Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
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Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
#2Sincere question: what's the energy usage for e.g. USD or EUR?
Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
#3Sincere question: what's the energy usage for e.g. USD or EUR?
It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".
Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
#4I posted on FB while working on my degree and got a 5 year memory about it recently. I visualized the miners turning the polar bears black, and I was a good liberal who turned off my lights. Ethics would win. "It was a cool prototype" that I forgot about. Every CS student can figure this out, so it's surprising that we've let it go. Incentives, right.
Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
#5Sincere question: what's the energy usage for e.g. USD or EUR?
It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".
Many bitcoin proponents believe that bitcoin can fully replace the current financial system so whenever the energy consumption problem comes up you should expect to hear someone talking about how much banks spend on air conditioning every year.
Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
#6Sincere question: what's the energy usage for e.g. USD or EUR?
It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".
I think it's a fair question; each transaction of paper money causes wear so it might make sense to amortize the cross of minting over each transaction. Plus transactions between banks would use some energy.
One can only assume the energy cost is negligible per transaction compared to bitcoin though, simply because if you scale up the transaction volume of bitcoin to what a real economy would need it's more than we produce.
Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
#7Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
#8Sincere question: what's the energy usage for e.g. USD or EUR?
It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".
are you sure?
all of these surely have a substantial eco footprint - money production, for both paper and coin - armored cars picking up cash and bringing to the bank - physical locations, banks, check cashing places
Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
#9Sincere question: what's the energy usage for e.g. USD or EUR?
It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".
It depends on how far you want to go.
The cost per transaction would be interesting in real terms.
What's the comparison between:
- Manufacturing physical currency / Manufacturing the hardware to mine coins - Cost to run POS systems in retail outlets / Cost to run bitcoin network - Cost to run global fiat exchanges (i.e. wallstreet) / Cost to run global bitcoin network
Obviously you could drill down as far as you wanted. I'd imagine it would be quite difficult to draw up such a detailed comparison though.
Re: Bitcoin’s energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it
#10Sincere question: what's the energy usage for e.g. USD or EUR?
It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".
This is anecdotal but my family operated a store in a rural vacation area and over half of our customers used cash. In the 2000s, we'd have to drive the cash 30+ minutes to the bank, twice weekly to mitigate the risk of a robbery. We sold the business, but more electronic transfers hopefully reduces the required driving miles, and overall cost to transact in cash.