook, most people decide not to theft that. You don't need central power grid to have enough electricity to run phones and cryptocurrencies. >Without the nuclear status quo and the threat of retaliation, NA would either be glassed or invaded. Or cooperative militias and private individuals ally with someone with nukes or seize the ones already in existence. Not to mention invading American part of NA is hilariously foolish as there would be a "rifle behind every blade of grass."
Guvante 5y ago
Don't believe the lies they say about fiat currencies in crypto circles. Currency is way more complicated than they lead you to believe. After all fractional reserve banking has existed since before currency did. And if you have fractional reserve banking you aren't "back up by something" unless you count the credit of the bank as something. Given that is the literal definition of fiat currency (backed by the full faith and credit of the United States) that means that it is way more complicated than the gold standard. To give a modern example (the gold standard no longer exists anywhere) many countries have a fixed currency backed by the USD. Since fractional reserve banking is a thing there too it isn't like the country is holding onto $1 USD for every $1 USD equivalent of currency. However it isn't like there isn't a relationship so the source of that relationship is government exchange. You can exchange $1 USD equivalent of currency for $1 USD. Now we get to the real wrinkle. How can countries have higher inflation than the USD if they are locked with USD? (Which they objectively have) By simply restricting the amount of currency that can be exchanged for USD. This can be hand waved around pretty easy "we have a shortage" or "it is difficult to obtain that much". Now you have a fiat currency in reality but technically it is a backed currency. To be clear it isn't like ditching the gold standard was without downsides, this is just long enough to point out that broad statements like "backed by anything" fail to account for the reality of backed currencies in a modern financial system.
- notch656a 5y ago
  >After all fractional reserve banking has existed since before currency did. We don't even have fractional reserve banking. There is no reserve ratio, it's 0. Bernanke's own published book states it is only fractional reserve banking when it is required to keep a fractional reserve.
  - Guvante 5y ago
    I am talking about the consequence of fractional reserve banking. Specifically that money is made by banks to some amount. Also I think saying "we don't have fractional reserve banking" is needlessly splitting hairs. The requirements are just more complicated than "hold onto X% of deposits".
- 5y ago
8note 5y ago
Gold isn't backed up by anything. If anything, government is a stronger backing than before

notch656a 5y ago

Quantify the environment cost that has been borne by bitcoin and now compare it to the cost by overheating or cooling houses (except perhaps a few elderly or infants, no one needs a house to stay within 60-80 degree band, you can survive with much less heating/cooling energy usage). Then explain to us how anyone living in a comfortable room temperature heated home that complains about bitcoin isn't a hypocrite, using environmental concerns as propaganda to shame people using computation cycles in some way they deem unfit while simultaneously restraining their outrage for AI training or video games. This comment is unpopular, because it hits too close to the heart of home for many of you sitting in your comfortable home wasting energy on heat and A/C while complaining about environmental consumption of bitcoin.

beaconstudios 5y ago
"You criticise bitcoin for using more electricity than Ireland while using disproportionately high levels of coal power usage, and yet you live in a house. Hypocrite!" This isn't a cogent argument. Yes, overheating or overcooling houses is also bad. If AI training used as much electricity as Ireland I'd be critical of that too.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  A lot more than Ireland now; that was years ago. It now uses more electricity than Argentina (about 6 Irelands).
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    Oh, wonderful.
- notch656a 5y ago
  Heating and cooling uses way more electricity than Ireland. This message is for the hypocrites who complain about bitcoin while keeping their house above 60 when it's cold, or those running A/C below 80 when its hot. Y'all are wasting way more energy than bitcoin, while many of you simultaneously complain about bitcoin. >This isn't a cogent argument. Yes, overheating or overcooling houses is also bad. If AI training used as much electricity as Ireland I'd be critical of that too. It's a cogent argument to point out the hypocrisy. If you want to argue we should create a watt-police or ensure externalities of power consumption are better accounted for, that's a different argument.

unobatbayar 5y ago

How is financial speculation and scams an environmental cost?

wombat-man 5y ago
driving up the price of bitcoin increases the motivation to run even more bitcoin miners which use more and more electricity. Depending on where it's generated that can come at the cost of the environment.
blackshaw 5y ago
It's not the speculation and scams that are an environmental cost, it's the fact that the Bitcoin network uses more energy than a medium-sized country.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

There's no benefits to mining bitcoin specifically. You're right about that, it buys us nothing. Wouldn't mind even more energy being spent to secure the Monero blockchain though. Also, scams are only common in the smart contract networks. People create useless shitcoins and spam telegram groups in order to generate some quick hype and exit with as much money as possible. I'd certainly like to believe nobody would be dumb enough to actually invest massive amounts of capital into these scams but that's exactly what they do.

theturtletalks 5y ago
The cost users are paying is the cost of decentralization. One single entity will always be cheaper than blockchain decentralization, but the cost can be spread across millions or billions of users. Now if the cost is worth it remains to be seen.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Bitcoin is not decentralized. You need specialized hardware to mine bitcoin and the entry costs are enormous. One CPU one vote is history. As a result there are relatively few miners. Just look at how much bitcoin suffered when countries started banning mining activities. A truly decentralized coin would simply shrug off attempts at regulation because there are so many independent nodes no single country could possibly ban them all. What happened instead is one country banning BTC put a stop to a huge chunk of the network.
  - theturtletalks 5y ago
    I mean decentralization in the "proving ownership" way. Right now, a bank can be the central authority on how much money you have in your account. With Bitcoin, people collectively determine how much each person has through the blockchain. A bank doing it will always be cheaper, but then the bank has too much control. How much are people willing to pay to make sure one entity does not have too much control or power?
    - 5y ago

