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Would you rather have us use the bad system that uses more energy or the better system that uses less energy?

SamBam 6y ago
...which is which? Since the global financial system clearly uses much, much less energy per person, I'm guessing that you're also calling it the "better system?" Or are you pretending that if BitCoin were used by every person on Earth that it would still be using the exact same energy?
- nietzsch3 6y ago
  Did you read my initial comment? Bitcoin uses 7% of the energy the global financial system uses and its energy usage does not scale with adoption. Transactions are meant to be run on the Lightning Network which consumes next to nothing compared to Visa, and long term savings are meant to be stored on the blockchain. This argument that Bitcoin uses too much energy has been around since its whitepaper and has been countered multiple times. *edit, not debunked but countered with practical solutions
  - SamBam 6y ago
    > its energy usage does not scale with adoption And yet it has scaled, drastically, hundreds-fold over the past few years. You could say that it scales with the price, which is true, but tell me with a straight face that if seven billion people started buying BitCoin that wouldn't affect its price to an extraordinary degree. > Lightning Network The magic words that have said every time energy is mentioned for the past six year, supposedly making us ignore the energy BitCoin is actually using.
- vokep 6y ago
  Bitcoin's energy usage is not correlated with volume of use. The energy usage is correlated with the expected value of newly minted coins. When you think you can get $2 of "mined" currency for every $1 of power, you wont think twice about wasting lots of power on it. When you only expect $1.01 for every $1 spent mining, you'll give up. It self regulates. The current wild case of so much energy being spent on it is due to the value rising quickly over time and expected to rise further. When the overall expectation for the future of bitcoin is that it will plateau or only very slowly climb further, lots of miners will drop out and the energy usage will plummet to an easily justifiable level.

...which is which? Since the global financial system clearly uses much, much less energy per person, I'm guessing that you're also calling it the "better system?" Or are you pretending that if BitCoin were used by every person on Earth that it would still be using the exact same energy?

nietzsch3 6y ago
Did you read my initial comment? Bitcoin uses 7% of the energy the global financial system uses and its energy usage does not scale with adoption. Transactions are meant to be run on the Lightning Network which consumes next to nothing compared to Visa, and long term savings are meant to be stored on the blockchain. This argument that Bitcoin uses too much energy has been around since its whitepaper and has been countered multiple times. *edit, not debunked but countered with practical solutions
- SamBam 6y ago
  > its energy usage does not scale with adoption And yet it has scaled, drastically, hundreds-fold over the past few years. You could say that it scales with the price, which is true, but tell me with a straight face that if seven billion people started buying BitCoin that wouldn't affect its price to an extraordinary degree. > Lightning Network The magic words that have said every time energy is mentioned for the past six year, supposedly making us ignore the energy BitCoin is actually using.
vokep 6y ago
Bitcoin's energy usage is not correlated with volume of use. The energy usage is correlated with the expected value of newly minted coins. When you think you can get $2 of "mined" currency for every $1 of power, you wont think twice about wasting lots of power on it. When you only expect $1.01 for every $1 spent mining, you'll give up. It self regulates. The current wild case of so much energy being spent on it is due to the value rising quickly over time and expected to rise further. When the overall expectation for the future of bitcoin is that it will plateau or only very slowly climb further, lots of miners will drop out and the energy usage will plummet to an easily justifiable level.