this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
199 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
37799 readers
181 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Well my understanding is that visa, MasterCard ECT. Are far more efficient in terms of energy and transaction time when compared to Bitcoin and Ether. Visa uses about a quarter of the power per 100,000 transactions.
So I would assume that would mean fewer data center computers to cool and therefore less water used per transaction
By design.
Bitcoin has pretty much no incentive to make the transactions efficient. The load is distributed to other people (their customers), and their biggest customers have a perverse incentive to want the transactions to be as inefficient as possible in order to discourage competition.
Vista et al have to pay for their own transactions, so keeping it light is simple cost savings and totally rational.
Sorry, I’ve not kept up to date with crypto, but wasn’t ethereum due to move from computational mining to staking? Wouldn’t that be a lot more efficient, or is that not a thing yet?
ethereum moved to proof of stake sometime back. BTC and I think a few other (very) minor cryptos still use proof of work which is where the significant power usage goes. Not something I track but I believe the vast majority of non-BTC cyptos are proof of stake or something not proof of work anyway and BTC is the only one that uses proof of work and is used at all. That might not exactly be technically correct but it is in the practical realm.
Most importantly, VISA, MasterCard, etc. are far more profitable for VISA, MasterCard, etc. stock holders.