> the BTC network uses a staggering amount of power
Actually, bitcoin uses a ridiculously small amount of power for what it provides. See for example here https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ for an introduction to clear up this misconception.
If you really believe that something that is 1 million times less efficient than Visa/MasterCard for a fraction of the service, and that miners really use residential energy when they are active 24/7 and thus by definition a continuous strain on the grid, I have so many scams^W interesting products to sell you
Comparing Bitcoin network to Visa/MasterCard is as pointless as comparing Gold mining to those cc networks. Fair comparison would be Bitcoin network vs Gold mining/storage/securing/transfer activities.
If your country's money and banking works for you I don't think I can explain to you why bitcoin is useful, you simply have no use for it. That your peers primarily use it for speculation says more about them than about bitcoin.
Because I cannot fathom a system where either currency or banking does not work, and the preferable alternative is to rely on a highly volatile asset that requires vast amounts of energy and time to work.
> That your peers primarily use it for speculation says more about them than about bitcoin.
We are not in 2011 anymore. Bitcoin did not become a widespread vehicle for commercial transactions. Countries with defenestrated economies did not find an alternative in Bitcoin. Instead, we have whales, among them large banks and corporations, controlling over a third of the market, and most transactions are made in exchanges with arbitrage or speculation purposes.
Suffice to say, I don't consider JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs my "peers".
> Because I cannot fathom a system where either currency or banking does not work, and the preferable alternative is to rely on a highly volatile asset that requires vast amounts of energy and time to work.
May I ask you where you were born and raised? A lot of people do actually have to face shitty systems where Bitcoin is a godsend.
Isn't it a bit disingenuous to think that common people have moved $50bn in Bitcoin out of China? Or have moved ~$2.4bn worth of Bitcoin in Nigeria in a single month?
> A lot of people do actually have to face shitty systems where Bitcoin is a godsend.
I would say that a handful of examples, of which some are highly questionable, constitute anecdotal evidence, at best. Some of these scenarios are indistinguishable from using any other stable foreign currency, or even commodities, with the added difficulty of requiring certain technology literacy most people don't have.
> May I ask you where you were born and raised?
I could ask the same, because I haven't found many ardent defenders of cryptocurrency outside the tech circles of the so called developed world.
Well, Bitcoin price is still 30K USD and the market cap is almost 600B USD. That is a very good macro proof that people value Bitcoin.
> I could ask the same
I was born in a third world country where the leader decided to demonetize 87% of currency in circulation on a whim. And the society doesn't trust government at all - people buy gold or land as soon as they can. Where are you from?
> I haven't found many ardent defenders of cryptocurrency outside the tech circles of the so called developed world.
Have you actually bothered to talk to anyone? I have had in-person conversations with people from multiple despotic or shitty regimes (Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Iran) to understand how and why they use Bitcoin. You talk to them, understand how it is used and you will also realize that Bitcoin is here to stay and grow.
> Well, Bitcoin price is still 30K USD and the market cap is almost 600B USD. That is a very good macro proof that people value Bitcoin.
Let’s not forget that Bitcoin price averages a volatility of ~4% daily. With Bitcoin, any given individual could have sold goods or services and make a profit one day, and lose pretty much everything in a week.
If that is not a sign of Bitcoin being used as a vehicle for speculative markets, I don’t know what it is.
> Have you actually bothered to talk to anyone? I have had in-person conversations with people from multiple despotic or shitty regimes (Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Iran) to understand how and why they use Bitcoin.
Using Bitcoin properly requires a certain level of tech and financial literacy most people just don’t have. It also relies on expensive infrastructure that is highly dependent on mining being profitable. Again, this is not 2011 anymore, nowadays only the very wealthy can expect to profit from Bitcoin mining.
I guess the question is, what is so different between a crappy hyper inflated currency, controlled by an authoritarian government, and a crappy volatile cryptocurrency, controlled by a few wealthy individuals?
On that regard, If I were to call any friend from Venezuela and ask them about starting to use Bitcoin right now, they would surely get some 2014 vibes.
> Using Bitcoin properly requires a certain level of tech and financial literacy most people just don’t have. It also relies on expensive infrastructure that is highly dependent on mining being profitable. Again, this is not 2011 anymore, nowadays only the very wealthy can expect to profit from Bitcoin mining.
But most of the users don't mine - they just buy and hold. It is pretty simple and is as complicated (or simple) as buying and holding gold.
