Right. It's scaled up. I suppose that if people became suddenly interested in old stamps to the tune of billions of dollars, stamp-dealing would also start competing for resources with the rest of the economy.

I think that’s wrong for a few reasons....

- a stamp uses a small amount of resources no matter how many stamps you want (more stamps may even be cheaper from economies of scale).

- Bitcoin inherently relies on expensive computation to provide safety

- each Bitcoin is more expensive than the last due to increasingly difficult nonces.

- (dumb edge case) you can’t make old stamps so it’s hard to image using a lot of resources to find/make them. Obv not true for other products

> each Bitcoin is more expensive than the last due to increasingly difficult nonces.

Bitcoin difficulty can change in either direction.

bitcoin uses less resources than traditional banking. I think people should stop judging it in a vacuum and instead speak in relative terms. If energy use is a concern then fiat is the greater offender. https://bitcoinist.com/banks-consume-energy-bitcoin/

further crypto would be a much more flexible domain at working towards reducing carbon emission than deeply embedded and slow changing fiat systems

Bitcoin does not replace traditional banking even if you view it as a legitimate currency.

Why not? Do you think every financial service offered by traditional banks can't be coded and made more efficient using internet-native money (bitcoin)?

If so, what services can't? People already use BTC as collateral for loans/mortgages ...which are two of the riskiest activities traditional banks engage in.

Banks use way less energy per customer

I've walked into many semi-empty downtown brick and mortar banks with 5-10 idle employees, you want to continue paying that "innefficiency tax" in every transaction/loan/wire/credit-card/etc...?

I don't think people really think through the reason there is a 20% tax on financial activity that goes through traditional banking system.

8 years vs 150 years of technology though