111–120 of 127 posts
Just to play devil's advocate, how much energy could be saved by closing all bank facilities and backend systems etc, in case they wouldn't be needed anymore? Would BTC mining consume more or less energy then today's mainstream solutions?
Interestingly, article cites a source that contradicts the headline. The Joule paper puts the number at 45.8TWh. The main focus of the article has some guys putting the number at 58.93TWh. That's quite the discrepancy. In general I have come to treat anything that cites Alex de Vries with suspicion. Amongst other things, the repeated discussion of the number of transactions and the power expenditure. The power expend…
Exactly. People here always seem to assume that its power consumption will increase linearily the more people it use (from what the whole network consumes now). But in the future, the amount of energy consumed for a single transaction will tend towards exactly the fee paid for that transaction multiplied by the cheapest electricity price in the world. So either the transaction fees will be outlandish, or for a transa…
Trip to the shops, but fuel, some take away and a few things online when you get home and you’ve used 10-16 kWh of energy, multiple that by a population (even a small one), and even the massive investment into renewables that there is now will be quickly eclipsed.
Adding transactions that are so intensive to people’s everyday energy consumption would be a huge step backwards IMO.
Just to play devil's advocate, how much energy could be saved by closing all bank facilities and backend systems etc, in case they wouldn't be needed anymore? Would BTC mining consume more or less energy then today's mainstream solutions?
Do not forget the energy expended by the employees necessary to run the bank, i.e. housing, commutes, food, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If every single transaction in the world was Bitcoin it would still be a _ridicilous_ amount of energy by several orders of magnitude. It is totally, fundamentally, broken
Just to play devil's advocate, how much energy could be saved by closing all bank facilities and backend systems etc, in case they wouldn't be needed anymore? Would BTC mining consume more or less energy then today's mainstream solutions?
it's important to note that it should be compared with what it's supposed to change: gold mining, bank stores, payment systems. Then the cost is less. Also important that this is the first iteration of a technology that will eventually be replaced with Proof of Stake systems which will be replaced by X.
it's important to note that it should be compared with what it's supposed to change: gold mining, bank stores, payment systems. Then the cost is less. Also important that this is the first iteration of a technology that will eventually be replaced with Proof of Stake systems which will be replaced by X.
There are already online only banks without physical presence in most places and many countries don't tie their currency value to gold. The payment systems are not great on either side of the issue.
Is there any national currency still on the gold standard?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've yet to see a single legal use case for bitcoin.
Well then you need to start looking more. You are just sore that you didn't buy in at $10 or $100, aren't you?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. People here always seem to assume that its power consumption will increase linearily the more people it use (from what the whole network consumes now). But in the future, the amount of energy consumed for a single transaction will tend towards exactly the fee paid for that transaction multiplied by the cheapest electricity price in the world. So either the transaction fees will be outlandish, or for a transa…
You make it sound as if it is reasonable for a transaction is to cost 2kWh, that is a huge amount of electricity/energy. If anything that used that much energy became the dominant means of payment, the average person would use more energy in payments than they would in powering their home in a day. Trip to the shops, but fuel, some take away and a few things online when you get home and you’ve used 10-16 kWh of energ…
Making a bitcoin transaction is like recasting gold bars - not something you want to do often with small amount of gold. This will be done only for large individual payments or for large settlement payments aggregating thousands or millions of normal payments. Everyday payments will be performed on second or higher layers (e.g. Lightning Network)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But at that point the cost of the electricity consumption of Bitcoin will be borne entirely by Bitcoin's users, who will not pay more than the value they derive from use of the network. That would only fund a small fraction of today's Bitcoin mining electricity consumption.
> But at that point the cost of the electricity consumption of Bitcoin will be borne entirely by Bitcoin's users I'm not sure what you mean by this. If a certain percentage of energy is used by PoW, less is available for other purposes, and thus prices will rise for all energy users.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But at that point the cost of the electricity consumption of Bitcoin will be borne entirely by Bitcoin's users I'm not sure what you mean by this. If a certain percentage of energy is used by PoW, less is available for other purposes, and thus prices will rise for all energy users.
My point is that Bitcoin users will not pay transaction fees that are anything close to the current mining reward that is subsidized by inflation of the Bitcoin money supply. Therefore when the subsidy inevitably falls, so will the total income of all Bitcoin miners. And in the long term Bitcoin miners collectively cannot afford to buy more electricity than their total income, therefore their electricity consumption…
Fees are denominated in satoshis though, and even today the average USD amount of fees is around $8,000 per block[1] (around 6% of the total reward). A 10x increase of the BTC price will make that amount around the same as the current total reward.