> Current Bitcoin usage is literally a rounding error of global energy usage (0.1%) and if wildly successful would still be < 1% of energy usage. https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/
That author doesn't seem to actually understand the scale of financial transactions in the world. Right now, there are about 300,000 Bitcoin transactions per day. The author defines Bitcoin being "wildly successful" as a 20x increase. Right now there are over 1 billion credit card transactions per day alone right now. If Bitcoin grew by 20x it still would be a drop in the bucket of global transactions but using up a relatively huge percentage of the world's energy compared to it's share of financial transactions. The author also justifies bitcoins energy usage by saying it's similar to Google's. But Google serves billions of people everyday and Bitcoin is used by a very small subset of people.
That author doesn't seem to actually understand the scale of financial transactions in the world. Right now, there are about 300,000 Bitcoin transactions per day. The author defines Bitcoin being "wildly successful" as a 20x increase. Right now there are over 1 billion credit card transactions per day alone right now. If Bitcoin grew by 20x it still would be a drop in the bucket of global transactions but using up a relatively huge percentage of the world's energy compared to it's share of financial transactions. The author also justifies bitcoins energy usage by saying it's similar to Google's. But Google serves billions of people everyday and Bitcoin is used by a very small subset of people.