Exactly: Bitcoin is using as much energy as the entire country of Sweden in order to do work that could be done by a single desktop PC from 2004.

If the work Bitcoin is doing could be done by a single desktop PC from 2004 then... the work would be being done by a single desktop PC from 2004. But clearly it is not.

Every time I see a thread on HN about crypto it makes me want to buy BTC or w/e because people are so unbelievably disingenuous on here that it probably still has a lot of steam left. The side that needs to be misleading to make their point is rarely the correct side to be on in my experience.

Bitcoin processes, as a maximum dictated by technological choices, 2-3 transactions per second. Each transaction is around a few hundred bytes.

Luckily Bitcoin has second layer systems being built on top of it, which allow it to leverage that 2-3 on-chain transactions per second to process thousands of millions more transactions off chain either through decentralized systems like Lightning or centralized custodial wallets.

Second layer solutions that do not actually work and that rely on solving unsolved problems in computer science to actually get working at scale.

Lightning is being used right now. In what way does it not work?

And sadly both sides are misleading.

Honestly, even though I don't like the insane power usage of PoW cryptos, I don't like the waste of the normal economy either. There's so much waste ... but anyways that would require its own thread I guess.

The important difference is, normal economy[0] profits off efficiency. There's waste, but that waste means companies are making less money than they could be. Everyone is incentivized to eliminate the waste. In aggregate, the market strives towards minimizing waste[1].

In contract, PoW cryptocurrencies have pure waste built in as a necessary component. They're literally waste incarnate, made into code and used to provide trustless consensus. It's a feature, that has to scale with the size of the network, and participants are encouraged to create more waste.

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[0] - Let's for the moment ignore the negative-sum game cancer the advertising industry is. But even advertising tries to be efficient at micro level.

[1] - In fact, it's a major source of modern problems with the market economy. Companies optimize way past the point it makes sense, because the consequences are borne by someone else (e.g. customers). See e.g. the whole field of value engineering.

I have a weird opinion on this. Markets and industries are complex multilayered systems. Each subsystem tries to be somehow efficient but actually it's not. People are slow, the tools they use are often slow (unless you have serious knowledge and resources on optimizing logistics, throughput, management), their partners are too, and asking optimizations from them will cause friction.

Market might be a minimizing function of some sort but it's a blind one. Very often groups could do 4x more for 4x less just with a change of mindset alone.

I don't disagree. I'm not claiming the market achieves total efficiency, just that it tries. Much like a submarine is a bubble of air at pressure of 1 atmosphere resisting much higher pressure outside, it is possible (and even common) for low-efficiency areas to remain stable under market pressure, but the overall gradient is still clear. In contrast, PoW schemes use inefficiency as a fundamental component; they're wasteful by design, and it's considered a feature.

Yeah there's waste everywhere, the amount of energy wasted by the over-reliance on cars in the US could probably power the entire planet.

It's telling that the bitcoin defense is 99% whattaboutism – but have no fear readers, I scream into the void about those other things too.

I don't think it's only whattaboutism, it's mostly that crypto is becoming a meme complaint and even whattaboutism is thrown as reflex "what about you".

ps: I'm trying to go from screamer to proactive these days. I was already frugal and dropped car use, I'm also thinking into starting clubs to make more walk/bike use, recycling/upcycling repair shops and the likes. Do you have similar ideas ?

I already do things like you mention... walk most places, reuse/repair when feasible, buying less packaged food, avoiding leisure flying (I used to travel often)... but individual impact is fairly minimal, so I've been putting more effort into supporting local political candidates who prioritize the climate.

I also complain a lot at community meetings for new development in my immediate area (things like reducing parking in new buildings, including bike storage, EV charging, better public transit infrastructure)... I've found some of this stuff more fulfilling in that the impact tends to extend beyond what I'd be capable of doing alone... sometimes it's fruitless, but sometimes it works.

I'm trying to skip politics because I think it's fluff and too laggy. But I'm still at theory level. Ideally I'd find a few open warehouses to set up stuff. Tools, materials, gather smart / knowledgeable people, teach and viral spread the new habits. Hopefully it will cost next to nothing and happen faster than politically impeded initiatives.

Yeah, advertisement generates a lot of waste by making people buy stuff they do not want or need.

Sure, let's stop most of that too.

...that's a joke, right?

Have you seen the average enterprise's stack?

The worst enterprise stack you have ever seen is most likely at least a million times more efficient than bitcoin.

That is not an exaggeration, and is more likely to be a severe understatement.

I can't claim numbers but even if you have the fastest and leanest information system, the rest of the economy might be problematic, the human layer is really bad. I stopped counting how many time we asked people to come back another day (more car use) because the old paper+digital system is not made for high throughput. Our servers are probably super fast.. but the apps are not useful, the system is not useful, thus lots of waste above.

I'm not sure I see what this has to do with what I said?