https://ark-invest.com/analyst-research/bitcoin-myths/
<TL;DR>
Claim: Bitcoin wastes too much energy.
Counter-Claim: Bitcoin’s energy consumption is more efficient than that of gold and traditional banks.
<TL;DR>
Claim: Bitcoin wastes too much energy.
Counter-Claim: Bitcoin’s energy consumption is more efficient than that of gold and traditional banks.
Add to this bitcoin does an infinitesimally small number of transactions compared to the global financial system and I am doubtful that on a per value or per transaction basis that it would be within an order of magnitude. A lot of this is inherent to the design, and while it may be able to be evolved or an alternative crypto may not have the caveats, Bitcoin as it stands now is VERY power inefficient.
Those already exist (Lightning Labs) and there's so much more to do with a secure programmable distributed database.
This requires people, and locations. Software isn't going to solve this problem. The only way I think this will be solved is by becoming very similar to what already exists.
Yes you could create a more energy efficient bank, but that is orthogonal to that bank using bitcoin. Many people have tried, but most have failed. Those that succeed are generally acquired and the bigger banks tend to (albeit slowly) integrate those efficiencies.
The post I was replying to originally was citing an article claiming that the energy costs of holding dollars and gold was higher then bitcoin. I was showing how tallying the total energy used by global banks was a false equivalency as much of what a bank does has no direct equivalent in the numbers given for Bitcoin.