spinny 5y ago

correct. the cost of the Bitcoin network, at least in terms of energy is the sum of all the energy spent mining so far. this is also what values the network and makes it secure. it's a very efficient method to convert raw energy into a digital token

anderber 5y ago

> Cryptocurrency is probably one of the worst inventions in recent memory Keep in mind that not all Cryptocurrency use mining. Nano, for example, is zero fee, environmentally friendly coin that is incredibly fast. Bitcoin gets all the talk but there are some great and interesting tech out there. Get yourself a wallet (https://natrium.io/ https://natrium.io/) and I'll send you some so you can try it out. https://nano.org/ https://nano.org/

hartator 5y ago
I am curious as well. I’ve created a wallet: nano_1g6bkdkp9h6y4594sa3kiyu4xdmfz3nbj9z4zeptrdatcztpprcdsno5p6nr How is it secure if it’s not doing any wasteful mining though?
- nojster 5y ago
  The general answer is: through proof of stake. Since this is HN, you might enjoy this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2815 https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2815 originating from a project called Cardano, which has published dozens of peer reviewed papers (not only on arxiv), presented continuously at EuroCRYPT and works with great academics from “boring” fields (at least to most CS students) such as formal verification. The main gist in pos (to which Cardano showed the first viable solution that does not have extensive unbonding periods or requires centralized coordination) is that stake pool operators (similar but different to miners in Bitcoin) are chosen randomly to validate the next block based on how much tokens are staked with them. The incentive system to keep these SPOs truthful is outlined in detail in the above mentioned paper. You basically do not let everyone hunt one complex problem (where all but one miner waste their energy to secure the network) but build a system to chose one to then perform a validation. This decreases energy consumption of the overall network substantially.
- anderber 5y ago
  This article (https://www.kraken.com/en-us/learn/what-is-nano https://www.kraken.com/en-us/learn/what-is-nano) goes into how it keeps the network secure. But Proof of Stake is the basics of it. I sent you one Nano to play with. Let me know what you think! For me, I think Nano is a great replacement to cash. You can give and receive without fees. It makes a great way to donate or pay for things.

kebman 5y ago

Do you have a measure against the banking system? If you do, then I'd love to see how Bitcoin is worse.

beaconstudios 5y ago
Bitcoin hasn't replaced the banking system though, nor could it (or should it). A crypto backed finance industry would be a libertarian hellscape of consumer abuse.
kentonv 5y ago
According to this: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/cost-per-transaction https://www.blockchain.com/charts/cost-per-transaction Bitcoin costs $150-$300 per transaction. Unless I'm misunderstanding something? Needless to say, nothing in the regular banking system comes anywhere near those kinds of costs.
- iso1210 5y ago
  Money laundering millions costs more than that. Hiding illgotten gains in swiss bank accounts costs more.
tsimionescu 5y ago
Let's take an article [0] produced by a big Bitcoin miner at face value. They claim the banking system consumes 263.72 TWh globally, twice the power consumption of the Bitcoin network at that time, 113.89 TWh. Now, Bitcoin is processing 4.6 transactions/second [1]. VISA alone is processing 1700 transactions/second on average, with peak transaction rates claimed in the 24000/second [2]. Mastercard is similar, as are other payment processors. Even worse, the claimed energy usage is for the entire banking system. This easily amounts to billions of daily transactions, but also many other services that Bitcoin doesn't even come close to offering: insurance, mortgages, credits, risk evaluations, escrow and many others. All this for a mere 2x the total energy expenditure. [0] https://cointelegraph.com/news/banking-system-consumes-two-times-more-energy-than-bitcoin-research https://cointelegraph.com/news/banking-system-consumes-two-t... [1] https://towardsdatascience.com/the-blockchain-scalability-problem-the-race-for-visa-like-transaction-speed-5cce48f9d44 https://towardsdatascience.com/the-blockchain-scalability-pr... [2] https://news.bitcoin.com/no-visa-doesnt-handle-24000-tps-and-neither-does-your-pet-blockchain/ https://news.bitcoin.com/no-visa-doesnt-handle-24000-tps-and...

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

If bitcoin's benefits do not offset the "massive costs" for you (because you're likely coming from a first-world country), it doesn't mean that these benefits do not exist for people who were not so lucky as you are.

SantalBlush 5y ago
Carbon pollution is not just a one-time cost, it is a debt that carries a massive interest rate with it that will be paid for generations. So whatever benefits someone else might reap from Bitcoin, it certainly isn't worth it to me.
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
  People use way more energy for dumb heating. In my region humans can't survive in winter without it. There is no reason why mining rigs can't be used for 'smart' heating, heat being a byproduct of mining. It is not done currently only because the energy use of bitcoin is so miniscule compared to other uses, that it's not even worthy to bother yet. Down the road, it'll likely change, but currently complaints about 'massive costs to the environment' are mostly virtue signalling.
  - SantalBlush 5y ago
    If the energy use of bitcoin was minuscule while heating a building, and it could generate mining rewards while doing so, then people would be using it for that purpose. They aren't.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      People absolutely do use bitcoin mining for heating. It's just not yet popular enough, and it makes sense only in certain climates.
      - SantalBlush 5y ago

lowkey 5y ago

Tell me you don’t understand the problem Bitcoin solves without telling me.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
beaconstudios 5y ago
"it's not bad you just don't understand it" Good one
SantalBlush 5y ago
Bitcoin does solve a problem, but it's a theoretical problem, not a practical one.

iso1210 5y ago

Bitcoin takes 200kWh per transaction. At current US energy pries of 13 cents, that's $26 per transaction.

notch656a 5y ago
The average transaction value made in bitcoin is $80k. A financial service cost of $26 on an $80k international transaction is amazingly good. And with something like litecoin goes down to $0.02
- iso1210 5y ago
  Just showing that bitcoin is more about international money laundering than a realistic currency