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Comment by l___l | Hacker News Reader

A different metric of comparison isn't Bitcoin's energy consumption compared to other countries but compared to the existing banking system it's trying to replace, which burns more energy than Bitcoin and allegedly burns more energy funding wars with fiat. Mining gold instead of Bitcoin burns more energy than Bitcoin too.

Compared to that for energy consumption, Bitcoin is superior really.

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> compared to the existing banking system it's trying to replace

I don't think it's appropriate to compare it to the existing banking system (whose featureset goes far beyond payments and managing account balances).

It's appropriate to compare it to existing payment and account systems. And on that front, compared to e.g. Mastercard, there's no way Bitcoin is more efficient. TXs/watt, $/watt, however you want to measure it.

> there's no way Bitcoin is more efficient

No way? You studied this personally and can prove it?

Transaction Fees On Bitcoin Lightning Network Are 1,000 Times Cheaper Than Visa And MasterCard

https://www.binance.com/en/square/post/447705

Lightning isn't Bitcoin. It's an L2. It helps implement actual practical payments for Bitcoin, and doesn't (afaiu) manage account balances. In other words, you cannot seriously compare it to Mastercard; you've gotta include Bitcoin itself.

Also, it should be obvious that sources from the cryptocurrency industry have a conflict of interest. If there are better sources than something like Binance, then those should be used. If there aren't better sources, well...

I have no numbers but i would assume the global "FIAT market" is orders of magnitude larger than bitcoin, so ofc it consumes more. I would want to se a chart of how much 1USD/EUR "consumes" compared to 1BTC.

You should not compare bitcoin to "the banking industry", but instead to say a stock. Apple is worth more than the entire crypto industry, but for arguments sake lets say they are the same.

So you should instead compare bitcoin to APL stock. How much energy is APL (and APL alone) stock using? This is hard to measure, but probably a fraction of a fraction of the bitcoin energy use.

A bitcoin transaction costs around $100 (in invisible money supply increase, paid by everyone that holds Bitcoin, but received by the miners).

There's no way a fiat transfer costs that much.

The comparison is moot because Bticoin barely functions as a currency. Banking system provides a lot of other functionality beyond just money.

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