<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>rothbardrand</author><text>Yeah, that&amp;#x27;s inaccurate.  The major portion of that energy expenditure is keeping the bitcoins that aren&amp;#x27;t moving secure.&lt;p&gt;Put another way, this is saying it is estimated to take about $800M it keep $40B of bitcoin secure.&lt;p&gt;This is probably a bit expensive in terms of comparing to fiat currencies (But then we are probably not covering all the real costs of those currencies)... but bitcoin is still in the technology adoption life-cycle and has not yet become a currency.&lt;p&gt;When the inflation of BTC has declined and it has become fully adopted (assuming this happens) then the numbers will likely start to make a lot more sense.&lt;p&gt;Also, the vast majority of transactions in about 2 years will likely be happening off chain using lightening network and the like.&lt;p&gt;Those transaction fees will happily be covered by merchants who are currently paying %2-%5 per transaction to Visa et. al. and will be more than happy to pay %1 or less to Bitcoin to manage a lightening channel.&lt;p&gt;Really, it will be companies disrupting Visa building payment networks out of lightening channels and they will have to keep fees really low because LN is open source and anyone can compete with them.</text><parent_chain><item><author>amelius</author><text>&amp;gt; Electricity consumed per transaction: 165 kWh&lt;p&gt;Thats about $20 in the US.&lt;p&gt;If a transaction is &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; expensive, how can this system even work for transactions with a value of that order? Are large transactions &amp;quot;sponsoring&amp;quot; small transactions?&lt;p&gt;What happens if more people use the system for small transactions? Will BTC become unusable?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index</title><url>https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>amelius</author><text>So, if you look just at transaction cost the system clearly cannot sustain itself. But as more people buy into BTC, the system keeps from collapsing. If you ask me, that&amp;#x27;s starting to look like a Ponzi scheme in disguise ...</text><parent_chain><item><author>amelius</author><text>&amp;gt; Electricity consumed per transaction: 165 kWh&lt;p&gt;Thats about $20 in the US.&lt;p&gt;If a transaction is &lt;i&gt;that&lt;/i&gt; expensive, how can this system even work for transactions with a value of that order? Are large transactions &amp;quot;sponsoring&amp;quot; small transactions?&lt;p&gt;What happens if more people use the system for small transactions? Will BTC become unusable?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index</title><url>https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption</url></story>