There have been previous threads on HN with some back-of-the-envelope comparisons of Bitcoin's energy consumption vs the global banking systems, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18325430 . If these rough calculations are correct, the global banking system uses ~100TWh/year (including datacentres, branches, heating in offices etc.) while Bitcoin is around one-third of that at ~30TWh/year for a negligible percentage of the total number of transactions, and a single Visa transaction (again factoring in datacentres etc.) is 41Wh per transaction whereas a single Bitcoin trasaction is around 20,000 more at ~826kWh. That was also 5 months ago, so the situation is likely to have got worse for Bitcoin, given the traditional banking system is incentivised to reduce energy consumption whereas Bitcoin is explicitly designed to increase energy consumption over time.
The article estimates the total number of ATMs at 3 million, with an average daily power consumption of 5Wh, for a total yearly power consumption of 13Twh. Except if I punch [3 million * 5Wh * 365.25 to terawatt-hours] into the Google, I get 0.0055TWh. If I assume the author meant to type 5kWh as the average daily power consumption, you get 5.5TWh, which is closer, but still not the stated quantity.
[EDIT: OK, so I if I punch [3 million * 500W * 365.25 days to terawatt-hours] into the Google I get the 13TWh the author estimated for ATM consumption. So the author is actually assuming that the average ATM is consuming 500W?]
Likewise the numbers for how much electricity bank branches consume doesn't seem to add up (it seems like the author assumes branches consume an average of 10kW, not 10kWh/day?), and I can't replicate any of the numbers given for bank server energy consumption (just multiplying the numbers given in the article together in different ways).
do these calculations take into account energy equivalent of running all the armies in the world, funding their wars and conflicts? because entire banking system exists on a premise that there is an army behind every fiat currency, so it's not really honest to exclude that from communication.
bitcoin security on the other hand is backed purely by energy spent by miners.
The idea that bitcoin will magically make armies obsolete is one of the most laughably silly ideas I’ve seen in a long time, and that’s quite the bar to clear.
Hint: wars predate fiat currency. You’d still need army without fiat.
The fundamental problem you’re going to have is that any point you decide is the beginning of debt based fiat currency, well there’s still a crap ton of war before it. If you say that the brits were really using fiat during WW1, a dubious argument, then I’m going to gleefully point out that the Romans conquered the Mediterranean using physical gold & silver coins; no fiat.
It’s entirely possible to fund massive wars without fiat currencies. We know this because we’ve seen it time and again. Taxes and bonds can be used even with a hard metal currency, as does the handy expedient of promising a portion of the spoils of war. I see no reason why a bitcoin based country couldn’t just raise taxes and bonds just like the gold backed ones did for literally all of human history.
Beyond that, the world hasn’t seen any truly massive multi-lateral engagements since the proliferation of fiat currency. While the Middle East remains a hot spot, there has been nothing to match the scale and hardship of a world war or a napoleonic war. If the theory is that fiat currency enables war, you’re going to have a very hard time explaining the limited scope of conflict since the abandonment of Bretton Woods in 1971.
why obsolete? i never said that. bitcoin will just decouple money security from state security. which is why when you compare energy consumption, you need to include at least some chunk of resources dedicated to army, defence, etc.
In my opinion, the fraction of the cost of the army that goes to preserving fiat is somewhere in the region of 0%.
What maintains the value of fiat is not government coercive action (e.g., having an army that forces people to use currency). Instead, the value is dictated by how much the populace believes it is worth. So it's the general government actions to maintain the health of the economy, and none of that would disappear if the government were to decide not to use fiat.
Indeed, to the extent that you'd compare how much the government spends in a hypothetical world where it doesn't use fiat currency versus one that it does, it probably takes more resources in the first case (i.e., fiat currency is a net asset to the government, not a net cost).
I love the idea of "no fiat, less war". I also love the idea of "less war". I don't believe war is a natural human occurrence but instead usually done for gaining fiat. However, I do believe that trading is quite natural and our current fiat implementation often simplifies trade. So maybe a borderless fiat simplifies it even more.
First, the logic doesn’t work. Let “has fiat currency” be A, and “has a large army” be B. You’re asserting “If A then B; therefore if not A then not B”. This is a formal logic error called “denying the antecedent”, which means the argument is invalid.
(You also don’t support A well, but that’s a side point because your logical assertion doesn’t work).
Second, there are plenty of examples of rich fiat countries with small armies (Switzerland, 0.7% GDP defense spending) and non-fiat countries with massive army expenditures (Roman Empire, harder to calculate due to history and lower productivity, but at least 2.5% GDP and 80% of the entire government budget). The presence of both indicates that the form of currency a country uses is secondary to other intangible aspects when it comes to the formation and maintenance of large armies.
> Let “has fiat currency” be A, and “has a large army” be B. You’re asserting “If A then B; therefore if not A then not B”.
those are incorrect presumptions and therefore incorrect conclusion. A is "has fiat currency", B is "needs an army or other means to maintain fiat value".
of course army is not the only thing, but it's one of the things in many of the countries. whatever other things other countries have to assert fiat value - those too consume some energy-equivalent of resources. army is just the most obvious and easy to understand example.
and yes, there are also feedback loops, there is no strict causal relationship between the components of this system, which is yet another reason why you can't make these energy consumption comparisons without being intellectually dishonest.
> yet another reason why you can't make these energy consumption comparisons without being intellectually dishonest.
The intellectually dishonest part is trying to shove as many extra costs onto the fiat currency side of the equation without counting them for cryptocurrency.
Comparing the energy cost per transaction is a simple, pairwise comparison. Even if all the world used bitcoin for currency, there is no reason to expect that things like banks, armies, and the entire financial ecosystem wouldn't also exist. Trying to make fiat currency account for all the latter costs is just trying to mask the fact that bitcoin is by design inefficient.
> The intellectually dishonest part is trying to shove as many extra costs onto the fiat currency side of the equation without counting them for cryptocurrency
let's meet in the middle then? i don't shove as much as possible but you shove enough for comparison to be honest.
> Comparing the energy cost per transaction is a simple, pairwise comparison
it's simple and wrong. energy-efficient transactions isn't bitcoin's goal. this has already been mentioned, i suggest you re-read the thread.
> there is no reason to expect that things like banks, armies, and the entire financial ecosystem wouldn't also exist
who's expecting that? i'm honestly amazed by amount of strawman-ing happening in this discussion. didn't expect that on HN.
You can change the definition of B all you want, it's still a formal fallacy, meaning the argument is literally worthless. You have to structure a very different argument from what you've shown to assert that bitcoin would reduce national military expenditures, not just tweak the details.
but you don't just disagree, you make convoluted invalid arguments. there is no logical fallacy in
> if maintaining fiat value requires spending resources then not having to maintain fiat value means there is no need to spend resources to maintain fiat value
it's indeed a case of:
> "I don't have an argument, but I believe it very strongly".
