Bitcoin is a revolutionary currency but a fairly inefficient payment network

[franky1]

To my eyes, efficiency questions relate to energy. So we would need to calculate how much energy is needed to confirm a transaction to verify the claim. Then to make a comparison, we would need to find out how much energy Visa or Paypal needs to validate a transaction.

I'm afraid I can't answer the question...

According to Forbes magazine, Las Vegas uses 5,600 megawatts of electricity on a summer day. This usage is expected to hit 8,000 megawatts by 2015.

thats alot of electric to power a industry of plastic poker chips,

let alone all the skyscrapers, offices and bank branches of thousands of financial firms powering FIAT

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[Dabs]

Here's the difference: bitcoin transactions are paid on the size of the data (in bytes), not the value that was transacted. All other fiat payment systems are a percentage of the value.

If you consider off-chain, the actual cost might be lower. But since most off-chain solutions are "private" except maybe for the lightning network or whatever side-chains the core devs are trying to do, you can't really see how they all work.

I mean, just look at the statistics of a lot of off-chain gambling sites, millions of bets, but they only charge on withdrawals. Old SatoshiDice was different. (on chain)

[Wind_FURY]

this is where doomsday theories rather than rational thought comes in.
some want 4mb (core) some want more. some want onchain some want 100% use offchain. thats where compromises come in and finding the acceptable level.
this "terrabyte block" doomsday has been shot out the park last year. the current compromise is 2mb bas 4mb weight.
the everthing has to be offchain has been shot out the park. the current compromise is expand onchain and allow offchain for freedom of choice.
i dont know why anyone is talking about terrabytes, apart from the doomsdayers who want to twist the future to distract the present
i dont know why anyone is talking about only offchain will work, apart from the doomsdayers who want to twist the future to distract the present

Well it is not really a "dooms day theory" but a rational thought questioning and speculating on what would happen if we had bigger blocks. As said before storage would be solved by having cheaper HD available but the question on how bandwidth is limited in a lot of areas in the world that it might become a problem if the blockchain has become really large enough and still growing.

I believe that is one area of concern for the big blockers.

there is misunderstandings and our misrepresenting of what a hard fork is.
ethereum was not a consensus hard fork it was a controversial fork.
ethereum bypassed consensus orphaning mechanism and literally banned communicating with nodes of different rules to avoid orphaning the minority. "--oppose-dao-fork"
it is actually Gmaxwell of blockstream that proposed that BU should split, rather than use the consensus mechanism which BU(ver) wants.

a consensus mechanism is what the community want to happen. rather than a dictatorial split.
consensus, everyone wins and everyone continues.
controversial, dictator wins and everyone else f**ks off

I now understand your view on this from your posts from the other threads. Thank you for enlightening us on the real situation.

[arcanaaerobics]

Nothing is perfect, for sure bitcoin have their own fails.

To be honest I don't like the anonnymous thing, if someone is doing anything illegal, like stealing of any other thing, will be always one side that will lost money. And that's just one point(my point of view ofc).

Perfect or not, is better than be on the hands of the banks.

[Snorek]

According to Forbes magazine, Las Vegas uses 5,600 megawatts of electricity on a summer day. This usage is expected to hit 8,000 megawatts by 2015.

thats alot of electric to power a industry of plastic poker chips,

let alone all the skyscrapers, offices and bank branches of thousands of financial firms powering FIAT

And do you think that would change if we were not FIAT based but instead bitcoin would be primary currency?
Because I don't think it it would be any difference in energy consumption whatsoever.

Plus, just to power bitcoin network we are consuming much, much more:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-could-consume-as-much-electricity-as-denmark-by-2020

[RocketSingh]

It is always interesting to note that most of the transaction costs are paid by the holders (and hodlers) of bitcoin in the form of inflation, and not the users.

How? Bitcoin's value is by design deflationary in the long run.

[franky1]

And do you think that would change if we were not FIAT based but instead bitcoin would be primary currency?
Because I don't think it it would be any difference in energy consumption whatsoever.

Plus, just to power bitcoin network we are consuming much, much more:

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/bitcoin-could-consume-as-much-electricity-as-denmark-by-2020

lol so you link an article that is hypothesising the year 2020.. but uses out dated numbers of mid 2015, along to exaggerate numbers of january 2016 in regards to electricity utility so far. and then uses that fudged number to hypothecate something in the future..
lol.. guess the guy reads tea leaves too

lets break it down
ok lets go backwards 2012
2 PC's with 4 GPU = 1.3kw... but only produces say 1.3ghash
now
1 ASIC = 1.3kw.. produces 1300Ghash(13Thash)
and this happened in just 3 years.. no extra power but ~1000x (100,000%) increase in hashrate.
same electric but 1000x efficiency 20012-2016 'unit for unit'

the article linked in the quote is calculating old obsolete tech, so lets update it.
i do love their wisting of details to hide the details.. by talking about grams of weight and not mentioning actual hashpower

12 kilograms each (15 grams per GHash/sec.)

hmm so each ASIC in that articles base number was under 1 T/hash ASIC..
lol.. dang thats so 2015!
using mid 2015 technology to calculate power of spring 2016 hashrate to get to 350megawatt (facepalm)

but anyway.. moving on
at 13thash an asic.. with the network at ~1,600Phash..
thats only 125,000 units =~160megawatt (125,000*1.3k/w)
160megawatt.. compared to the articles out dated 350megawat
 
so we have DROPPED the power usage while INCREASING the hashrate.
.. enough said?!?

