Comment on Is cryptocurrency good for anything?

• YaBoyMax@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

  This is a silly thing to say. Normal payment processing uses more energy, but that’s only because there are many, many more payments going through it. It’s orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than crypto.

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  • Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Bitcoin wastes so much energy, I think all normal payment systems combined use less energy than it.

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    • JennyLaFae@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Bitcoin wastes so much energy because it’s proof of work based which to my understanding is basically a bunch of computers churning out answers competing to be “first and correct” in order to print coins.

      I like the idea of decentralized currency but the current execution of cryptocurrency leaves much to be desired.

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      • p4rzivalrp2@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The current execution of *bitcoin*, there’s plenty of non pow cryptocurrencies 

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  • Nibodhika@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Bitcoin in specific doesn’t scale, but other things like Bitcoin Cash scale without increasing the energy usage, because the energy cost of PoW Blockchains comes from their security, not from the scale, so doing 1 or thousands of transactions costs the same.

    Plus, things like Ethereum have migrated to PoS which uses very small amount of energy comparable and also scales without increasing energy costs.

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  • witheyeandclaw@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Perhaps, but it’s no more silly than comparing something’s energy usage to Norway.

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