Yes, Bitcoin is what is causing climate change. Also stop eating meat.
You're repeating the propaganda lines from big corporation and big government, while they keep subsidizing oil companies and ultra-rich take their private jet to have dinner in Paris. Also it feels good to believe climate change is within our (we the people) grasp, and we just have to recycle a bit more.
This is literally putting the masses at each other's throats, while Unilever hopes to make billions if you buy their vegan products, and petrol companies go brrr.
Divide et impera.
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Bitcoin turns energy into money. The problem is that we need more clean energy, not cry that people are using off-grid energy to mine Bitcoins.
Build more nuclear. Invest in fusion research. But you nor I can't, so we're at each other's throat. Saying we need to consume less energy is misguided and absurd.
That's not a very good comparison. Visa is more like the lightning system of bitcoin and ignores the breathtaking energy use of the underlying network. It's a good thing that people can give a decent estimate of bitcoin energy usage.
Try doing that with a fiat currency of your choice. Because it's invisible doesn't make it free.
Yawn. No monetary system works on 7 transactions per second either, this is why we now have Lightning and people are doing something about it, instead of repeating the same tired, exaggerated arguments.
I find it disturbing how engineers in here can only claim for the prohibitionism of an inefficient yet radical technology. This ain't no hacker spirit.
Ok, seeing as you’re not answering my questions, in what way do Bitcoin and other proof-of-work coins get down to even vaguely sensible levels of energy consumption? Fission takes decades to spin up, fusion is a pipe dream, and we need all the renewables we can get to transition away from an oil-based economy.
> fusion is a pipe dream, and we need all the renewables we can get to transition away from an oil-based economy.
That's a load of nonsense but to address your question: with one Bitcoin transaction, with Lightning, you can have millions of transactions with little than hashing a few numbers each. There is no theoretical limit. With one single Bitcoin transaction that you claim is killing the Earth.
This information was just a Google away if you really wanted an answer, but crypto has become like football or party politics: my camp is always good, the other are the literally Satan. Since you started by saying I am immortal and should feel bad for even just talking positively about Bitcoin, there is no intelligent discussion to be had here. I don't even own Bitcoin, for crying out loud.
I'll go back causing climate change or whatever you think I do.
Since you're such a massive lightnight fan, can you answer something very quickly for me?
Imagine Bitcoin gets very popular, so much so that 10% of the world is using it. They all will at least need to open a lightnight channel, and then settle that channel back to Bitcoin. What is the minimum number of Bitcoin transactions needed, and how long would it take to settle all those transactions? For this exercise, assume world population stays fixed at current levels.
(For those not so drunk on the cool aid, it's 6 years. 6 years minimum to settle one meaningful transaction for any reasonable number of people.)
In engineering, when there is a problem, we don't go crying about it or feel good because we have identified a bug, but work to fix it.
What you said is true. What you said will not be true forever. So it's a constant moving of the goalposts with people like you that measure everything in a vacuum and as an absolute unit.
Technology tends to improve over time. But apparently you are able to design perfect global distributed systems that are infinitely scalable from day 1, so chapeau.
As I said elsewhere, I am not invested, but I am an engineer, and I approach it as such. The kool aid is being drunk by the anti-crypto-at-all-costs cult, attacking with dishonest and frankly ridiculous arguments for people working with distributed systems and networks all day.
