Exactly 14 years ago , Satoshi Nakamoto designed the most pathetic / inefficient system ever invented by humankind : the blockchain.
Today, it weights 60 000 tons, wastes constantly 10 gigawatts .. to process less than 7 transactions per second :
Less than a 33 bps modem from 1990.
This could be joke if it didn't have such gigantic environmental impact, wasn't enabling billion dolllars ransomware industry and was not crushing thousands of lives in the process.
@FranckLeroy I mean, that's just not factually true.
@volkris
What's wrong exactly ?
Well the main thing that too many people have bought into is that Bitcoin wastes that much power. That gets it backwards.
No, the Bitcoin system itself could run on a solar cell. It's a fairly efficient method of accomplishing its goals of trustless transaction recording.
The rest of the power isn't Bitcoin's waste but rather what people are paying to use the system. It's effectively customer revenue.
To say Bitcoin wastes this ton of power is like saying Taylor Swift wasted $13 million since fans paid that for her concert.
@volkris
No it could *not* run on a single cell.
Proof of work is designed to waste a constant share of transferred funds in energy.
Currently the Bitcoin wastes around 1300 kWh of energy per transaction.
As much as an average US household during 45 days.
That's absolutely insane.
I've run it on a single battery before. You can too. Grab a RaspberryPi, install the daemons, and let it rip.
Proof of work is designed to allow people to decide for themselves how much energy they think the network is worth. If they think it's worth very little then they'll give it very little energy--they won't give it much work--and then it won't take much energy to operate.
Currently people believe Bitcoin to be worth 1300 kWh of energy per transaction, and people believe Super Bowl tickets to be worth $200 and Taylor Swift tickets to be worth $1000.
Is that insane? Well, people are going to value what they value.
Free market is the worst driver for humanity.
We shouldn't rely on this.
There are physical limits to this world.
We ignored them for too long.
Physics is stronger than our imaginary economy
@FranckLeroy I'd say this is a case where the free market is the worst driver for humanity except for all the others.
The alternative to the free market is some sort of authoritarianism that puts the power in the hands of some fallible humans, which is even worse.
At least in the free market the function is win-win associations.
