Processing transactions is a two part job. You need a simple device with a disk that holds a copy of the blockchain, there's currently 11 000 of them. The power usage for these devices is insignificant as it's typically desktop PC's which would have been powered up and online anyway.
The second part is to append new blocks every 10 minutes, a block is 1MB of data which is downloaded to every node. That's literally less energy than all of us patriots consume just to browse this site.
Mining, which is the biggest energy consumer is powered solely by greed, because we cannot trust scummy bankers, or one central authority for verification to not fuck around.
Assuming we could in fact trust central authorities, the entire Bitcoin network, no matter how many users it has could be verified by just one single device, owned by one person. Consuming only a couple of watts of energy.
It isn't. The miner who gets to update the blockchain also gets to process new transactions.
"You need a simple device with a disk that holds a copy of the blockchain, there's currently 11 000 of them."
This seems completely wrong. There are many more than 11,000 nodes and only the node that updates the blockchain processes transactions (a different one roughly every ten minutes).
The miners ARE the transacation processors.
The whole "powered by greed" spin is there to turn people against cryptocurrency. They perform an essential service, which is to uphold the integrity of the system which helps ensure the money is valuable in the first place..
Processing transactions is a two part job. You need a simple device with a disk that holds a copy of the blockchain, there's currently 11 000 of them. The power usage for these devices is insignificant as it's typically desktop PC's which would have been powered up and online anyway.
The second part is to append new blocks every 10 minutes, a block is 1MB of data which is downloaded to every node. That's literally less energy than all of us patriots consume just to browse this site.
Mining, which is the biggest energy consumer is powered solely by greed, because we cannot trust scummy bankers, or one central authority for verification to not fuck around.
Assuming we could in fact trust central authorities, the entire Bitcoin network, no matter how many users it has could be verified by just one single device, owned by one person. Consuming only a couple of watts of energy.
"Processing transactions is a two part job."
It isn't. The miner who gets to update the blockchain also gets to process new transactions.
"You need a simple device with a disk that holds a copy of the blockchain, there's currently 11 000 of them."
This seems completely wrong. There are many more than 11,000 nodes and only the node that updates the blockchain processes transactions (a different one roughly every ten minutes).
The miners ARE the transacation processors.
The whole "powered by greed" spin is there to turn people against cryptocurrency. They perform an essential service, which is to uphold the integrity of the system which helps ensure the money is valuable in the first place..