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Comment by gritzko | Hacker News Reader

I believe that most of money consumed by the financial system actually goes back into the economy. Some bankers buy sushis, then sushi chefs buy gasoline, then oil drillers... and so on.

BitCoin tends to waste energy irrecoverably.

Apples-to-apples comparison is a challenging task, but the modern financial system hardly has that feature of burning more for the sake of burning more.

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> I believe that most of money consumed by the financial system actually goes back into the economy. Some bankers buy sushis, then sushi chefs buy gasoline, then oil drillers... and so on. BitCoin tends to waste energy irrecoverably.

Bitcoin is best technical solution we have for an existing societal problem. As soon as better technical solution will be created (e.g. proof-of-stake which can be relied upon), Bitcoin will be modified to use it. And Bitcoin will continue to operate with lower costs - burning less energy.

Money is returned to the economy via energy company profits and wages just as effectively as via bankers' salaries. It's the labour and energy itself that is wasted.

> I believe that most of money consumed by the financial system actually goes back into the economy. Some bankers buy sushis, then sushi chefs buy gasoline, then oil drillers... and so on.

Yes and no. If a banker is being paid $100/hour then presumably (in an efficient-markets sense) their labour is worth that much, and they could be doing something else with their time that would be creating $100 of value instead.

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