How much electricity do you think traditional money printing and transfers consume?
The entire us consumes 75 twh in a year, the same as bitcoin’s global energy use.
Of that, the entire commercial sector is about 12 twh. That’s not just banks. That’s every company. Banks alone are surely far less. Maybe 2-3 twh? And the us is 15% of global gdp. So, global finance might consume about 14-32 twh.
Again, that is while doing all of global finance. Bitcoin powers a rounding error of transactions yet consumes 75 twh.
There’s just no comparison energy wise. My math could be off by several orders of magnitude and bitcoin would still consume more if it were actually powering the world’s transactions.
If we assume banks are 10% of that, then it’s 200 twh. 3x bitcoin. But also, handling literally all finance and banking in the US. Vs essentially nothing for bitcoin, compared to the scale of the us economy.
There’s no need to introduce hrs and years to the mix. Watts describe precisely what you’re attempting to quantify.
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=4+PW+hr%2Fyear+in+GW&o...
The total amount of reported money transacted might be higher for bitcoin but that doesn’t come from contact with the real economy. So that depends on the valuation of bitcoin rather than economic impact.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/277841/paypals-total-pay...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/730806/daily-number-of-b...
Of course it'd be much better for us to adopt a crypto currency that uses a different algorithm that has even less energy usage. Even without that though I think it could prove to be more efficient than existing financial systems.
Anyway, as another way of answering your question, physical money printing and transfers require no electricity at all, predating the invention of electric power by thousands of years.
1. Print the money
2. Harvest the Cotton and other raw materials
3. Transport the money
4. Secure the money (even in electronic form)
5. and about 100 other things
All use "energy" the point of the OP's comment was about "wasted energy" which i would image is tied to climate change
The idea that "printed money uses no energy because it is old tech" is just ignorant
Since you're too lazy to, I will:
* Bitcoin: 0.1% of all electricity in the world, 7tps.
* THE ENTIRE REST OF HUMAN CIVILISATION, EVERYONE IN IT AND EVERYTHING THEY DO: 99.9% of electricity, a hell of a lot more than 6,993tps.
Bitcoin is the most inefficient payment system in history.
Bitcoiners' usual objection at this point is to claim that transactions per second is a bad measure, for some reason - though if you're comparing how much each system achieves for the resources it uses, it's precisely the obvious and correct measure.
But if tps doesn't matter, then the entire bitcoin ecosystem should be replaced with a small rock. A whole country's less electricity use, and only 7tps less! Also, it'd be hard currency.
And? Who are you to tell anyone how they should use their electricity? Do you want my advice on what you should be doing in your home?
> Bitcoin is the most inefficient payment system in history.
I think the "hauling big rocks between islands" currency was probably less efficient, at least on a per capita basis.
> then the entire bitcoin ecosystem should be replaced with a small rock
Then go ahead and do that. If people have trust in your rock then that will work fine.
You appear to have written two books about money. Do you not understand how it works yet?
You've probably been told before but I'll tell you the why again. Bitcoin's energy consumption is not proportional to the number of transactions it's processing.
The energy used is proportional to the block reward, the reward that miners get from mining a new block roughly every 10 minutes. They won't spend more money on energy than they get from mining, or they would go out of business. That mining reward goes up with price, (because it's paid out as a fixed amount of BTC) and goes down with each halving event (every ~4 years the block reward is cut in half in BTC terms).
The network can be doing 7tps or 7 million tps, doesn’t really matter for energy use, although higher usage can have indirect effects on price or other things.
But I'm no expert.