And how many computing cycles and kWH are wasted on cryptocoins
On the other side the crypto mining is not only the power consumption: it's all the hardware and it's production as well. The ASIC antminers can't be used for anything else, hard to recycle as well and they constantly need to get bigger and faster. For Ethereum, people are buying shitloads of high end GPUs.
I also don't like the idea of storing insane amount of data, hoping to find correlations to make more money, but this is also nothing I can do anything about.
An American computer engineer is sent to install the machine. He chuckles at the monks' superstition: they claim that generating the billion gibberish strings is a task from God and the fundamental purpose of the universe.
(Of course the worth of paper currency is the same, still, the backing is stronger)
What will happen when bitcoins are worth less than the cost to mine them is anyone's guess
> There was approximately $1.56 trillion in circulation as of July 12, 2017, of which $1.52 trillion was in Federal Reserve notes.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm
> In FY 2017, total US government revenue, federal, state, and local, is “guesstimated” to be $6.56 trillion
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm
Current balance of federal bank deposits is ~$2.3T:
Now think of how much energy is "wasted" keeping all those accounts updated, the lights on at all the branch offices, etc.
> Now think of how much energy is "wasted" keeping all those accounts updated, the lights on at all the branch offices, etc.
You should do some research before making such uninformed assertion (also banks do more services than just transaction ledgering)
Utility and potential for utility are incredibly different. Bitcoin has no utility. I can't safely store value in it, nor can I use it for quick transactions.
Its only utility is speculative. The energy consumption is fueling a somewhat randomized, opt-in wealth redistribution service. That's not to say I think bitcoin or its ilk are terrible, but rather that the energy, in most cases, could be better used elsewhere (or like, not at all).
It's ok to like bitcoin. But let's not fool ourselves about the bad parts of it.