> Lots of problems to be solved back then, but Bitcoin is just the same now. Nothing was solved. No progress
Oh, it's way worse than that. Now, a small country's worth of electricity is consumed every day to no end at all, except "mining" Bitcoins.
Oh, it's way worse than that. Now, a small country's worth of electricity is consumed every day to no end at all, except "mining" Bitcoins.
The end is existence of bitcoin as solution to fairly important problem of decentralized and censorship-resistant consensus mechanism over open ledger that everybody can transfer value within (and soon with convenient atomic swaps - across multiple chains). And that is just the lowest layer of operation.
Anybody claiming bitcoin mining is wasting energy assumes the solution to said problem is worthless or the problem doesn’t exist. Both of which I (and the market) disagree with.
As for whether there could be more “efficient” way to line bitcoins - this is irrelevant, because for every jump in efficiency there will be similar jump in mining difficulty by design.
In contrast with proof of stake there is quite literally nothing at stake.
The "small country" comparison is deceptive as the energy is equivalent to just a single nuclear power plant: 15 TWh/yr = 1.7 GW