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> using less electricity than the major credit card networks

I googled around for "Bitcoin vs. VISA energy consumption"; the only argument I found in favor of VISA using more is here [0]. This compares Bitcoin to the entire global banking system, including the cost of e.g. keeping the lights on at physical bank branches. It very approximately guesstimates that the entire global banking system requires ~100 TWh/year, compared to Bitcoin's ~30 TWh/year [1].

For comparison: all data centers worldwide combined use about ~400 TWh/year [2]. I very much doubt that the credit card networks account for 7% of all data center energy consumption.

[0] https://hackernoon.com/the-bitcoin-vs-visa-electricity-consu...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2017/12/15/wh...

@corv come on, even if we go with the incredibly generous hypothesis that Bitcoin alone currently uses 1/3 the energy of the entire global banking system including physical lamps at desks (!!!), it is still only providing a tiny, teeny, percentage of the value store or of transaction volume. It's not even remotely a fair comparison. It's like saying my car consumes 1/3 of the world's entire output of gasoline so it's way more efficient than the sum total of all the transportation on the planet.

I didn’t say it’s currently more efficient. I’m saying what it is designed to replace eventually, is already using more energy.

Currencies are adopted and developed on a different time scale than most other technologies we are used to.

Saying cryptocurrency has failed after being around for 10 years is shortsighted and not giving the incredible minds working on these problems enough credit.

It's designed to be actively anti-efficient. The more efficient tech is deployed the less efficient Bitcoin gets. It's already atrocious, and it's going to get more-so, on purpose. What it's designed to replace is using more energy (maybe) because it serves like 3 orders of magnitude more customers, value and transaction volume. A single BTC payment takes 826kWh of energy. Now, a MacBook Pro uses at most 85W, so for a single payment on Bitcoin network you could run your laptop for almost 10,000 hours -- or your house for a WEEK. That's stunning, and only going up (again, intentionally).

Visa OTOH is around 41Wh per transaction, or 20,000x more efficient.

You’ve ignored second-layer technologies.

There need be only one decentralized, immutable ledger to handle all transactions, the store of value and registration of assets for the entire planet.

While we’re comparing Apples and Oranges, credit cards don’t confirm payments for weeks and there are significant fees associated with accepting transactions, apart from that risk for the merchant.

Nope, I haven't. The anti-efficiency element applies to core Bitcoin no matter what you run on top of it. If you keep to the maximum 7tx/sec that's what you'll encounter. I can't imagine a world where no matter what you're running L2 that the system won't hit that incredibly low limit.

Second layer technologies, in the form of exchanges, aren't blockchain at all. They're just varying degrees of fly-by-night bookkeeping and/or settlement. They require blockchain tokens as much as they require the dollar - not at all.

There's no viable L2 technology right now that anyone is using (especially LN) yet, so it's too early to speculate. If I recall correctly it takes a traditional transaction to open a channel, and we're still capped at 7 per second. If there's 7.5 billion people on earth and we want to establish a channel for each of them, well, buckle up, we'll be here melting the Earth for 1.071 BILLION seconds, or 34 years. Just to open channels. Then another 34 years to close them. Here's a mathematical proof of the LN issues [1].

Hand-waving and pretending there's a path or some solution today means we're not even talking about objective reality anymore.

[1] https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-...

A useful metric would be energy consumption per transaction. Visa alone processes about 1700 transactions per second, Bitcoin 3 per second.

Bitcoin is essentially unused compared to the world economy, yet consumes a comparable amount of energy.

> Regarding the environmental impact of the Bitcoin network, while being widely derided for its energy use, it is in fact using less electricity than the major credit card networks. It is also using less energy than global gold mining. There are ways to reduce consumption should a consensus accept the tradeoffs.

That's not the point. The issue is with its growth trajectory.

Setting aside how little Bitcoin network can handle vs. major credit cards per unit of energy used, the "mainstream" financial system treats energy use as waste that has to be minimized. Per constant number of players, it is expected to stay stable or even decrease. Bitcoin treats energy use as a security feature, and is designed up front to grow it continuously. Per constant number of players, it'll still grow fast as the difficulty of mining is increased. Even with growing populations, mainstream system seems at worst O(n log n), and Bitcoin is definitely faster[0].

Another thing is - the mainstream financial system already works, and does its job well. Bitcoin is seen as a way for some mix of greedy and politically fringe types to make money quick, exploiting cheap electricity.

--

[0] - I'm giving a tentative O(n^2) here, I have a feeling it might be faster, but didn't check it. I'd love if someone could list here the sources of growth of energy usage in Bitcoin network.

Yes, the expenditure of energy is a defining feature of Proof of Work security, however there is going to be a plateau.

The immutable base layer Bitcoin provides is also on a trajectory of feature completion and second layer technology will increase the amount of transactions per kWh tremendously.

Who knows what benefits micropayments or smart contracts are poised to bring to further increase the efficiency of the global economy?

If you can’t offer a concrete example of more efficient micropayments or useful smart contracts, you’re basically talking about how great the second coming of Jesus might be.

> the Bitcoin network, while being widely derided for its energy use, it is in fact using less electricity than the major credit card networks

Isn't this kind of like comparing a moped to a big rig in terms of transaction rate?

> the reputation of the entire space has been tarnished by snake oil salesmen

The market for snake oil wasn't much without the salespeople in the end though, was it?

" it is in fact using less electricity than the major credit card networks." - citation needed

I should have been more careful in my wording here.

What I meant by this is the total energy expenditure of current payment systems (Credit cards, PayPal, WeChat Pay, Alipay, SWIFT, ACH, SEPA) including the overhead of fraud detection, chargebacks and the cost of fees on the economy.

To be entirely fair you would also factor in the cost of QE & inflation.

Although cryptocurrency isn’t widely used as such, notarization and its associated costs could also be taken into account.

All of these factors are obviously extremely difficult to estimate properly.

I still stand by my assertion that a mature cryptocurrency would be less costly for the global economy than the current systems of regional central banking and the damaging credit & debt cycles it brings with it.

Do you have a source on the electricity use of major card networks?

Lightning is broken, sadly - not enough trust.

It was part of a talk by Anthony Towns at Scaling Bitcoin 2018 in Tokyo.

https://youtu.be/y8hJ0VTPE34

I suggest you ask him e.g. on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ajtowns

I think the jury is still out on Lightning.

> Lightning is broken, sadly - not enough trust.

Can you elaborate on this?

In short, people aren't holding enough value in their online node accounts.

Here's a short article on the phenomenon: https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/06/26/lighting-network-...