6 ms·

How much water did the banking industry use? Or the gold mining and storage industries?

lxgr 3y ago
Agriculture probably also uses more, but you can’t eat Bitcoin.
TaylorAlexander 3y ago
Comparing bitcoin to the banking industry is so absurd to me unless you account for users served. How much water per user served did the banking industry use? It makes sense that banking uses a lot of resources in total because it is a huge industry, serving hundreds of millions of people worldwide, if not billions. Bitcoin serves what, at most a few tens of thousands of users? I heard people talk about the electricity usage of the banking industry in comparison to bitcoin and its the same thing. Yeah it takes a lot of energy to heat and cool every bank in the world, but it is serving several orders of magnitude more people than bitcoin and offering way more services. Can I walk in to a bitcoin building and get a loan for a new car? Nope.
- lolbase 3y ago
  Perhaps it could be compared to _just_ FedWire. But even then, FedWire handles about $4t of transfers per day. That's a couple orders of magnitude more than BitCoin. And that's literally one service, from one bank.
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  - TheDudeMan 3y ago
    That is a reasonable comparison. Bitcoin can do that much volume as well (without much change in water “usage”). The difference being that one is controlled by the US government and one is not.
    - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
      Bitcoin can handle $4T in transfers a day?
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      - TheDudeMan 3y ago
        At ~700,000 transactions per day, if the avg txn value is $6M, then yes.
- kkielhofner 3y ago
  To put it in perspective Bank of America alone has over 60 million customers. 60 million real people. People that forget a password, lose their wallet, encounter fraud, need to walk into banks occasionally, use debit cards/deal with cash/ATMs, credit cards that are also accepted everywhere, and as you point out financing products people can actually use (not some crazy smart contract DEX who knows what), need help, have questions, etc, etc, etc. Safety deposit boxes to notary services the list just never ends. This is just retail. Plus little things like at least trying to comply with the law, customer protections, regulation, oversight, fraud departments, etc. People that even bring up comparison to the banking or financial system in discussion of bitcoin power usage instantly have zero credibility. Although the same could be said for almost any comparison between bitcoin and the banking system. It has total users measured in the 7-8 figures tops after 16 years for many valid reason.
  - junofan 3y ago
    Well yeah it’s called regulatory capital for a reason. Banks are happy to provide token services in exchange for mispriced loans from retail to support their nonretail biz. It’s cool I can walk into a BoA branch in my neighborhood; in exchange I can’t get a house for less than a million bucks. Number one rule of banking is retail’s getting fucked. Most people would be better off with a narrow bank.
    - imtringued 3y ago
      Nothing stops you from borrowing Bitcoin loans and using that to pay for your house... except the risk that Bitcoin goes up from 40k€ to 60k€ and your loan got 50% more expensive and there you go, your comment becomes pure hypocrisy. The idea that 11 people bidding up 10 houses is going to radically change if you have Bitcoin or a narrow bank is ridiculous. If people borrow Bitcoin for the loan, they will still have to outbid everyone else at exactly the same price measured in dollars, because eleven people are bidding up 10 houses. I am honestly quite tired of nonsense like your comment. If the economy is in general equilibrium, then there is no meaningful difference between Bitcoin and the dollar. If there is no general equilibrium, I would expect Bitcoin to be further away from it than dollars.
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boppo1 3y ago
Golf courses in Arizona and SoCal
sc68cal 3y ago
Which one provided more economic value to society? It wasn't Bitcoin, that's for sure.
- mistercheph 3y ago
  *extracted [...] from society
Ekaros 3y ago
And wouldn't bitcoin likely use almost same amount of servers if they provided same services? Moving numbers around on ledger is only part of it. Heavy computing is in all business rules and internal logs and traceability. And you are not getting rid of those situations where one service called an other even if final ledger is immutable...
bdcravens 3y ago
This is always the default response to these conversations, but I think it should be evaluated in different terms: what is the ratio of resources consumed to value created/maintained?

lxgr 3y ago

Agriculture probably also uses more, but you can’t eat Bitcoin.

