The Frustrating, Maddening, All-Consuming Bitcoin Energy Debate

Nic Carter always puts forth good stuff. Here’s his take on the never-ending Bitcoin/energy topic:

https://www.coindesk.com/frustrating-maddening-all-consuming-bitcoin-energy-debate

So if we return to Holthaus’ musing, we see just how many wrong turns he has taken.

We know now that Bitcoin handles a relatively small number of final settlements, but this is in no way a constraint on the system. We don’t think of Fedwire or CHIPS as constrained due to their relatively small number of settlements. We know that most of bitcoin’s energy is due to initial coin issuance, which is declining with time. We’ve looked at some toy fee models to ascertain that the doomsday scenarios are exaggerated. We know that Bitcoin and Visa transactions aren’t comparable. And we know that scaling Bitcoin involves building out deferred-settlement payments systems on higher layers, which ultimately settle to a small number of payments on the base layer.

So the next time you open an article on Bitcoin’s energy consumption, ask yourself: Would this person pass Bitcoin 101? If the answer is no, you can safely discard his or her opinion.

Master Asked on March 5, 2021 in Bitcoin.
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