Or $68/transaction supposedly if electricity cost at 11 cents per KwH is used. Actual transaction fees run around $0.20 for on-chain which implies either math is wrong or per block reward is sufficient still (total blocks I believe are fixed with increasing difficulty). Does this analysis take into account secondary network transactions? For example wire transfers are relatively expensive to process still, but are of…
Transaction costs are currently being socialized across all holders. The block reward is sold to pay the power bill creating downward pressure on price for everyone.
This does not seem to include transactions on the Bitcoin Lightning network which are transaction that are handled offchain so they are not included in blocks. I don't have the exact number of lightning transaction ocurring but it is the Bitcoin Core developers' plan that the scaling to thousand of transactions per second will and should take place on the lightning network (this is where they differ from their competitor Bitcoin Cash which is aiming for bigger blocks and onchain scaling). Bitcoin is still a technology in its infancy ten years after being started.
This seems completely outrageous to me. I had seen similar numbers thrown around casually in the past but still found it hard to believe to be true, (despite being pretty bearish on Bitcoin myself). This seems to provide some pretty detailed evidence, analysis and validation directly addressing criticisms. It seems pretty thorough. Is there any more to discuss on the topic of Bitcoin being outrageously wasteful? Or i…
Wasteful compared to what though? How much energy, human capital, and resources are consumed by the banking industry? If (and big if) bitcoin is able to replace a significant fraction of the banking industry it will be extremely efficient in comparison. Per-transaction measures isn't the right metric since the Bitcoin blockchain can still be successful as a reconciliation backbone without being used for small everyda…
Here's an apples and oranges comparison.
According to the article, bitcoin consumes about the same amount of electrical energy as Austria, a nation of 8,857,960.
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, ~8.6 million people are employed in "Financial activities" in the US.
This seems completely outrageous to me. I had seen similar numbers thrown around casually in the past but still found it hard to believe to be true, (despite being pretty bearish on Bitcoin myself). This seems to provide some pretty detailed evidence, analysis and validation directly addressing criticisms. It seems pretty thorough. Is there any more to discuss on the topic of Bitcoin being outrageously wasteful? Or i…
Wasteful compared to what though? How much energy, human capital, and resources are consumed by the banking industry? If (and big if) bitcoin is able to replace a significant fraction of the banking industry it will be extremely efficient in comparison. Per-transaction measures isn't the right metric since the Bitcoin blockchain can still be successful as a reconciliation backbone without being used for small everyda…
I mean, the article lays out the energy costs of competing transaction processors. But if Bitcoin is just a clearinghouse for large-scale reconciliation, then... who is the audience exactly? Large banks that have to operate using real money under actual governmental regulation have no use for Bitcoin's naive guarantees, which pretend that the court system and human ambiguity don't exist.
if true Bitcoin needs to die, and eventually will under its own weight.
Here is the proposition: let's make an inherently deflationary currency suitable for black market transactions that will become even more polluting with every transaction.
CryptoKidz: I'm in!
But haters gonna hate, and downvoterz gonna downvote. what evs
> Wasteful compared to what though? How much energy, human capital, and resources are consumed by the banking industry? The article actually answers this to some degree. See the following graphic: https://i.imgur.com/8TdKevG.png
As others have commented, per-transaction is a very misleading metric. Hashing difficulty is based on the number of other miners and time between blocks, not based on the number of transactions. With something like lightning network, a single Bitcoin transaction can facilitate millions of 'lightning' transactions.
> As others have commented, per-transaction is a very misleading metric.