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>Proof-of-work requires, by design, that the electricity value expended on mining is proportional to the total market cap of Bitcoin. This is mostly true, but

>Proof-of-work requires, by design, that the electricity value expended on mining is proportional to the total market cap of Bitcoin. This is mostly true, but I think you're conflating a couple different things here. At market equilibrium, you would think it would look like the cost of power + hw depreciation = crypto price * (block reward + fees). >if it takes an Argentina's worth of electricity to run Bitcoin now It might be justified if bitcoin could replace the traditional financial system (think about how inefficient that is), but I do not think it can. >how does the world manage if Bitcoin has a 10 or 100 times greater market cap? I don't think bitcoin's market cap can multiply by a factor of 10 or 100

remper 4y ago
> It might be justified if bitcoin could replace the traditional financial system (think about how inefficient that is), but I do not think it can. Bitcoin is already way more inefficient than the current financial system. Just compare cost per transaction between Bitcoin and Visa, for example. People seem to think that Bitcoin will somehow replace the entirety of the financial system when it's not even designed to do that and only really handles transactions.
- cowtools 4y ago
  Yes. The fees are mostly due to bitcoin's unreasonable 1MB blocksize constraint. Most other cryptocurrencies do not have this problem because they make a more reasonable throughput to bandwidth/storage tradeoff
  - kobieyc 4y ago
    That constraint is perfectly reasonable and rational, not a thumbsuck.
    - cowtools 4y ago
      It's neither reasonable or rational. As technology improves, the cost of bandwidth and storage decrease, and latency decreases. Rationally block size and block time should reflect that.
      - Gigachad 4y ago
        Without some way to squash history, I don’t see how it’s possible to fix this. The bitcoin chain is currently 400gb. If we bumped it up to 10mb blocks we would be looking at several terabytes while still not being anywhere near big enough to handle real transactions.
        cowtools 4y ago
        It does not really matter, as only miners (and large buisnesses accepting bitcoin) would need to run a full node. All these non-mining nodes have no real effect over decentralization, as they can't counter a 51% attack.

remper 4y ago

> It might be justified if bitcoin could replace the traditional financial system (think about how inefficient that is), but I do not think it can. Bitcoin is already way more inefficient than the current financial system. Just compare cost per transaction between Bitcoin and Visa, for example. People seem to think that Bitcoin will somehow replace the entirety of the financial system when it's not even designed to do that and only really handles transactions.

cowtools 4y ago
Yes. The fees are mostly due to bitcoin's unreasonable 1MB blocksize constraint. Most other cryptocurrencies do not have this problem because they make a more reasonable throughput to bandwidth/storage tradeoff
- kobieyc 4y ago
  That constraint is perfectly reasonable and rational, not a thumbsuck.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    It's neither reasonable or rational. As technology improves, the cost of bandwidth and storage decrease, and latency decreases. Rationally block size and block time should reflect that.
    - Gigachad 4y ago
      Without some way to squash history, I don’t see how it’s possible to fix this. The bitcoin chain is currently 400gb. If we bumped it up to 10mb blocks we would be looking at several terabytes while still not being anywhere near big enough to handle real transactions.
      - cowtools 4y ago
        It does not really matter, as only miners (and large buisnesses accepting bitcoin) would need to run a full node. All these non-mining nodes have no real effect over decentralization, as they can't counter a 51% attack.