Bitcoin

A refrain from an old song has it that ‘money makes the world go round’. There is a lot of truth to it. Many people spend their lives to obtain as much money as they can. And really, with the way our society functions, it’s hard to be a part of society without it. In result, or some say in cause, the financial institutes aid us by assigning value to money and by moving money from here to there.

While a bank as an institution may be a fairly recent construct, the concept of money is quite older. It was just so much more convenient than bartering. Yet money has changed. From commodity money, representative money and on to fiat money. What hasn’t changed was that money could be placed in the hand. Until now. Along came cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. This is valued like money. It is computer based. It requires a computer to be on so as to keep it in existence. And there’s a lot circulating about the Web. A recent debate argues that it requires too much energy. Counter to that claim is that the traditional financial institutions require more. From four times to ten times the amount. What isn’t argued is that the concept of money is very valuable and worth expending large amounts of energy. How much energy? In rough calculations the combined forms of money use 0.443 quadrillion BTUs or 4.63e17Joules each year to be in existence. And using energy may be the oldest concept known.

Cryptocurrencies use a lot of energy. Some say as much energy as Cuba does. And yes money does facilitate living in our society. Though it may not make the Earth turn. It does make for easy, fair trade. At an energy cost. Summing cryptocurrencies and financial institutes results in a usage of less than 1% of humanity’s energy expenditure. Per year. Will our future include real and virtual financial institutes no matter what their energy cost? Will we ever have to choose between energy for machines and energy for people? While the Earth keeps going round.