> Bitcoin thus appears about 15 times less efficient than the non-cash status quo.
You can make calculations today, but they're somewhat meaningless. The reason is, miners don't mine to secure the system and earn money on transaction fees. They mine to earn from new bitcoins being created.
As such, miners total expenses will approach the rewards in bitcoin, which has been >90% of a miner's income.
Long-term, bitcoin will either die, or it'll switch to a system where miner's primary income is from transaction fees. At that point you'll see cost per volume come down to something much more sensible.
In the short term this transaction cost to volume ratio tends to get worse as the price increase outpaces usage. Bitcoin's price increased over tenfold the past 12 months or so, usage didn't, so you'll get a whole lot more mining expenses (electricity) spread out over not many more transactions. But again, that's only because mining expenses currently are linked to bitcoin rewards for mining which correlate with price increases. Bitcoin is designed to phase that out, so again, this is a temporary situation, whether bitcoin has 100 users or 1 billion, this shouldn't last.
You can make calculations today, but they're somewhat meaningless. The reason is, miners don't mine to secure the system and earn money on transaction fees. They mine to earn from new bitcoins being created.
As such, miners total expenses will approach the rewards in bitcoin, which has been >90% of a miner's income.
Long-term, bitcoin will either die, or it'll switch to a system where miner's primary income is from transaction fees. At that point you'll see cost per volume come down to something much more sensible.
In the short term this transaction cost to volume ratio tends to get worse as the price increase outpaces usage. Bitcoin's price increased over tenfold the past 12 months or so, usage didn't, so you'll get a whole lot more mining expenses (electricity) spread out over not many more transactions. But again, that's only because mining expenses currently are linked to bitcoin rewards for mining which correlate with price increases. Bitcoin is designed to phase that out, so again, this is a temporary situation, whether bitcoin has 100 users or 1 billion, this shouldn't last.
disclaimer: not holding any bitcoins.