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

by kebman 5y ago

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...
- neb_b 5y ago
  Your transactions/second number ignores the lightning network
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    We were discussing Bitcoin. The Lightning network is a completely different thing, with completely different guarantees of payment security/trust than Bitcoin (it's possible to steal money on the Lightning network, or to do denial of service attacks against nodes, by design).

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

by 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.

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...

neb_b 5y ago
Your transactions/second number ignores the lightning network
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  We were discussing Bitcoin. The Lightning network is a completely different thing, with completely different guarantees of payment security/trust than Bitcoin (it's possible to steal money on the Lightning network, or to do denial of service attacks against nodes, by design).