Bitcoin Is as Legitimate as Ice Cream
This analogy neglects to ask what the environmental impact of ice cream is.<p>Let&#x27;s say I bought a gallon of ice cream with bitcoin. What is the energy cost of the transaction? How much waste heat did it generate? And on the other side: what is the energy cost of making that ice cream, shipping it to the store I bought it from, and keeping it refrigerated? How much waste heat did <i>that</i> generate?<p>If the bitcoin transaction cost as much energy and generated as much waste heat as the production, storage, and shipping of the gallon of ice cream, then yeah, that&#x27;s a good start for saying one is legitimate as the other. But if one of them cost a couple of orders of magnitude more energy, and generated three orders of magnitude more waste heat, for something that is theoretically the same monetary value (because they <i>are</i>, given that we paid for that whole supply chain with the bitcoin transaction), then there is a pretty clear imbalance.<p>And for a bit more clarity - what is the energy&#x2F;heat cost of buying that gallon of ice cream with a debit&#x2F;credit card? How does that compare to both the production&#x2F;shipping&#x2F;storage of that gallon of ice cream, and to the cost of buying it with bitcoin?<p>I am not going to do the research and estimation for this. Some quick lazy searching suggests that one BTC transaction consumes about 3x the energy of 100k transactions via Visa&#x27;s network, though. And that is the issue: Bitcoin is, <i>by design</i>, incredibly wasteful of resources. Ludicrously so.