Think about all the energy that is used by a fiat monetary system.
How about cost of employees, cost of real estate, etc. etc. in a fiat system?
I wonder what the cost of the USD system would be.
First we have to agree on units, then a baseline.
Compared to the existing system that one finds preferable to USD, what is the average gain (or loss), per participant, in:
life expectancy
opportunity for independence (political, financial)
time spent completing a transaction (financial, social, commercial)
access to
Its far simpler than that.
First, the banks have themselves said that blockchains can save them nearly $30bn each year in costs. What costs? That would be middle layers that can be deleted. Within that $30bn of savings are many servers living inside data centres, with many additional data centres for back-ups, DR and support - in many countries around the world.
Then there is all the testing and sign-off that takes place. Training, useless meetings, etc.
Second, when an international transaction takes place within the banking system, the data bounces from one system to the next to pass around the layers routers and transaction processors. Just this aspect would have the same electrical footprint / cost as the Bitcoin network.
If you don't know what is involved in moving money around the world, how can you claim to known the hidden costs in order to compare them to the Bitcoin network.
meh.