Re:'Minting' electronic cash (1999)
by shawnz on Friday April 30, 2021 @07:19PM
(#27000819)
I am sure you know well the counterarguments to measuring by kWh per transaction.
- The power consumption of Bitcoin has almost nothing to do with the transaction rate limit. Increasing it would have basically no impact on the power consumption. So it doesn't make sense to look at the energy usage on a per transaction basis.
- It's debatable whether there is actually a need to increase the transaction rate limit yet, whereas it's obviously necessary for Visa to process a high transaction rate right now and so it makes sense that Visa would have optimized for that already. I think even the "small blockers", who prefer the current low rate, can agree that the rate will need to be increased eventually.
- The power consumption of Bitcoin has almost nothing to do with the transaction rate limit. Increasing it would have basically no impact on the power consumption. So it doesn't make sense to look at the energy usage on a per transaction basis.
- It's debatable whether there is actually a need to increase the transaction rate limit yet, whereas it's obviously necessary for Visa to process a high transaction rate right now and so it makes sense that Visa would have optimized for that already. I think even the "small blockers", who prefer the current low rate, can agree that the rate will need to be increased eventually.