Comparing bitcoin to the banking industry is so absurd to me unless you account for users served. How much water per user served did the banking industry use? It makes sense that banking uses a lot of resources in total because it is a huge industry, serving hundreds of millions of people worldwide, if not billions. Bitcoin serves what, at most a few tens of thousands of users? I heard people talk about the electricity usage of the banking industry in comparison to bitcoin and its the same thing. Yeah it takes a lot of energy to heat and cool every bank in the world, but it is serving several orders of magnitude more people than bitcoin and offering way more services. Can I walk in to a bitcoin building and get a loan for a new car? Nope.

lolbase 3y ago
Perhaps it could be compared to _just_ FedWire. But even then, FedWire handles about $4t of transfers per day. That's a couple orders of magnitude more than BitCoin. And that's literally one service, from one bank.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
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- TheDudeMan 3y ago
  That is a reasonable comparison. Bitcoin can do that much volume as well (without much change in water “usage”). The difference being that one is controlled by the US government and one is not.
  - TaylorAlexander 3y ago
    Bitcoin can handle $4T in transfers a day?
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      [deleted]
    - TheDudeMan 3y ago
      At ~700,000 transactions per day, if the avg txn value is $6M, then yes.
kkielhofner 3y ago
To put it in perspective Bank of America alone has over 60 million customers. 60 million real people. People that forget a password, lose their wallet, encounter fraud, need to walk into banks occasionally, use debit cards/deal with cash/ATMs, credit cards that are also accepted everywhere, and as you point out financing products people can actually use (not some crazy smart contract DEX who knows what), need help, have questions, etc, etc, etc. Safety deposit boxes to notary services the list just never ends. This is just retail. Plus little things like at least trying to comply with the law, customer protections, regulation, oversight, fraud departments, etc. People that even bring up comparison to the banking or financial system in discussion of bitcoin power usage instantly have zero credibility. Although the same could be said for almost any comparison between bitcoin and the banking system. It has total users measured in the 7-8 figures tops after 16 years for many valid reason.
- junofan 3y ago
  Well yeah it’s called regulatory capital for a reason. Banks are happy to provide token services in exchange for mispriced loans from retail to support their nonretail biz. It’s cool I can walk into a BoA branch in my neighborhood; in exchange I can’t get a house for less than a million bucks. Number one rule of banking is retail’s getting fucked. Most people would be better off with a narrow bank.
  - imtringued 3y ago
    Nothing stops you from borrowing Bitcoin loans and using that to pay for your house... except the risk that Bitcoin goes up from 40k€ to 60k€ and your loan got 50% more expensive and there you go, your comment becomes pure hypocrisy. The idea that 11 people bidding up 10 houses is going to radically change if you have Bitcoin or a narrow bank is ridiculous. If people borrow Bitcoin for the loan, they will still have to outbid everyone else at exactly the same price measured in dollars, because eleven people are bidding up 10 houses. I am honestly quite tired of nonsense like your comment. If the economy is in general equilibrium, then there is no meaningful difference between Bitcoin and the dollar. If there is no general equilibrium, I would expect Bitcoin to be further away from it than dollars.

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boppo1 3y ago

Golf courses in Arizona and SoCal

sc68cal 3y ago

Which one provided more economic value to society? It wasn't Bitcoin, that's for sure.

mistercheph 3y ago
*extracted [...] from society

Ekaros 3y ago

And wouldn't bitcoin likely use almost same amount of servers if they provided same services? Moving numbers around on ledger is only part of it. Heavy computing is in all business rules and internal logs and traceability. And you are not getting rid of those situations where one service called an other even if final ledger is immutable...

bdcravens 3y ago

This is always the default response to these conversations, but I think it should be evaluated in different terms: what is the ratio of resources consumed to value created/maintained?