this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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"Research has found that bitcoin miners alone consume approximately between 60 to 125 TWh of energy annually, which is equivalent to around 0.6% of global electricity"
"Traditional banks' total annual energy consumption of traditional banks is around 26 TWh on running servers, 26 TWh on ATMs, and 87 TWh from an estimate of 600k+ branches worldwide. Totaling 139 TWh."
Not to mention banks impact on people's lives. Limited purchasing power of the poor and soon to join them middle class.. to purchase disposable products
https://www.iyops.org/post/energy-consumption-cryptocurrency-vs-traditional-banks
Compare Wh vs # transactions. PoW is unsustainable and irresponsible. We need a different way.
I've always been a fan of having the USPS provide banking services to everyone. Make it a public service and it is no longer exclusionary.
Ok fine lets look closer at those numbers, I don't think they mean what you think they mean....
On their own these numbers are completely useless, we need to compare something that exists in both crypto and in traditional banking.
I found this page: https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/bitcoin-mining-statistics/
I suspect that is on the extreme end of the scale, so let's be kind and slash 50% off of it, even then the energy consumption would be 600kWh per bitcoint transaction, and if we use the same data for VISA transactions, this is the equivalent of 50 000 VISA transactions, if these numbers are correct, crypto is insanely energy inefficient.
So I kept looking and found this page:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/
This page claims that one Bitcoin transaction used about 700kWh in 2023, and 100 000 VISA transactions used about 150kWh in total at the same time.
So we have two sources showing that Bitcoin is an absolute disaster for energy use and therefore the environment.
So I kept looking, and found some data about Etherium, which claims that one etherium transaction consumes 0 kWh, which I naturally doubt...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/
I will make no secret that I dislike crypto, but I did try and find objective data and summarize it objectively, I will also note that while I dislike crypto, I am not blind to the issues with traditional banking, they absolutely needs to clean up their act, environmentally and otherwise.
That doesn't make any sense unless it's the only transaction in a block
If you have other data, please post it
nah the power use numbers you gave are not on an extreme scale, the point of how the bitcoin and most cryptos work is designed to keep using more and more power
I suspcted as much, but I wanted to show that even cut in half the power use of a single Bitcoin transaction consume an absurd ammount of energy, this to try and stop people arguing that I was being unfair against crypto
Proof of work is not even scalable to the level of current bank transactions. Ethereum network didn't have enough compute to clear the backlog created by some niche cat NFT "game" a few years ago when people still gave a shit about NFTs.
Limited purchasing power of the poor and middle class is a political problem, not a problem solved by tech, no matter what crypto gurus and tech messiahs will tell you. The most prolific crypto miners are the ones that already have more "traditional" capital to invest. So crypto is not solving the wealth divide, it is just making it worse.
I hate banks as much as anyone, but crypto is not the solution.