Quote from: ernie- on July 08, 2014, 07:44:03 AM

Quote from: halfawake on July 08, 2014, 06:12:58 AM

Quote from: smoothie on July 08, 2014, 06:09:31 AM

The amount of energy used for the Bitcoin Network is tiny compared to the amount of money to print, mint, guard, secure, etc for say fiat currency.

For now, perhaps. But how big would this energy consumption be if the bitcoin network were as big as a traditional major finanical company like, say, Visa? We should strive to do better than fiat is doing, not merely being not as bad as the traditional system.

Visa don't mine coins, their network has nothing to do with the creation of money, the banks do that for them. Your comparison is flawed.

If not them, then who would you compare bitcoin to? I grant you that it's not a perfect comparison, but there is no one to one comparison between bitcoin and the traditional financial world: the bitcoin network / ledger / mining combined creates new coins, processes transactions, handles transaction fees, etc.

I picked a major player in the traditional financial system to choose to compare. But if you want to say that it's a flawed comparison, then you're missing the point here. The point is if you're going to make a comparison, you have to compare bitcoin to something. And bitcoin does what credit card companies (like Visa) do, it does what Banks do in creating money, it handles transaction fees, which traditionally would be something credit card companies do. So...what would you compare bitcoin with? If you want a true one to one comparison, you're shit out of luck, because there isn't any one to one comparison since the bitcoin network does what several different players of the traditional financial system do.