3. Fiat currencies are supposedly backed by the power of the state... meanwhile the US military consumes more energy than Bitcoin mining per year
(this is a comparison of the military of a single country compared to a truly global currency)
If you take all these factors into account, Bitcoin may actually be less energy-intensive than traditional
fiat currencies. Besides, many mining companies have set up their operations in countries with an abundance
of renewable energies like Canada or Iceland. The days where Bitcoin was solely mined in rural Mongolia and China
may finally be behind us.
Two problems here....
First, the bitcoin network currently has 180k transactions a day.The US army has currently 1 300 000 personnel.
Most of you say banks consume a lot of energy....but how many transactions are banks doing?
Of course this problem will be solved with the LN but till then, it's hilarious to have 800 000 (or something like that) S9 mining non-stop each burning 32 kwh while the network is servicing less people than a bank in Lithuania.
If bitcoin price goes up and there is no rapid improvement and deployment of LN the things will only get worse.
More mining, more energy consumed but still the same capacity.
Second.
As long as somebody in this world consumes coal, you burning free green energy doesn't make things right.
Because if you would stop, then the energy consumed by you would be redirected to the one burning coal energy, and the coal power plant will be shut down.
When you build a green energy source (solar/wind/hydro) you make things better only if you replace the nuclear/coal/gas sources. If the energy you produce is consumed on top of that, there is nothing greener in it.
ps.
There is always this argument, that banks also use energy for ATMs for offices, for POS.
But nobody is speaking about the 8000 nodes that are also on right now. Not the hundreds of servers running exchanges, online wallets etc...