you do realise that there are 90,000 bank branches that use more then 1.3kw/h each. after all just 13 light bulbs in a bank branch totals that, let alone the PC's on each bank tellers desk and bank managers office and security guard station.(only 4 standard pc's add another 1.3kw)
thats atleast 180mwat just for the bank branches
thats without including the call centres, offices and bank HQ skyscrapers that protect fiat. which add up to more again
let alone the markets and private financial institutions on top.

inshort:
fiat wastes more electric "protecting" a system thats:
not immutable
where people can take funds at will..
records 'disapear'
money created out of nothing.

but hey. (sarcasm)lets not talk about facts that bitcoin is more efficient. lets instead talk about old data to make bitcoin today look bad by fudging some numbers fiat style and then inflate the numbers for the future too.. (sarcasm)

[RocketSingh]

To be honest I don't like the anonnymous thing, if someone is doing anything illegal, like stealing of any other thing, will be always one side that will lost money. And that's just one point(my point of view ofc).

Anonymity is a two edged sword. It has its own +ve as well as -ve implications. But, there should be choice available to the common people regarding the path they want to chose in terms of anonymity or non-anonymity.

[Doamader]

To be honest I don't like the anonnymous thing, if someone is doing anything illegal, like stealing of any other thing, will be always one side that will lost money. And that's just one point(my point of view ofc).

Anonymity is a two edged sword. It has its own +ve as well as -ve implications. But, there should be choice available to the common people regarding the path they want to chose in terms of anonymity or non-anonymity.

Soo you do wanna to be exposed and allow the criminals to hunt you and your family because you made or hold a huge ammount of bitcoins? That make you to be a rich person, i do like be almost anonymous, my small coins are safe with bitcoins, and no one will hunt me because those. Even with transactions taking longer then needed  or expected bitcoin network its safety, and i do like those, even if i do have to wait some minutes till transaction be confirmed, as i do spend my coins online i can wait.

[RocketSingh]

To be honest I don't like the anonnymous thing, if someone is doing anything illegal, like stealing of any other thing, will be always one side that will lost money. And that's just one point(my point of view ofc).

Anonymity is a two edged sword. It has its own +ve as well as -ve implications. But, there should be choice available to the common people regarding the path they want to chose in terms of anonymity or non-anonymity.

Soo you do wanna to be exposed and allow the criminals to hunt you and your family because you made or hold a huge ammount of bitcoins?

Where & how I said so?

[el kaka22]

The inefficiencies we may be worrying about will be getting rid of by future enhancements.

In the case of we are not ready to wait for at least 10 minutes, we can have many alternative solution like having bitcoin debit cards. (yes, with some extra fees)

I strongly believe that payment network functionality of bitcoin system just one of many benefits we are enjoying with bitcoin ecosystem. Any difficulty of this payment system will get removed over time by enhancements.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

There is nothing special about payment networks, the technology is simple and has been around for ages. Whats new and revolutionary about bitcoin is the decentralized currency.

[South Park]

Nothing is perfect, for sure bitcoin have their own fails.

To be honest I don't like the anonnymous thing, if someone is doing anything illegal, like stealing of any other thing, will be always one side that will lost money. And that's just one point(my point of view ofc).

Perfect or not, is better than be on the hands of the banks.

Bitcoin is not anonymous is pseudonymous, basically you can hide behind a fake identity if you want but all your transactions are visible to anyone so if someone is really looking for you, like a government agency they can find you unless you take additional measures to try to avoid that.

[franky1]

Nothing is perfect, for sure bitcoin have their own fails.

To be honest I don't like the anonnymous thing, if someone is doing anything illegal, like stealing of any other thing, will be always one side that will lost money. And that's just one point(my point of view ofc).

Perfect or not, is better than be on the hands of the banks.

dont like anonymity..?
then please post your bitcoin addresses and then tell us your home address real full name social security number, date of birth.
have nothing to hide and dont mind police having heat vision CCTV camera's on every street? ok well walk around naked.
dont mind businesses buying up medical records? ok then tell everyone you meet your entire medical history.

you may think you are doing nothing wrong to not care about privacy but if someone asked you to have your medical records tattooed to your body and had to walk around naked.. im sure you will see the subtle point of why even innocent people want privacy

[JeffBrad12]

To be honest I don't like the anonnymous thing, if someone is doing anything illegal, like stealing of any other thing, will be always one side that will lost money. And that's just one point(my point of view ofc).

Anonymity is a two edged sword. It has its own +ve as well as -ve implications. But, there should be choice available to the common people regarding the path they want to chose in terms of anonymity or non-anonymity.

Soo you do wanna to be exposed and allow the criminals to hunt you and your family because you made or hold a huge ammount of bitcoins?

Where & how I said so?

Nope, he's about quote in the wrong post. 

Already there, Following or nothing, just like for choosing  the terms of anonymity or non-anonymity.

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but bitcoin is a fairly inefficient payment network

Try to test it on my signature website. (NSFW)
It work fast and efficient.

[Indrawan77]

Well i am quite agree with op, bitcoin is a pioneer to the new era of digital currency, but in this early stage we still have some problem to handle, the one that still become major problem is the transaction speed, this is the one that's make some local store doubt to adapt bitcoin

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local store doubt to adapt bitcoin

How much customers of them have bitcoins to buy goods?

[shyich03]

as altcoins that outruns bitcoin in some perspective are introduced, wouldn't such things inflate the digital currency market?

[Ryan Dugan]

Lol omg...  Most people are saying yes.  Then why you here ? If everyone used bitcoin then amount you would pay would just be the donbertion of your local fiat currency. I think bitcoin maybe does work better with fiat still around ? I say this because different countries use different currency and bitcoin is only one currency.