> Even the predicted environmental impact of Bitcoin, which does require lots of computing firepower, has been considerably exaggerated by some researchers.
Exaggerated or not, what's aggravating is that Bitcoin is literally secured by the consumption of power through wasting it on hashing.
To process the same amount of transactions per second in a non-trustless (trustful?) system, you'd need, like, a few Raspberry Pis around the world. And the trustlessness is dodgy anyway, with a few big mining pools having over 51% of the mining, with everyone basically having to trust the developers, etc.
Exaggerated or not, what's aggravating is that Bitcoin is literally secured by the consumption of power through wasting it on hashing.
To process the same amount of transactions per second in a non-trustless (trustful?) system, you'd need, like, a few Raspberry Pis around the world. And the trustlessness is dodgy anyway, with a few big mining pools having over 51% of the mining, with everyone basically having to trust the developers, etc.