Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#11

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

spaced-out wrote: post #7

The link doesn't state whether it's counting only the energy costs incurred by VISA, or if it includes the energy costs of making a transaction on the SWIFT payment network that VISA, Mastercard, banks, and other institutions run on top of. Obviously to do a fair comparison you have to take SWIFT into account, otherwise you're not capturing the true energy cost of making a VISA payment. https://www.investopedia.com/a…

> to do a fair comparison you have to take SWIFT into account

The difference is orders of magnitude. SWIFT won't cross the gap. Bitcoin has a lot of things going for it. Energy efficiency isn't one of them.

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#12

Post by rspeele » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

johndevor wrote: post #6

The lightning network will naturally grow as a result of this.

There's no way to measure either directly, but I bet Lightning network has been used an order of magnitude more times to handwave Bitcoin's scaling issues in internet discussions, than it has been used to actually transfer money.

I went through a bitcoin phase in mid 2017 and that's what we used it for back then. Lightning network adoption is just around the corner! It'll solve high fees and do billions of transactions per day!

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#13

Post by vonsydov » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

How about the energy footprint of all the people that work for Visa ?

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#14

Post by supernova87a » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

Yeah, but does this compare the cost of creation of the currency? Isn't that what's (fallaciously) being compared here?

How much does it cost to create a US dollar, to be able to have transactions with it? Did it take 100 years of faith in the US credit to establish that? How much energy was that?

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#15

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

obilgic wrote: post #10

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is completely autonomous If we're counting the footprint of Visa's 19,500 employees [1], we'd have to start counting the footprint of every Bitcoin miner and ASIC manufacturer. Which is (a) silly and (b) unlikely to affect a difference of orders of magnitude. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc .

> the footprint of every Bitcoin miner Do they have 1000s of office all around the world with 100s of thousands working in offices and branches like banking industry?

> Do they have 1000s of office all around the world with 100s of thousands working in offices and branches like banking industry?

Banking does a lot more than payments. Most people working at banks do not work on payments.

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#16

Post by Rebelgecko » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

obilgic wrote: post #10

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bitcoin is completely autonomous If we're counting the footprint of Visa's 19,500 employees [1], we'd have to start counting the footprint of every Bitcoin miner and ASIC manufacturer. Which is (a) silly and (b) unlikely to affect a difference of orders of magnitude. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_Inc .

> the footprint of every Bitcoin miner Do they have 1000s of office all around the world with 100s of thousands working in offices and branches like banking industry?

Based off of current GPU availability (which isnt mining bitcoin per se but is) does cover coins which are comparable) I would say no, Bitcoin probably has more physical locations and more people involved

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#17

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

I mean, I know people are commenting on whether the comparison is valid, but regardless, the BTC energy cost at at 741 kWh for a single transaction is pretty close to the average monthly household energy usage in the US of 867 kWh [1]. That seems pretty nuts on its face to me.

[1] https://electricityplans.com/kwh-kilowatt-hour-can-power/

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#18

Post by EthicalHacker03 » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

spaced-out wrote: post #7

The link doesn't state whether it's counting only the energy costs incurred by VISA, or if it includes the energy costs of making a transaction on the SWIFT payment network that VISA, Mastercard, banks, and other institutions run on top of. Obviously to do a fair comparison you have to take SWIFT into account, otherwise you're not capturing the true energy cost of making a VISA payment. https://www.investopedia.com/a…

VISA (or Mastercard) do not 'run on top of' SWIFT. The net position of each VISA/MC institution will be transferred with SWIFT, but this is one payment with potentially millions of underlying card transactions.

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#19

Post by bkmrkr » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

What all of these analyses fail to realize is that the network is just used for clearing most of trading and payments are actually done off network. Think of the difference between energy used to buy gold (just buy GLD) vs energy used to move physical gold. (Fuel + Security etc)

Re: Bitcoin network average energy consumption per transaction compared to VISA

#20

Post by tmcw » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 6:58 PM UTC

spaced-out wrote: post #7

The link doesn't state whether it's counting only the energy costs incurred by VISA, or if it includes the energy costs of making a transaction on the SWIFT payment network that VISA, Mastercard, banks, and other institutions run on top of. Obviously to do a fair comparison you have to take SWIFT into account, otherwise you're not capturing the true energy cost of making a VISA payment. https://www.investopedia.com/a…

If they factored in the other-bank transaction costs, there'd be something else to "what-about." What about the company's energy costs in its non-payment processing? How about all the plastic they use to make those credit cards? The silicon in the card swipe machine?

None of these things will bridge that gap, unveiling a missing data point that somehow makes VISA less efficient by six magnitudes that somehow researchers were missing all this time. But constantly asking for more detail is a good way to stay in denial about Bitcoin's terrible numbers.