Ask HN: Why is cryptocurrency so hated here?

The "killer app" for cryptocurrency is ransomware and malware.

Ransomware creators used to ask for payments with gift card codes or sketchy Western Union-style transfers. Cryptocurrency makes it MUCH easier for ransomware gangs to get paid.

This has led to a boom in ransomware attacks and the commoditization of ransomware into an entire industry [1][2]. There are entities that specialize in getting a foothold via exploits, contacting the victims to force payment, taking payments and laundering them, and providing paying victims with decryption tools.

Cryptocurrency has made ransomware a big business for criminal gangs and financially-strapped nefarious state actors (North Korea for example) [3].

[1]: https://techmonitor.ai/technology/cybersecurity/ransomware-a...

[2]: https://www.titanhq.com/blog/the-correlation-between-cryptoc...

[3]: https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Nor...

The blockchain tech and distributed ledger technology is interesting. The current uses of it appear like money grabs of some kind or another. A ledger itself has zero value, it's literally the same as a checkbook register, its a tool.

For example using the checkbook register as the ledger, let me describe my understanding as it relates to crypto:

* I offer up a limited set of pages of a checkbook register for trade and we track who trades what part of this register. We establish 1 transaction (tx) in the register is 1 unit

* We assign some value to each unit in the register. These values are associated with government backed currencies since we need some reference point as to their value in money.

* Accounts are created to track how many tx/partials you own. Trading platforms are built to buy/sell/trade units of this register. Apps are built with value displaying the govt currency

* If you run some complex mathematical proofs on your computer/GPU you can "find" a new unit and keep part of it.

* It is well known there are limited units of the register, this drives the "value" up on trading platforms.

* People (or companies, banks, etc.) are allowed to buy/sell their units and move the proceeds of that sale that into a supported government backed currency with some transfer fees.

Humans have associated monetary value with a ledger of transactions and those transactions are tracking trades of the ledger itself? It just doesn't make much sense when you think it through at that basic level like it was a checkbook register. In my example if the value of each unit on the register/ledger was associated to marbles instead of a government backed currency, this whole thing falls down.

What if blockchain/distributed ledger technology was used as a tool to track transactions but the ledger itself wasn't something that has monetary value?

Remember, HN is not with 100% US members. I'm not an US citizen and the US government does not give a flying fuck about my opinion toward their military spending. On the other hand, not all of the US citizens are eco friendly and are much pro US military than me, so it makes sense for them to vote for it.

Your argument is, “This thing may be bad, but what about this other thing that I think is even worse?”

It doesn’t address why you don’t find the arguments compelling. Do you think energy impact is completely trivial?

You find find an argument from me that the energy consumption of the US military is somehow acceptable.

However, all of that energy consumption being used by crypto is at the mercy of a desperately small number of speculators, hobbyists, and marks. For what it accomplishes - the actual utility it provides, which is to say, very little - it is an astonishingly energy-hungry system. Even compared to traditional banking systems like Visa - which process millions of transactions every second to bitcoin's, what, three? - it is shamefully wasteful.

I think I fall into the category of folks that "hate crypto", though to be honest, the environmental factors aren't what really gets my goat. Not only does the entire sphere speak like either well-fed con-men or desperate marks (Framing critique as "hate", for instance, is a common tactic), but the basis of their technology is focused on taking the single worst aspect of physical existence - that there is only so much stuff - and porting it to the digital world. At that point, the fact that it literally burns away resources wily-nily is just, what? Helpful metaphor?