241–250 of 436 posts
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This is not just some article, it's a peer-reviewed study from the University of Arizona. Surely it has fault, but honestly I don't think a "cursory glance at wikipedia" provides a compelling counterargument
>This is not just some article, it's a peer-reviewed study from the University of Arizona. When junk science is peer-reviewed, it's even more of a problem.
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Still has usage as a potential store of value and a means of cheap global transfers. My mother in law use it monthly to transfer money to her home (third world) country, which is crazy easy and cheap compared to traditional means.
Any legitimate use of cryptocurrency will never materialize as long as people are gambling with them. The intrinsic value of Bitcoin is nowhere near the current price. When the speculators all sell and the only demand comes from people looking to actually use them, the price will drop by a lot. But, when that happens, the speculators/grifters will simply move to another coin. That other coin will see a similar bubble…
What I think you are not considering here is that you can speculate both on the upside or the downside. Speculators are only trying to predict the future price, speculation is not the same as a "pump and dump scheme".
> When the speculators all sell and the only demand comes from people looking to actually use them, the price will drop by a lot. ... bitcoin’s value will drop even further as people perceive it as “dead” or worthless (as maybe it should have always been perceived)
Like you said yourself, if it is true that Bitcoin is overvalued then it would be a good thing for every Bitcoin user if its price dropped to the fair value. Why are you describing that situation like a bad thing here? I expect users would be happy that they can now afford more of the coin for practical use cases, and adoption in those use cases would probably go up more than anything.
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Miners don't care/get a choice. They plug their machines into the nearest wall socket.
This is not true. Miners are sophisticated business enterprises that select mining farm locations carefully based on access to cheap power and natural cooling. People signing their gaming rig into the network aren't a factor.
Miners were supposed to be everyday Joe’s.
All money has cost. How does Bitcoin cost compare to the cost of the mint and keeping dollars in circulation?
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Miners don't care/get a choice. They plug their machines into the nearest wall socket.
Not true. We have actively sought the cheapest electricity sources for our rigs. I guess it depends on the scale you're operating at, but you're not going to be too profitable plugging into your apartment wall socket here in Central London @ 20p/kWh!
If $1 in BTC is responsible for ~$0.50 (I don't buy this claim)...imagine how much damage central banks cause by debasing currencies to fight endless wars, funding corruption through a class of useless cantillonaires, exacerbating inequality, etc.... Central bank corruption probably even indirectly funded the stupidity that allows articles like these to be branded as "science"...to the casual observer this might seem…
You can simply observe the number of deaths. Even harder to measure the lost economic productivity created by price fixing.
BTC's popularity among speculators is arguably due to artificially cheap credit and economic manipulation. If you accept that you can attribute these so called "climate costs" back to central banking.
The entire premise has so many elite promotions baked in that it becomes hard to approach logically. For me the headline reads as pure nonsense. I'd hoped true believers of central planning and anthropogenic climate apocalypse would find some of these leaps a bit too far.
The comments read as a false dichotomy between bitcoin absolutists and warmists.
Cryptocurrencies can operate without the energy usage of bitcoin. Subjective value tells us that individuals will have different preferences for energy consumption. We don't have to agree that it is efficient or demand that everyone agree on a preference for efficiency as we define it. The other goalpost of the dichotomy is more like a high voltage line. Instead of electrocuting myself and opening a debate on climate change, I'd prefer to simply note that many disagree for a variety of philosophical or scientific reasons.
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As European citizen I don't really trust the Euros or Dollars. Just think about the loss in value If you own money. Even if the official 2% inflation, its still 2% lost of value. And now with Corona they printing billions of Euros and the inlfation will stay at 2% ... sure.
The whole point of inflation is that your money is actually used to do things. Were those currencies to deflate, it would literally be more beneficial to not touch them. Ever. Investments would grind down to a halt, and why would you do groceries now when you could get more if you waited for next week ? Even as a hardcore socialist, it's worrying that cryptobots have failed econ 101.
Because you're hungry and your fridge is empty?
Inflation creates artificial demand and drives consumerism, thereby arguably causing more resource usage/wastage than would otherwise be the case.
Depreciating money means that people's time horizon narrows and they're thinking more and more of the present at the expense of the future, causing all kinds of negative externalities.
Capitalism is actually supposed to make things cheaper, by virtue of competition spurring everyone on to be more efficient and economic with their inputs in order to provide cheaper and better products.
> Were those currencies to deflate, it would literally be more beneficial to not touch them.
This is such a silly, hyperbolic argument. People need to eat, they have other desires than just hoarding money, there will always be reasons to give out money and therefore there will always be reasons to provide goods and services for that money.
Why are there so many articles attacking crypto across the web as of late?
Bitcoin and other proof-of-work crypto comes with a price. And the price is environmental.