This seems as unlikely to be true, as it does sensationalist. Hate on Bitcoin all ya like, but don’t make off the cuff “calculations” and report it as news.
Crypto is entirely an extremely expensive gambling system. It serves no actual explainable purpose for the vast majority of people. It’s trivially provable to be worse than existing alternatives in every way that isn’t scams and or money laundering.
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Sorry, I meant than using Zelle, a credit or debit card, Paypal, etc. Last time I looked, most crypto is completely traceable because of the public ledger (monero does built in illegal in the US money laundering style transaction mixing to try and make it less traceable, not sure how well that works, but the rest apply to it), and the distributed public ledgers are the only way it works. I’d argue the way most people can get crypto requires a bank account tied to something like Coinbase, so that’s a link from your bank, to your crypto wallet, then the rest is even more public.
However, for most people, crypto doesn’t work like cash, and does work like a stock. You need a special broker, you need to move money with fees into the crypto account, then pay fees to buy the crypto. This is way more analogous to stocks, so that’s how people think of it, than cash or bank transfers.
Assuming you can figure out the right crypto to buy, now every time you spend it or try and send it to a different wallet, there’s stupid high fees for the common Bitcoin and Etherium networks (I haven’t actually tried to use the other ones as they get very obscure). We tried to move $30 dollars in Etherium to a different wallet (granted this was 4 years ago) and it cost $15 in “gas fees”. This makes me long for the 3% credit card processing fee.
After the fee, it takes quite a while to transfer, I recall Bitcoin took over an hour, and it was like several minutes or more for Etherium. Paypal, Zelle, Card are all instant, or maybe seconds.
Basically if you’re not buying something highly illegal, there’s 0 benefit to a normal person and masses of costs, complexity, opportunities to get hacked and all your crypto stolen, and exchanges to either collapse or also steal whatever money you had in there. It doesn’t solve a problem, and so normal people are right to not use it. I’d suggest after 13 years it’s only been used by speculators and scammers “successfully”.
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Normal things might turn into “highly illegal” overnight - first thing that comes to mind is what happened with abortion laws. There are always vulnerable people who aren’t criminals, and saying they shouldn’t have such a payment option is kind of close to “only criminals would need end-to-end encryption”.
I’m not saying people have nothing to hide, or making that case. I’m saying the ask is so high that people who don’t feel like they must use crypto don’t, and this is one of the hills it would have to conquer to be taken seriously. There are obvious negatives like the environmental impact, the PITA complicated tech that is hard to understand, the slow transactions, and the difficulty of getting usable money into and out of crypto. And the vast majority of purchases, the mass adoption, aren’t stuff that people care to hide or they would already be only using cash.
I’d love to pay for my VPN with crypto, but I’m not willing to spend the hours it would take to figure it out in the current form, not to mention actually make it at all actually anonymous, plus pay roughly 2x in payment fees.
Now think of people who don’t even care about privacy to use a VPN…
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But when it comes to learning the tech… Isn’t it the same for proper privacy, anonymity and safety in general? Instead of proclaiming it as a “lost cause”, I think we should lend a hand to someone who needs protection but has trouble figuring it out.
I’ve gotten cynical over trying to lend a hand to people around using Linux. Masses don’t want to be taught things. Heck, look at the lemmy adoption issues. Yes, idealistically maybe “digital cash” has a use, but practically people don’t see it. At this point, it’s not a lack of knowledge - there were super bowl commercials. It’s a lack of interest. It’s like the laser keyboards “of the future” circa 2010. They didn’t solve an actual problem enough people had to be worth learning how to use them and deal with the clunky parts.
Wasteful but not as bad as golf.
https://www.deseret.com/2022/3/22/22988989/an-illogical-oasis-golf-course-water-usage-st-george-golf
The U.S. Geological Survey’s most recent water use data for Utah shows the state uses about 38 million gallons of water on golf courses per day.
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I mean, yeah, it’s bad. We shouldn’t be ignoring how bad bitcoin is for the environment.
But are you really gonna tell me that all the computers and CPU time that Wall Street uses for trading somehow takes less?
It doesn’t matter what financial system you use, you’re still burning energy to make it work.
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As far as transactions, yes, something like Visa takes way less than Bitcoin. For HFT compared to crypto, who knows, but one thing they’re not doing is something intentionally wasteful like proof of work.
You know what else uses as much water as a swimming pool? Swimming pools.
And don’t get me started on golf courses.
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Don’t get me started on humans either. Not only do those thirsty shits require shitloads of water to function, it also needs to be clean! Not relatively clean either, but clean clean!
Do you have any idea how many bitcoin farms I could run if there weren’t any humans? Me neither, but it’s probably zero.
This is simply untrue. I know a large BTC mining operation and they don’t use water. They use the gases coming off from oil mining that would otherwise go into the atmosphere. BTC mining takes advantage of surplus energy so it’s creation doesn’t go to waste. The mining is good for our environment. I’ve also read about solar panels sitting above crops to power BTC miners. These panels covering the crops help conserve water while helping the plants grow better.
Edit: • Agrivoltaic farming • Mining with gas flaring • Mining with nuclear and hydro power
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Doesn’t the lightning network which is millions of times faster than btc alone solve this?
Just another reason to add to the already massive pile of hating crypto.
Bitcoin ≠ Cryptocurrencies
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How did you manage to twist a truism into a fallacy? You shouldn’t make these claims, because if anything arguably you used a hasty generalization or fallacy of composition.
Not all cryptocurrencies are bitcoin nor do they work the same at all. For example, many don’t even use “mining”, which is the source of bitcoin’s outlandish energy waste. I really have no interest in discussing cryptocurrencies, but at least don’t do so in defiance of common sense.
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That’s not my point, I haven’t tried to convince anyone to trust anything nor have I minimized anything. I don’t know if you’re a troll or just want to argue in bad faith, but I’m out.
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Bitcoin is the ur-cryptocurrency, the Original Sin from which all of the other flaws from cryptocurrency arise.
Bitcoin is the first in a huge series of crap for speculation, but it’s not the whole thing. A good example is several central banks that are creating their own cryptocurrencies, centralized and generally fundamentally opposed to that.
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You were a troll after all. Blocked.
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Eth consistently seems to be the better technology. I really don’t see why Bitcoin doesn’t see more transition from mining to just validation as it sunsets.
Mining is validation through POW. Eth is almost pointless from the point of view of bitcoin as proof of stake is “who has the gold makes the rules”.
PoW is inherently unavailable while also a system of dimmishing returns. PoS is bad IMHO too, but from a sociopolitical aspect and not from tech standpoint.
