Quote from: e4xit on September 02, 2013, 12:12:29 PM

Well, you said:

Quote from: crumbs on September 01, 2013, 11:01:47 AM

Lol, if traditional banks burned as much power as bitcoin miners (who will continue mining until energy cost=bitcoin value), they'd have to plug into the nearest sun, conventional power grid would be just piss in the ocean Cheesy

To which I replied:

Quote from: e4xit on September 02, 2013, 08:00:01 AM

So do you think all the miners in the world are currently using more energy to regulate and secure the bitcoin network, than all the banks in the world are using to regulate and secure their financial system?

I'm glad you agree that bitcoin miners are using less energy:

Quote from: crumbs on September 02, 2013, 10:13:33 AM

No. What are we comparing?
All of the banks in the world serve more than seven billion people. Unless you live in a cave, they serve you too, even though you probably also use bitcoins.
The bitcoin network serves a ridiculously small number of people -- it's current *market cap* is less than 1.5 billion.
Comparing "all of the world's banks" to bitcoin makes as much sense as comparing the combined jet fleet of the world to your neighbor's Vespa -- Sure, the jet fleet uses more fuel than the Vespa, but they happen to serve moar people.

I'm happy to enlighten & inform.

But I'm interested as to why you believe the rest of your quote to be true; do you think that we require more hashing power to secure the network simply because there may be more people using bitcoin than we have now, and if so why?

Your first problem is use of the term "require."
We do not "require" the current hashrate to secure the network. The hashrate is a byproduct of miners wishing to get bitcoins. The hashrate is not determined by some Socialist central planning committee. It is determined by people wishing to profit. If the net income of increasing the hashrate is positive, *the hashrate will increase, regardless of security needs*. Talking about "required" hashrate is as meaningful as talking about "required poop rate" -- it's not required, but it inevitably happens, regardless. Best accommodate for it

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Satoshi and many others believe that full nodes and miners would be a small proportion of the bitcoin network, with most most users running just SPV nodes, the "everybody can mine" was simply the best way that could be thought of to bootstrap the network and distribute the coins (semi) fairly. Do you think that this model of bitcoin requires more (hashing) power than we have now, rapidly approaching 1PH/s, in order to stay secure?

No. See the poop analogy above.

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I think that if a billion people downloaded multibit tomorrow and started using bitcoin the network would remain functional, and would not require much more (electrical) power to function (yes blocks might fill up etc etc but I am counting those effects as irrelevant to this conversation).

If the moon was made of cream cheese, moon cream cheese mines would be practical. It's not, so they aren't.

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I still feel confident in my (nearly arbitrary) gut feeling, that a bitcoin network with 'more than 7 billion people' could be mined using less energy than it takes right now to run all the world's banks.

See cream cheese mine analogy.

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And no, I don't live in a cave.

And yes, I do see now why your ignore button is glowing bright orange...

I'm glad for your revelation.