Huge loss.
It's mainly used for shady or illegal purposes and it also has a carbon footprint larger than some countries.
It's mainly used for shady or illegal purposes and it also has a carbon footprint larger than some countries.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Is cryptocurrency a net gain or loss for the world?
- Thread starter KDR_11k
- Start date
Until cryptocurrencies move beyond being used for speculative trading, I don't see how it's not a net negative.
I wonder how many of those that answered "positive" are lucky bastards who managed to snag an RTX3080 or similar
It's virtually the embodiment of rampant unchecked capitalism: the pursuit of money at the expense of the environment.
So fuck no its far from a positive.
So fuck no its far from a positive.
Full disclosure, I don't care at all about an RTX anything and I think crypto-currency is idiotic as a concept.
I feel like defi is massive. Finance controlled by protocols and blockchain instead of banks. That's a better future
Math-based protocols, cryptographically secured, are obviously a part of the future. They are more transparent, more auditable, more decentralized and accessibly to everyone, either you were born in mozambique, spain, canada or taiwan. The positivity of it is huge.
Stop looking at crypto as bitcoin or, worse, doge.
Stop looking at crypto as bitcoin or, worse, doge.
I think it's still too early to tell how positive it will/won't be. The concept of a decentralized currency fascinates me but we still have a long way to go before it's widely adopted by corporations/governments.
Blockchain tech is the huge positive here imo
Blockchain tech is the huge positive here imo
The justifications for obvious harmful technologies which have 'potential future benefits' are always fun to see.
Drones were a great idea btw. Can't wait to see what they're used for in the future. When Boston Dynamics robots have guns installed on em that might be bad, but we can get more good memes out of those funny guys. That's a benefit.
hell, the first thing they did with nuclear energy was make a rather scary bomb
Drones were a great idea btw. Can't wait to see what they're used for in the future. When Boston Dynamics robots have guns installed on em that might be bad, but we can get more good memes out of those funny guys. That's a benefit.
hell, the first thing they did with nuclear energy was make a rather scary bomb
Last edited:
Bitcoin is a massive Ponzi scheme that does not have significant underlying value. Its value is in the influence of those holding it convincing those not holding it to buy. If you ride the speculative wave to the top, hop off, and make some money, good for you. But there's going to be a ton of people left holding the bag.
I think destroying Visa and Mastercard, and working towards a level of anonymity/lack of centralised editorial control in transactions akin to cash are net positives, but I don't think any of the solutions are quite there yet.
Perhaps they have to happen. But god, as long as Mastercard dies in a fire.
Perhaps they have to happen. But god, as long as Mastercard dies in a fire.
I'm going to play devil's advocate here because many ppl have mentioned it's negative environmental impact which should not be understated BUT their are several nations in the world that would benefit significantly if the population has acessses to Bitcoin. I think of the average Nigerian household and how useless their currency has become since covid became a thing. For them, cryptocurrency is the better option for doing business while actually having buying power around the world.
Can't really think of any positives. It made a lot of money for some people, so that's a positive to those people but the environmental cost is a huge negative for everyone else.
Last edited:
Both Mastercard and Visa is adopting Blockchain..
Visa B2B Connect
Why Mastercard is bringing crypto onto its network
By directly supporting select digital assets, we are enabling many more merchants to accept cryptocurrency and giving people more ways to save, store and spend money.
www.mastercard.com
Paypal: https://news.bitcoin.com/paypal-launches-business-unit-dedicated-to-cryptocurrency/
It doesn't stop there:
EBSI (European Blockhain Services Infrastructure) https://ec.europa.eu/cefdigital/wiki/display/CEFDIGITAL/EBSI
LACChain: https://www.lacchain.net/home?lang=en
SIAchain: https://www.sia.eu/en/innovation/siachain
And the company allowing all of these networks to communicate freely: Quant Network with their Overledger Blockhain operating system: https://quant.network
Everyone just focusing on the negative aspect of Bitcoin's energy usage is really missing the plot.
Blockchain brings an unprecedented connectivity, openness and trust to an antiqued financial system.
This makes little sense as the price inflation of bitcoin would've exactly the same result as currency inflation with the added effect of effectively concentrating wealth in a few single accounts and no power to print additional money to distribute.
Nope. There are cryptocurrencies that are not mined, they're just not as popular as Bitcoin.
The technology is cool and it's nice to have a trading platform that isn't entirely controlled by big banks and financial institutions.
On the other hand, it's instead controlled by the founders, early adopters who hold enough coins to control the market, and shady websites who may someday abruptly disappear with all your money.
