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Comment by noch | Hacker News Reader

> And if the maximum daily number of transactions is more or less fixed, and the total energy spend is also relatively stable, then it’s very easy to calculate the energy cost per transaction.

You don't understand how transactions work.

A transaction can have arbitrary value, an arbitrary number of inputs, and an arbitrary number of outputs.

Therefore Bitcoin has infinite throughout and 1 hour confirmation/finality latency.

An example:

My company has 100 engineers each paid USD10k in bitcoin per month. We generate 1 transaction worth USD1M with 100 outputs.

Similarly when paying numerous suppliers for hardware, machinery, logistics, transportation, catering. 1 transaction of high value with numerous heterogeneous outputs.

Transaction count is not the correct way to measure the throughout of the Bitcoin network at a given block height or over several retargets.[0]

[0]: https://medium.com/@hasufly/an-analysis-of-batching-in-bitco...

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It still seems like a valid metric, you just need to multiply the number of bitcoin transactions with some factor for the average number of outputs. That number will be pretty low and quite stable over time.

> It still seems like a valid metric, you just need to multiply the number of bitcoin transactions with some factor for the average number of outputs

Nah. You don't need to double and triple down on wrong ideas and metrics that are scientifically spurious. You know calculus so you know multiplying by averages won't tell you what you want to know.

Transaction count relative to energy usage doesn't tell you what's valuable about the observed system and its energy consumption, which is its decentralisation, censorship resistance, assurances, and trustlessness.

Assuming you care about logic, simply update your broken mental model.

Because batching will increase as Bitcoin grows, and has practically infinite throughput, its efficiency improves exponentially by securing more value relative to energy consumption.To secure ever more value using the Bitcoin network, humans are incentivised to find and build more efficient energy sources.

Further, an arbitrary number of transactions can occur securely offchain and get aggregated and finalised on-chain i.e the settlement layer. In fact this is how the future will be. See Lightning, Liquid, other L2 designs. The order of operations is first to have a bulletproof settlement layer.

Bitcoin was designed to be the single planetary currency. Spend time studying it and you'll realise that Satoshi was smarter than all his current critics who all imagine they've brilliantly and uniquely perceived some fatal flaw in Bitcoin's engineering, game theory or economics.

Remember, if Bitcoin were a company, it would currently have a market cap of >USD800B. Few programmers can build anything that valuable let alone critique it meaningfully.

Let go of useless, poorly reasoned concepts. Humble yourself and study Bitcoin. It's a wonderful optimistic scientific discovery on par with fire, antibiotics, and electricity. http://lopp.net/bitcoin-information.html

If you want to be more precise, just tally up the total number of outputs then. It won't make bitcoin more efficient as a means of payment.

> what's valuable about the observed system and its energy consumption, which is its decentralisation, censorship resistance, assurances, and trustlessness.

The thing you need to understand is that nobody cares about this, except a small fringe of libertarians and computer scientists. Sure, it's cool that it's possible but not a single one of these would come up if you ask the man in the street (or your average economist in the street for that matter) what he wants from money.

> Humble yourself and study Bitcoin

I built a prediction market that used bitcoins in 2014, and ran a small but profitable crypto quant fund a few years later. I think crypto currencies are fun and there are one or two legitimate use cases, but the way you and other zealots look at bitcoin as a kind of panacea is just insane. Your fervour borders on a religious mania.

In reality there is still almost nothing that crypto can do that anyone actually wants, and bitcoin is far from the best even at what it actually does.

And no, the fact that the price of bitcoin is high does not indicate that people think it's useful. It's still a purely speculative asset, almost nobody uses it as a medium of exchange, and those who do are either criminals or zealots. Close to zero non-criminals use it because it solves an actual problem in the real world.

Not saying this will never change, but that is where we are now, more than a decade later.

> The thing you need to understand is that nobody cares about this,

Um. Don't be obtuse and obdurate. This conversation is getting really tedious. Look at the market, look around the world. Actually research the statements you make. There are already millions who care.

> I built a prediction market that used bitcoins in 2014.

You built on bitcoin yet you never understood how transactions work? That's deeply disturbing. Nonetheless, I sincerely wish you good luck. I respect your effort at building and sincerely hope you keep building winning products.

The market will decide the victor. See you on the builder's battlefield. That's where all the action is. En garde!

> the way you and other zealots look at bitcoin as a kind of panacea is just insane. Your fervour borders on a religious mania.

P.S. I totally want Bitcoin to be declared a religion, if only for the possible tax advantage! Fun times.

> not a single one of these would come up if you ask the man in the street (or your average economist in the street for that matter) what he wants from money.

[sigh] If you asked them what they want they'd have said they want a faster horse, not a car. The purpose of travelling and talking to people is to discover their problems and pain-points not what they imagine the solutions are. The innovator then inserts a solution into the machine.

> bitcoin is far from the best even at what it actually does.

You keep making these vacuous statements yet you don't even have a grasp of what Bitcoin actually does because, apparently, what it does has no value to you. I mean, good for you. What you don't seem to realise is that your inability to look at reality looks like a religious mania.

Now, respectfully, I have to bow out. Code to write, Bitcoin to build on.

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