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0 pointskenforthewin5y ago0 comments

Unclear what goes into calculating the visa transactions. Is it just the literal cost of sending the bits over the wire? Does it include the cost of servers, man-power, real estate, etc?

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rcxdude5y ago

It's basically the cost of Visa running divided by the number of transactions they do. So yes it includes everything. You don't need to play silly tricks like that to make Bitcoin look bad. Bitcoin uses similar or more energy than the banking system while processing vastly fewer transactions. Somehow people can't comprehend how ridiculously inefficient bitcoin transactions are.

nybble415y ago

It's the inflation that's expensive, not the transaction processing. The threshold for economical power use in bitcoin mining scales in proportion to the block reward, not block size or number of transactions. Since the rate of inflation decreases exponentially (the block reward in BTC halves every four years) this issue will eventually resolve itself.

p1necone5y ago

According to the numbers above a bitcoin transaction is currently 591715 times as expensive (in kwh) as a visa transaction.

If a transaction costs half as much power every 4 years that's only 193 years until it's cheaper than visa[0]! Truly the financial instrument of the (distant) future!

[0] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=x%5E2+%3D+%281005%2F%2...

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