<i>(Note: Since most HN readers are technical, this comment is being downvoted by bitcoin enthusiasts among them.  You won&#x27;t see many replies from them to this comment, since their reaciton is political and not a technical statement.  Still, I&#x27;ll keep it up.  This comment is currently at -2.)</i><p>To put this into context, by comparing it with a centralized version, an equivalent number of actual transactions could be done at a bank with a crud app running on a $5 complete desktop PC which the Raspberry Pi foundation just released[1].  It is a 1 ghz computer with 512 MB of RAM. It draws up to 0.7 Watts.<p>Wait, wait, wait.  did I say an equivalent number?  Since Bitcoin is limited to 7 TPS (7 transactions per second), I should modify this to 100x more transactions (700 transactions per second), if you wrote it in C, or if not a hundred times, then at least ten times as many in python.  If it were a crud app running at a bank, a $5 computer could do 100 times the transactions that 650 Phash&#x2F;s of wasted effort collectively give.  And 40 megawatts.<p>Bitcoin is a supreme waste of resources through the proof of work hack.  It is like emulating a GPU in a CPU...in javascript.  I mean, sure, you can do that.  You can run Open GL by emulating a GPU in single-threaded Javascript.<p>But it&#x27;s a stupid, wrong solution.  The basic idea sucks.  It&#x27;s bad.<p>(by the by my target price for btc is $600,000 based on a comparison with how bad gold is physically, and the market cap of gold. :-P.)<p>I love fiat currencies, they&#x27;re one of the great achievements of modern civilization. (This sentence isn&#x27;t ironic, it&#x27;s actually how I feel.)  Despite my target price I don&#x27;t hold any bitcoins at all.  I hope some of the numbers I&#x27;ve given can put into perspective why.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.raspberrypi.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;raspberry-pi-zero&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.raspberrypi.org&#x2F;blog&#x2F;raspberry-pi-zero&#x2F;</a>