Debunking the waste of energy argument against Bitcoin

[d5000]

solar energy has the huge downside of being dependant on weather and time of day, while mining requires constant 24/7 energy. At night the powergrid would overload. The only way to sustain the mining requirements are coal and nuclear plants.

Fortunately, this isn't really a big issue:
1) you can distribute your mining plants on several sites on Earth, using daylight on different longitudes. This would obviously increase the incidence of hardware costs in the profit equation, but at good sites with high insolation you would have also smaller electricity costs than grid-connected farms.
2) there are solar electricity generation methods like "concentrated solar power" providing the possibility to store energy so they can also work at night. The Andasol plants I mentioned, for example, work with this principle.
3) if CSP isn't possible, batteries may be an option - their costs are also falling.

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[Samarkand]

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Also the BTC vs cash money comparison is flawed. It should be BTC vs wire transfers vs credit cards.

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Bitcoin will never replace credit cards if you ask me.

I think Bitcoin´s main value proposition is the fact that it can be a store of value due to
its unique characteristics that make it a form of sound money (hard cap on the total
amount of BTC, predictable issuance schedule, scarcity...).

Credit cards will always be more efficient in terms of transaction volume per second, because Bitcoin is designed in a way
that requires a trade-off between efficiency and decentralization/security.

2nd-layer solutions might change that in the future, however they will run into the same issue
when they are designed in a way that leads to a decentralized system.