A meaningless comparison as the mainstream financial system processes far more transactions over a given period of time, and it is nearly certain that on a per-transaction basis Bitcoin consumes more energy. Moreover, the incentive for financial institutions is always to consume less energy per transaction as this lowers their operating costs, whereas the only incentive for Bitcoin miners to consume less energy is if the price of Bitcoin declines relative to the price of energy.
This whole "Bitcoin isn't as bad as they say" is getting tiresome. Bitcoin consumes as much energy as a large country to process just 6 transactions per second. No need to get defensive about your favorite payment tech. It has its problems and those problems need to be solved, why is that so hard for the Bitcoin crowd to acknowledge?
OK, let’s compare transaction volumes, both nominal dollars and number of transactions. Finance does several orders of magnitude more than BTC. BTC uses more energy per transaction than the financial system, I promise. I don’t need to do the calculations because finance handles trillions of dollars a day, BTC doesnt. Our financial system also finances everything so it has far more utility than crypto.
- How many people make use of "the financial institution"? That is everyday and real purchases, banking system, stock market, industry etc.
- How many people make use of Bitcoin? What if you compare the number of transactions per hour of Bitcoin vs. the number of transactions in "classic" finance? (that includes all the things mentioned above)
- The site only shows Bitcoin (BTC) energy consumption, which is scary enough by itself, what if you add all the other coins out there?
- Take a look at the total power consumption of the whole world, and the percentage of Bitcoin. Now add the question: How many people actually use Bitcoin vs. how many people worldwide use electricity.
While I can't provide a good source on the energy cost of the financial system, I did look for comparisons. Right now ccaf.io shows Bitcoin estimated consumption for 2022 @ 123.15 TWh with a worst case estimate of 309.23 TWh.
Let's compare that:
- In 2012 the whole country of Sweden had a total energy consumption of 136 TWh [1]
- In 2014, the whole industry sector of Germany had a total energy consumption of 244,4 TWh [2]
Bitcoin is attacked for electricity consumption it's only because it's easy to calculate the direct electricity consumption of Bitcoin.
Claiming Bitcoin is bad because of electricity consumption is like calming wash machine is bad because of electricity consumption. But everybody understands that washing with hands actually cost way more than wash machine.
The only meaningful comparison is to put carbon tax on electricity consumption and then compare the total USD cost.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 21.3 ms ] threadhttps://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...
This whole "Bitcoin isn't as bad as they say" is getting tiresome. Bitcoin consumes as much energy as a large country to process just 6 transactions per second. No need to get defensive about your favorite payment tech. It has its problems and those problems need to be solved, why is that so hard for the Bitcoin crowd to acknowledge?
A few thoughts on that:
- How many people make use of "the financial institution"? That is everyday and real purchases, banking system, stock market, industry etc.
- How many people make use of Bitcoin? What if you compare the number of transactions per hour of Bitcoin vs. the number of transactions in "classic" finance? (that includes all the things mentioned above)
- The site only shows Bitcoin (BTC) energy consumption, which is scary enough by itself, what if you add all the other coins out there?
- Take a look at the total power consumption of the whole world, and the percentage of Bitcoin. Now add the question: How many people actually use Bitcoin vs. how many people worldwide use electricity.
While I can't provide a good source on the energy cost of the financial system, I did look for comparisons. Right now ccaf.io shows Bitcoin estimated consumption for 2022 @ 123.15 TWh with a worst case estimate of 309.23 TWh.
Let's compare that:
- In 2012 the whole country of Sweden had a total energy consumption of 136 TWh [1]
- In 2014, the whole industry sector of Germany had a total energy consumption of 244,4 TWh [2]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_energy_consumption
[2]: https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/stromverbrauc...
Claiming Bitcoin is bad because of electricity consumption is like calming wash machine is bad because of electricity consumption. But everybody understands that washing with hands actually cost way more than wash machine.
The only meaningful comparison is to put carbon tax on electricity consumption and then compare the total USD cost.