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