from Hacker News

Why the Biggest Bitcoin Mines Are in China

by amaks on 10/13/17, 5:06 PM with 1 comments

  • by ballenf on 10/13/17, 5:28 PM

    The pictures in this article and details of power consumption make the inherent proof-of-work approach very hard to defend.

    The counter argument is that the resources required to secure, print and transport traditional currencies is probably still orders of magnitude greater. But on a MWh per $-equivalent flow, Bitcoin is probably orders of magnitude less efficient.

    Would be great to see someone with actual numbers do calculations of that sort to watch trends over time. I wonder if the W / $-value-transaction is going down or up over time? That is, the energy spent vs. rate of flow of currency (as a rough measure of its utility), denominated in dollars.