Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

lifeisstillgood

Thank you - I heard the 'if you add the costs of Visa / banking it evens out' and was not sure how to tackle it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argentina - 44 Million people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine - 41 M (handwaving around bits that got invaded etc)

So is the global population of the banking industry comparable to 41 M ?

UK employees: 1.1M US Employees: 8.3M

So I went round a few houses and there is a lack of solid stats. But I think I can go with a decent indicator.

The USA has about 7.5 % of GDP (1.5tn) in Finance Services, and 6.3M employees (2018). Now translate that up to the global GDP of 87TRN, and say the global finance sector is as large globally as in USA (generous assumption) and that give 7.5 % of 87TRN - 6.5TRN. At 4.2M employees per Trillion that gives us 27 M global employees.

Now there can be lots of hand waving, but if bitcoin uses same amount of electricity as Argentina, and Argentina has around 1.5 many people as the global finance sector, then bitcoins electrical use does seem very excessive.

https://www.selectusa.gov/financial-services-industry-united... -> 6.3 M employees, 1.5 Tn (USA), 7.5% of GDP

Bibliography:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/298370/uk-financial-sect....

https://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag50.htm

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030515/what-percent...

https://www.selectusa.gov/financial-services-industry-united... -> 6.3 M employees, 1.5 Tn (USA), 7.5% of GDP

But here you are comparing apple and oranges.

The energy one technical component uses versus the energy that all the people that use another technology uses.

Bitcoin also have support systems around it, hardware production lines, and a lot of people who use it that you don't include in your comparison.

I think I am replying to the oft-heard crypto argument that because bitcoin is self contained we need to bring in the whole costs of the current financial system to compare it.

This was my first attempt at it - and it seems bitcoin loses badly - the current bitcoin energy use is easily comparable or greater than the energy use of the people, buildings etc of the global finance industry.

And bitcoin still cannot buy me a latte at starbucks.

So it's a weird speculative / money controls avoidance thing that happens to subsidise dubious global activity to the tune of Argentina's electrical usage.

It has always seemed BS - it still seems BS. And speculators have grown rich not on a technology that will replace currency but on massive migration of dubious activity (Chinese currency outflows). That Tesla was paid for by Chinese billionaires securing their gains.

:-(

Edit: so dissing bitcoin and Tesla is probably a bad idea on HN.

But to be fair I am not dissing Tesla - it's a genuine company making genuine product. It just seems to be marketing towards a ... marketing archetype that got lucky with their Crypto.

You see, to make cash from Chinese money laundering, one would previously have had to be a lawyer in the City or a real estate agent selling central London flats. But we democratised access to this flood of grey market cash via Bitcoin.

Maybe I would feel differently with a couple of coins in a wallet somewhere. But from a regulatory point of view, it's still taking cash from the poorest globally.

> the current bitcoin energy use is easily comparable or greater than the energy use of the people, buildings etc of the global finance industry

But energy consumption behavior of all people who are deployed in the global finance industry ≠ energy consumption of the median of Argentinan/Ukrankian people. I think you can agree that most people who work in finance are generally in at least low middle-class to super wealthy. If you compare the mobility/consumption index of such a class to median income level of countries where wealth is generally much lower, the equation changes drastically in favor of computers doing the job without having the urge to fly to fiji over the WE, up to 4x between poor and lower middle-class already [1]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region

And it’s estimated that there area only around 1 million active Bitcoin wallets.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com