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A comment on Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index. Parent comment

Re:Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index by MereInterest on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @12:03PM (#26091777)
The cost is per transaction, not per amount transferred. A small transaction takes just as much space in the ledger as a large transaction.

A fun thought experiment is to see just how limited the throughput of Bitcoin is. Suppose the Bitcoin enthusiasts were to get their wish and Bitcoin becomes the dominant "currency". If every person on the planet were to make a bitcoin transaction once if their lifetime, that alone would be too many transactions/second for the network to handle.

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Re:Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index by frongpik on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @12:21PM (#26092023)
Sounds like a single bitcoin transaction is like transferring a few billion dollars at a time.
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Re:Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index by MereInterest on Wednesday February 10, 2021 @12:25PM (#26092062)
Pretty much. It is only useful in cases where you are making very large transactions. At that point, you have few enough actors that setting up a trusted network is far, far cheaper and more flexible. The trustless nature of Bitcoin is what makes it unscalable.
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