Bitcoin is estimated to use about the same energy as the whole country of Denmark[1]. Denmark has over 790 million cashless transactions with "Dankort", a local debit card, per year alone[2] - excluding other payment methods. Bitcoin can handle about 2,000 transactions per block[3]. 2,000 transactions times 6 blocks per hour times 24 hours in a day times 365 days in a year equals 105,120,000 transactions per year.
Congratulations, you just used the energy of the whole country of Denmark with _everything_ in it (housholds, heavy industry, etc.) to process less than a 1/7th of Denmark's cash-less transactions with a _specific_ (albeit widely used) debit card.
You see, your argument is simply invalid. "Traditional" banking is more energy efficient by multiple orders of magnitude.
Congratulations, you just used the energy of the whole country of Denmark with _everything_ in it (housholds, heavy industry, etc.) to process less than a 1/7th of Denmark's cash-less transactions with a _specific_ (albeit widely used) debit card.
You see, your argument is simply invalid. "Traditional" banking is more energy efficient by multiple orders of magnitude.
1: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/bitcoins-insane-...
2: https://www.nationalbanken.dk/en/publications/Documents/2011... (page 125)
3: https://blockchain.info/en/charts/n-transactions-per-block