Assuming those estimates are correct (I haven't verified it), I think it's hard for me to believe that there are fewer than 191K people working to manage an equivalent number of financial transactions in USD.
I tried this wolfram query: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=number+of+people+workin...
Yes, we are increasing entropy outside of ourselves but not within, if the population of humans is increasing, humans have acquired more negentropy from the environment and are "winning" against entropy as they get better at extracting energy from the environment, we'll run out of energy in the form of fossil fuels soon, so we'll have to find another source of energy, because we need more energy to decrease entropy.
Let me be clear(er) in saying that I don't support burning fossil fuels, I think OP linked mining bitcoins directly to burning coal -- we're mixing two very separate arguments here. Burning fossil fuels for generation of electricity is a topic on its own.
The problem is, this estimate is just for Ethereum. It does not account for Bitcoin which must arguably have a much larger energy usage.
The thing about these 191K people is that Ethereum uses them just for transactions while people working in the banking industry will most likely not spend most of their carbon footprint just on managing transactions.
Most modern banks also don't manage transactions with employees anymore, they use computers to transact. They use the power invested into transactions more efficiently, the energy used being directly proportional to the amount of transactions moved around, the human meat sacks are only there for the smiles and managing things the computers can't do. yet.
> if the population of humans is increasing,
> are "winning" against entropy as they get better at extracting energy from the environment
Making a human is a net increase in entropy. Burning fuel is a net increase in entropy.
>so we'll have to find another source of energy, because we need more energy to decrease entropy.
This is not a fight you can win as the amount of energy you need to expend is magnitudes larger than the amount of entropy you decreased, actually, by the law of thermodynamics, any energy you expend to reduce entropy will produce an equal or larger amount of energy as a result.
Entropy may decrease temporarily in a locality but overall it will always increase inevitably.
> Most modern banks also don't manage transactions with employees anymore, they use computers to transact.
so, there's some of that carbon expenditure going into computers and networks to manage these transactions? Banks also use your money to make more money for themselves, does that bother you at all? considering that this thread started out by looking at things "holistically".
In any case, my point here isn't that crypto currencies are the best thing ever, but they're definitely a step in the right direction. I hope you can see the potential in these ideas and what they're trying to achieve. Basically, we need a system that can't be defeated with fraud, if everyone was honest we could just pass around a piece of paper and ask everyone to write down how much money they have and we'd be good, unfortunately that's not the case, as I see it, most of it is a just the cost of preventing cheating, we can certainly observe the current networks and come up with better ones in the future.
> Making a human is a net increase in entropy. Burning fuel is a net increase in entropy.
> This is not a fight you can win as the amount of energy you need to expend is magnitudes larger than the amount of entropy you decreased, actually, by the law of thermodynamics, any energy you expend to reduce entropy will produce an equal or larger amount of energy as a result. > Entropy may decrease temporarily in a locality but overall it will always increase inevitably.
so, are you suggesting that we stop reproduction and burning fossil fuels and slow down the "advance of entropy"? (or is it just bitcoin you want stopped?)
Also, "net increase" in what system?
Yes, but a bit less, with high confidence.
>Banks also use your money to make more money for themselves, does that bother you at all?
Not really, miners in bitcoin also make money, don't they?
Additionally, European Banks announced they're starting SCT Inst, SEPA transactions which are confirmed in 15 seconds instead of overnight. My bank doesn't charge me fees for it.
Why bother with bitcoin's immense carbon footprint when it can't beat the lower effective carbon footprint of banks if they are faster and cheaper?
>but they're definitely a step in the right direction.
I can agree with that, but they need to fix things to be applicable for a wider audience.
> we can certainly observe the current networks and come up with better ones in the future.
I'm currently somewhat invested in Ethereum since they plan to go into PoS which would be immensely more efficient.
>so, are you suggesting that we stop reproduction and burning fossil fuels and slow down the "advance of entropy"? (or is it just bitcoin you want stopped?)
No at all, just refuting that you can decreaser net entropy.
>Also, "net increase" in what system?
In the closed system that is the reachable universe. In any closed system, net entropy increases over time. That's nothing inherently bad, just a property of closed systems.
You can somewhat "cheat" and decrease entropy in some parts of the system but the entire system will increase or not decrease it's entropy.
Visa and mastercard together employ ~20k people and handle much, much, much more transactions than all the cryptocurrencies combined.
The EU SEPA customer payments system handles ~1000 times more transactions than ethereum, and the infrastructure for running that (spread across all the involved banks) likely takes thousands of people, but not 200k, and certainly not the 200 million people that would be required to do so as horribly inefficiently as cryptocurrencies do.
20K people (debatable) and a bunch of computers and networks which need to be managed by more people, and the infrastructure doesn't run on sunshine either (yet).
Without laboring the point, if your position is: * The methods applied by the crypto currencies waste more energy than our current system of currency.
I'll accept this, iff we make sure we've collected data rigorously and we notice that the difference is significant. Even then, there's no reason to give up on the idea of crypto currencies, we just have to make it more efficient.
