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How does this compare to the environmental impact of the millions of people constantly surfing sites like Reddit all day? I always hear about how bad Bitcoin is in terms of energy consumption, but nobody seems to perform similar analysis on actually frivolous activities we all accept in our society.
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You have the cause and effect reversed. One of the reasons I want to move from USD to crypto is because I don't want to invade countries for their oil. I'd rather my currency not be tied to imperialistic warmongering.
I’m asserting that a country that used Bitcoin would still warmonger for oil.
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The number of times such an activity would be useful to me is zero. However calling my bank and having cash recalled from fraudulent (or even just bankrupt) merchants, that's happened. Who do I call at Bitcoin?
Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The benefit of BTC is that when your bank mismanages their assets a la 2008, resulting in a bank run, you know your assets are safe instead of having to rely on the Fed to bail out your bank. Your money is in your control, not in the control…
The point is when we're looking at comparative energy use, you can't just point at the whole banking system and compare it to Bitcoin, as if it's an apples to apples comparison, because the banking system provides an embarassment of services that Bitcoin does not.
> The strawman is disingenuous and shows how little you understand the topic.
There's no strawman here and if anything this shows how little you understood the thread you're replying to.
(Edit: fixed a copy/paste screwup)
Cryptocurrency is still something that legacy financial systems could easily out-compete given an appropriate regulatory environment. There are things Bitcoin is better at than e.g. credit cards. If you're a trusted merchant with shady customers, once the transaction posts you don't have to worry about scammers fraudulently disputing the charge or your bank cutting you off because that happened too often. You can get…
Presumably, forcing illegal actions to happen through bitcoin adds friction to the process. But more importantly, as far as I know bitcoin is not designed to guarantee anonymity in money transfers, and the fact that every transaction is set in stone publicly in the blockchain makes it relatively easily traceable. Am I wrong in that area?
And of course even if transactions themselves were fully anonymous, many people end up needing to rely on exchanges, and the idea of those being truly anonymous is borderline absurd.
Cryptocurrency is still something that legacy financial systems could easily out-compete given an appropriate regulatory environment. There are things Bitcoin is better at than e.g. credit cards. If you're a trusted merchant with shady customers, once the transaction posts you don't have to worry about scammers fraudulently disputing the charge or your bank cutting you off because that happened too often. You can get…
Presumably, forcing illegal actions to happen through bitcoin adds friction to the process. But more importantly, as far as I know bitcoin is not designed to guarantee anonymity in money transfers, and the fact that every transaction is set in stone publicly in the blockchain makes it relatively easily traceable. Am I wrong in that area?
Adding friction to non-illegal actions is harm, not benefit. Adding friction to illegal actions is the opposite of what happens, because it's enabling something that wasn't previously possible. Also, criminals can survive higher friction than dissidents and vulnerable populations because the illegality creates a moat that raises margins.
It's why drug cartels make billions of dollars and can finance submarines and stuff but marginal changes that nobody thinks through the implications of get dissidents killed.
> But more importantly, as far as I know bitcoin is not designed to guarantee anonymity in money transfers, and the fact that every transaction is set in stone publicly in the blockchain makes it relatively easily traceable. Am I wrong in that area?
Every transaction is public but it's only the transaction and there is no requirement to reuse the same wallet for multiple transactions.
You go to some cryptocurrency hangout, pay some stranger a hundred bucks in cash and they transfer a hundred bucks in Bitcoin to your wallet. You go pay for a VPN with it. Then everybody can see that A transferred money to B and B transferred money to C, but nobody knows that you're B and those are the only transactions for that wallet.
Also, there are cryptocurrencies where this isn't the case and you don't even get that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The number of times such an activity would be useful to me is zero. However calling my bank and having cash recalled from fraudulent (or even just bankrupt) merchants, that's happened. Who do I call at Bitcoin?
> The number of times such an activity would be useful to me is zero. You say that now, but it's the kind of innovation that will require some time to develop use-cases. I use it as an example of where crypto is just a lot more powerful than traditional banking. There's the ability to scale without "permission". Think a 12 year old opening an "account". > However calling my bank and having cash recalled from fraudule…
Right, so that means that Bitcoin is not providing many of the services the financial system provides now, so comparing its energy footprint to the existing financial system is pointless.
That's the point I was making. You can't say "Bitcoin uses X electricity and Finance uses Y, which is bigger, and so is worse" when Bitcoin doesn't provide the same services or service the same size of audience as existing financial systems do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The benefit of BTC is that when your bank mismanages their assets a la 2008, resulting in a bank run, you know your assets are safe instead of having to rely on the Fed to bail out your bank. Your money is in your control, not in the control…
> Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The point is when we're looking at comparative energy use, you can't just point at the whole banking system and compare it to Bitcoin, as if it's an apples to apples comparison, because the banking system provides an embarassment of service…
Sorry, this does not make BTC a bank.
As they continue to add more features, we will see what BTC will become and how it may be useful. But comparing it to a bank is silly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Bitcoin isn't a bank, it's a currency. You can't do that with the USD either, and you could build a banking platform on top of bitcoin to allow for chargebacks and credit lines. The point is when we're looking at comparative energy use, you can't just point at the whole banking system and compare it to Bitcoin, as if it's an apples to apples comparison, because the banking system provides an embarassment of service…
> Escrow accounts and merchant layers are in development. Sorry, this does not make BTC a bank. As they continue to add more features, we will see what BTC will become and how it may be useful. But comparing it to a bank is silly.
I agree, Bitcoin is not a bank, that makes comparing its energy footprint to the banking system totally pointless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m asserting that a country that used Bitcoin would still warmonger for oil.
I'm asserting that you can't have a currency independent of a country without crypto. It's a prerequisite to defunding warmongering countries.
The funny thing is that we know that neither fiat currency nor oil is necessary for empire building or warmongering, because both fiat currencies and large scale oil consumption came out after the greatest period of imperialism and colony building that humanity has ever seen. The idea that replacing something that’s been around for ~50 years will solve a Millenia long problem of humanity’s is just funny.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The number of times such an activity would be useful to me is zero. You say that now, but it's the kind of innovation that will require some time to develop use-cases. I use it as an example of where crypto is just a lot more powerful than traditional banking. There's the ability to scale without "permission". Think a 12 year old opening an "account". > However calling my bank and having cash recalled from fraudule…
>Escrow accounts and merchant layers are in development Right, so that means that Bitcoin is not providing many of the services the financial system provides now, so comparing its energy footprint to the existing financial system is pointless. That's the point I was making. You can't say "Bitcoin uses X electricity and Finance uses Y, which is bigger, and so is worse" when Bitcoin doesn't provide the same services or…