That's quite an apples and oranges comparison. I think they are e.g. basically implying, that ATMs or point-of-sale systems or any financial services at the ban

That's quite an apples and oranges comparison. I think they are e.g. basically implying, that ATMs or point-of-sale systems or any financial services at the bank counter wouldn't be needed in a Bitcoin-only world. Seems like a false premise. Also they ignore the energy consumption of storing the blockchain. It is currently at around 400 GB, and growing exponentially. I think there are around 70 million Bitcoin users at the moment, so if everyone downloaded the full chain, as recommended, that'd be close to 30 BILLION GB of data — that's a whole bunch of flash memory to manufacture and power. I know not nearly everyone has the full copy, but even if the number of full copies is 1 %, it's still insane. https://www.statista.com/statistics/647523/worldwide-bitcoin-blockchain-size/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/647523/worldwide-bitcoin...