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It's interesting that many outside of tech circles seem to be fascinated with Bitcoin. I have no opinion on alternative currency, but I have an issues with Bit
by qqyy 14y ago
It's interesting that many outside of tech circles seem to be fascinated with Bitcoin. I have no opinion on alternative currency, but I have an issues with Bitcoin as an approach to alternative currency: it's a power hog. To use the politically correct terminology, it's not "green". Not even close. While it has its appeal to nerds because it uses the computer, it is an ecologically unsound idea when you consider "scaling up". How much energy does it take to produce paper currency? How much to generate "bitcoins"?
Given the world's energy situation, it's neither a smart nor a feasible "implementation" of alternative currency.
- richcollins 14y agoHow much energy is used to support transactions in the current banking system? (not to mention physical branches, vaults, trucks, wars ... etc).
- icebraining 14y agoBitcoin could use a Raspberry Pi to generate all the coins. The only reason it's a power hog is because many people want to generate them, and it automatically adjusts to an higher difficulty in order to maintain the same rate of supply. So if energy is scarce, then it becomes more expensive, so it's less profitable to run miners, so some people stop mining and Bitcoin automatically takes less energy to generate coins.