Comment by davidgerard | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davidgerard | Hacker News Reader

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Zero bitcoiners going "BUT WHAT ABOUT CONVENTIONAL MONEY HUH" provide numbers.

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.

> Bitcoiners' usual objection at this point is to claim that transactions per second is a bad measure, for some reason

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.

> * Bitcoin: 0.1% of all electricity in the world, 7tps

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?

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