> a crappy volatile cryptocurrency, controlled by a few wealthy individuals
No idea how that is relevant since we are discussing Bitcoin :-p. In seriousness, that is where the social belief comes from. If people believe Bitcoin to be controlled by a few wealthy individuals, then either they will stay away. If they believe Bitcoin to be a truly decentralized store of value not controlled by any single government or entity, they will flock to it. If they are right, they will be rewarded with an asset which will appreciate in the long run. If they are wrong, they will get burned.
> If I were to call any friend from Venezuela and ask them about starting to use Bitcoin right now, they would surely get some 2014 vibes.
I met a Venezuelan last week and he regularly sends Bitcoin back home to help his family. Fiat exchange rate is artificially suppressed so his family would receive less if he sends USD. Gold is hard to send from the US to Venezuela. No one can stop Bitcoin transfers though and it is more trusted than the local currency.
No, the price is 30K USDT, which has very dubious backing, part of which is BTC. They've never been audited and thus nothing points to them being solvent. It's believed that a lot of the backing is in Chinese real estate papers which took quite a big fall with Evergrandes' troubles.
This article is basically like arguing: “Sure, using the Infant-Chipper 9000 results in the deaths of infants. But it’s a rounding error if you consider how many infants die in the world every year!”
Bitcoin purposefully wastes lots of energy to provide something of extremely dubious value.
The people finding it useful are overwhelmingly moving money illegally, such as how you can peg BTC shifts to Xi's anti-corruption crackdowns in China, or MBS in Saudi. Or moving drugs. Or hyping something to sell more made up money to rubes.
When how people live their lives depends on them shoveling millions of joules s of externalities onto my environment and that of my kids, in addition to propping up a rube goldberg Ponzi scheme that has a non-zero chance of ensnaring people I care about either directly or indirectly through financial mismanagement, you better believe I'm going to tell you how to live your life.
I'll tell lots of other people how you live your life is hypocritically contributing to a massive increase of financial leverage on the part of "rationally self interested" sociopaths and criminals at everyone else's expense( in direct opposition to its putative purpose of undermining predatory central bankers, yet is simply shifting the power to predatory anon-ish ransomware purveyors and sex traffickers and bullshit gambling token insta-twit "influencers" seeking to exploit the naivety of children for their own financial gain), and generally promoting the enshittification of everything that touches the internet, and should be mocked and discouraged at every opportunity.
You don't like the free market of ideas when it turns against you? tough.
"When how people live their lives depends on them shoveling millions of joules s of externalities onto my environment and that of my kids, in addition to propping up a rube goldberg Ponzi scheme that has a non-zero chance of ensnaring people I care about either directly or indirectly through financial mismanagement, you better believe I'm going to tell you how to live your life."
This is no defense of Bitcoin/crypto, but the above paragraph relatively concisely describes how I feel as part of the underclasses in the traditional world. Except that all the fears it encapsulates have already occurred for my family, generations back.
There are people in this thread who get a yearly payrise (which translates to increased selfish expenditure on plastic toys and air flights and fancy petrol burning machines) that's greater than my entire household's income, and I'm just an ordinary person in a western country. How many household bitcoin miners does that equal, environmentally speaking? For that one person?
The hypocrisy embedded in fervent hatred of crypto, as though extravagant & hugely unbalanced wastage of resources wasn't practiced by us all daily, implies a moral distance that, imo, barely exists. Bitcoin and crypto are mere reflections of the wastage that we as a species have normalised, and still do, via our lifestyles.
It's "industry" and "business" that have fucked this world.
I'm not advocating for the "industry" side as if it's a dichotomic industry against crypto, or banking against bitcoin. I'm specifically criticizing crypto and especially Bitcoin because the entire ideological mission of the project is to disrupt and disintermediate all of these well-known predatory Industries, when it has done none of this whatsoever. In fact has actually contributed both to incumbent disproportionate inequality of wealth, as well as creating new classes of disproportionate and malignant, aggressively unaccontable wealth. It has backfired in the worst possible way and all the fallout is on the people that was supposed to benefit.
And the and the relative handful of people at the center of the so-called decentralized crypto world are well aware of this and don't give a flying f**.
The tcp/ip protocol didn't have a white paper and accompanying ideological promotion and narrative expressly stating the purpose was to wrest power to create money from sovereign central governmental authorities that had ostensibly abused it, back to regular people in a decentralized manner. And instead resulted in a cartelified cabal of people who go out of their way to be unaccountable by obscuring their identities, which is actually a step down from people who you can at least in theory remove from power or hold accountable through democratic means.
It sure doesn't help that the earliest adopters went on the social media of the time crowing about how they were the new wealthy elite.
Actually, bitcoin uses a ridiculously small amount of power for what it provides. See for example here https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ for an introduction to clear up this misconception.