More downsides include:
- incredible energy waste on mining
- hardware drain from people buying video cards for mining
- the sheer obnoxiousness of the general community
- the way some people who get rich from crypto wind up insufferable, at least partly because of said community
- the way crypto in general is used for many shady dealings
- a subset of malware these days now involves inserting crypto miners into unsuspecting computers.
On the other hand, it's instead controlled by the founders, early adopters who hold enough coins to control the market, and shady websites who may someday abruptly disappear with all your money.
More downsides include:
- incredible energy waste on mining
- hardware drain from people buying video cards for mining
- the sheer obnoxiousness of the general community
- the way some people who get rich from crypto wind up insufferable, at least partly because of said community
- the way crypto in general is used for many shady dealings
- a subset of malware these days now involves inserting crypto miners into unsuspecting computers.
Last edited:
Now try to combine that with KYC for instance? If the purpose of the crypto is directly opposed to regulation, then you have an issue.
https://twitter.com/yassineARK/status/1360343382556483587?s=20
Good thread on why bitcoin energy consumption is trivial compared to current legacy financial systems.
Good thread on why bitcoin energy consumption is trivial compared to current legacy financial systems.
But it is not doing any of the things that are requested from current legacy financial systems... It will have to do all of that on top of current energy consumption. Stuff like storing years of data will also need to be done by BTC if it is supposed to be a serious thing. Also it is a terrible thread, it is making basic excuses that aren't correct.
Someone already posted it, and we already had a good laugh at it.
There are a lot of people with vested interest in Bitcoin succeeding because they are essentially the "old money". The ones who bought in at $100US or less per coin, the ones who are hoarding billions of dollars worth of the "currency", whose wealth is predicated on the idea that Bitcoin's value only goes up. And those who hope they aren't too late to jump on the ride, making pennies in the process but serving to further increase the wealth of the early adopters.
Why would we choose to buy into a system where the wealth has already been allocated to the 1%?
Blockchain technology in general may find a use, but Bitcoin as it is has too much baggage to be seriously considered the "future", when there are so many alternatives that offer the same benefits, if not more so that Bitcoin, but at a fraction of the environmental cost.
Last edited:
Both Mastercard and Visa is adopting Blockchain..
Visa B2B Connect
usa.visa.com
Why Mastercard is bringing crypto onto its network
By directly supporting select digital assets, we are enabling many more merchants to accept cryptocurrency and giving people more ways to save, store and spend money.
Parasites always try to cling on to new hosts but it doesn't mean they'll succeed or are even really trying.
It's pretty important to have currency and currency transfer where KYC does not apply IMO. KYC is a source of a lot of discrimination and states/large banks have repeatedly shown they can't be trusted with it.
Okay, but then you're just asking crypto be a backdoor for illegal transactions instead of a legal currency.
It's complicated. I'm buying in because, well, I see it as an investment oppertunity. People are getting rich off of it. I don't want to be left behind. I think it can be positive if it becomes something that replaces the entire monetary system but that's a big ask. Consider all the power that the financial sector takes up, if you replace that with the blockchain, which is often run with mining farms that use solar energy and the like (though obviously not always), that could be a benefit.
It's complicated.
It's complicated.
The fundamentals of cryptocurrency are still solid and I believe we will make the necessary breakthroughs eventually, but it's impossible to deny that it is completely useless in its current iteration. A speculative bubble like BTC becoming the poster child is the worst thing that could have happened.
We are talking about the current state of almost all coins. Of course there are better alternatives like ETH, but it's still a bigger problem that mining is drawing power of two whole countries.
So far the whole thing has made some peolpe really rich and some people dirt poor. Most things that are bought with bitcoin are illegal so privacy works out and all and is decentralized, but it's a total net loss so far.
In the end most coins will die away, and when people see that ETH 2.0 works they will eventually move to POS. All this crazy electricity consumption will stop.
Yes it made people very rich but what can be done now? Government currencies made the rich very rich too via QE. The problem is we have hyper-inflation in some countries and negative rates which will made the poor poorer. If you were Venezuelan, would you rather have had lots of Bolivar or a small amount of BTC?
Perhaps what could be done is create a new fairly distributed POS crypto which can't be hyper-inflated by any entity.
Cons of crypto: bad distribution, energy costs, hard to secure, inability to create more to redistribute wealth unless there is some on chain voting system.
Cons of fiat: government hyper-inflation or unfair QE, governments use it to start wars.
I don't claim to know the answers buy we can't look at the cons of crypto and ignore the cons of fiat.