Bitcoin More Energy Efficient Than Traditional Financial System, Says Morgan Creek’s Anthony Pompliano

Bitcoin (BTC) skeptics often criticize BTC’s environmental impact, but Anthony Pompliano argues the top cryptocurrency has a distinct energy advantage over the traditional financial system.

Pompliano, the co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital, tells CNBC in a new interview that Bitcoin becomes more efficient as it scales.

“There’s a linear relationship between energy consumption and the US dollar system.

So in order to support more users and more transactions, we need to consume more energy. We need more data centers, more bank branches, more ATMs, et cetera.

The Bitcoin blockchain, the layer-1, doesn’t have that same linear relationship.

So regardless of how many transactions fit into a block of transactions, there is the same energy consumption.

So as it scales, Bitcoin becomes more and more efficient because you can pack more economic value into each one of those blocks, whereas in the legacy system, as you scale, you need to consume more energy.”

Pompliano also argues that the Bitcoin community “shouldn’t apologize” for using energy.

“Important things in the world use energy.

And so when you ultimately look at Bitcoin specifically, a very large percentage of the mix is actually renewable energy – it’s driving all sorts of R&D [research and development] in the renewable space, and what we start to see is that if you want to protect your purchasing power, that is the key to Bitcoin.

If you want to protect your purchasing power in a world of undisciplined monetary and fiscal policy, what you have is a decentralized network of computers around the world that are securing that purchasing power and they’re defending it for you, and I think that’s why you see over 100 million people around the world who have adopted this asset.”

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