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Comment by GhostVII | Hacker News Reader

Stopped reading once they tried to say Bitcoin is green because it uses less energy than modern money production. Bitcoin handles many orders of magnitude fewer transactions that pretty much every other monetary system - the fact that the energy usage is even comparable shows how much energy Bitcoin truly uses.

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Even worse is that energy use is a feature. All the energy used in other monetary systems is incidental, so if lower energy usage becomes a goal, it can be actualized. You can't make more digital Beanie Babies while reducing power consumption since the power consumption itself is what makes the whole idiotic thing work in the first place.

On the other hand bitcoin doesn't need to be reprinted every few years and same coins can be reused millions of times, especially if transaction rate goes higher in the future. I still don't know if that comparison is something to care about.

There still need to be miners to process transactions, they will simply collect on fees instead

Transacting with bitcoin requires mining. Mining is what validates blocks of transactions. Mining does create coins, but that's sort of a side-effect. Eventually the mining reward will go away, but the energy costs of transacting will remain.

The same is true of all electronic payment systems, fiat included. Bitcoin adds nothing to the equation.

Most money in the world exists only in digital form, so I don't think bitcoin has any benefit in this regard.

The energy usage comparisons were taking into account the energy requirements of reprinting money every few years.

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