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> How does energy usage scale with the number of users in general?

You're confusing Bitcoin miners and Bitcoin nodes.

Bitcoin nodes verify transactions. You can run a Bitcoin node off your home PC. It doesn't use much energy.

Bitcoin miners are what use all the energy, and their energy use is driven by the size of the mining rewards not the number of users.

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> Bitcoin nodes verify transactions. You can run a Bitcoin node off your home PC. It doesn't use much energy.

You basically answered a different question, because this doesn't tell me how it scales

I'm sure I'm off a little bit in my understanding, but I thought part of the idea whole blockchain thing was being a decentralised ledger. How does that scale if everyone is on it? Is the energy use better or worse than a centralised bank, by how much, and is it significant?

But the size of the mining rewards scales with the value of Bitcoin which roughly scales with the number of users.

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