Government money printing, wasting, power-grab and destruction via dilution and s and the pain, destruction and suffering they cause
Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
571–580 of 862 posts
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#572Earlier quoted context omitted.
Look at Bitcoin.orgs own marketing. https://bitcoin.org/en/faq#what-are-the-advantages-of-bitcoi... "Payment Freedom" and "Choose your own fees" are both things that no longer apply to Bitcoin.
"Choose your own fees" still holds, but everybody has freedom around the choice of fees. You are free to propose a fee that suits you and miners are free to ignore your proposal.
The marketing makes it sounds like higher fees get processed/"confirmed" faster.
The reality is that if your fee isn't high enough, it stays in the mempool until it expires, never being sent.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
Was it? I know a couple books[1] that suggest life prior to the agricultural revolution wasn't nearly as famine-stricken as we tend to think it was. These books claim hunter gatherers were quite proficient at finding enough sustenance. Obviously starvation was still possible and likely, but was it the primary cause of death? Is there some more evidence that humans were suffering from starvation before agriculture? Wo…
That same book claims that the agricultural revolution was responsible for human specialization. We were able to feed larger families/tribes and develop non-food related skills. Without agriculture, those extra people would've died aka "thin out" as you mentioned.
The two are not mutually exclusive. Are you going to boom and bust in both scenarios
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#574There are so many better crypto-currencies. Better for the environment because they use proof-of-stake, and not proof-of-work. Better for users because transactions are confirmed in seconds, not hours, and without the ridiculous fees that Bitcoin has. I think this shows how truly powerful the network effect, and being first to market is. Because without those things, Bitcoin would be nothing.
Yeah, I think bitcoin has been completely surpassed technologically speaking. Monero in particular solved almost all of bitcoin's problems yet still can't compete with it in popularity.
Isn't litecoin also better than bitcoin on the technical side, with very few changes?
I think Monero failed at the name. Bitcoin's name is self defining to some degree which I think helped make it gain a lot of popularity. It's also impersonal, bits and coins, there's no real branding there to get twisted up with. When people first hear "bitcoin" they already have constructs in their head about bits and coins and it elicits free advertisement as the imagination tries to create a working theory on what a bitcoin is.
Monero makes me think of some kind of failed sports car nobody has ever heard of. I'm not counting it out, but if it's really better on the technical side then it needs some prominent evangelists spreading its use.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#575The irony is that the exact society destabilizing grand visions of the future billionaires advocate for are some of the main drivers behind people embracing Bitcoin. If you push a "you own nothing" WEF approved dystopian tech oligarch reality don't be surprised when people adopt an asset that cannot be confiscated by the government.
I find it really cute that people think that a fully transparent public ledger, where every transaction is written for all to see, is the way to escape government control.
Remind me again what currency was used on the Silk Road for purchasing illicit goods and services. And how many of those vendors were prosecuted by the US gov?
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are having to mandate cash acceptance at stores now as many would prefer to do away with it. https://www.npr.org/2020/02/06/803003343/some-businesses-are...
The possibility of not getting robbed because you have $4000 cash on the till is a damn killer feature. Sure, this would just lead to an evolution in methodology. but for now its worth it.
Safes exist. There's no reason to have $4000 in a till.
Besides, even without cash, you're still going to get robbed. They'll just take merchandise instead of cash.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#577Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just because something else is bad already doesn't mean you should introduce more of the same. Also Bill Gate's opinion is based on Bitcoin offering almost no utilitarian value but consumes a ton of energy, nothing to do with monetary policies.
The value is providing the ownership of a digital scarce fixed-supply item that can be transferred and traded. That's the product. And the market gives it a price. Also, it has everything to do with monetary policy.
There are 8000+ cryptocurrencies, some (or a lot?) of them are bitcoin clones. Most of them issue millions and billions of those digital items. It's not scarce at all.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#578Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jeezus people have short memories. Bitcoin solved a flotilla of problems that were blockers for an all-digital currency in 2008. The most severe and proven problem was the threat of government shutdown by a police raid of your servers, this is what killed E-gold and other predecessors. The blockchain solved the problem of having your central ledger being shutdown by the cops/IRS/etc. by decentralizing it and of cours…
> governments have to be careful here as they must ensure that there are no challengers to their primary form of taxation payment Why do they have to be careful? Are they going to magically going to have to start accepting Bitcoin instead of dollars? > Bitcoin was very carefully crafted to survive government attack and finally the government accepted it by considering it a taxable commodity. They still doesn't mean y…
They have to be careful because they won't be able to collect taxes. There are 2 types of taxes. Direct and Inflationary.
The second one is gone because control of money supply is gone and as far as the first one the govt can trace funds in your bank accounts but it's going to have a really hard time if someone holds crypto currency and is intent on not disclosing their real wealth.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
Again, I'm not a BTC fanboy, I don't even own any. But obviously it solves SOME problems - like how to transfer some sort of store of value across borders without using a bank. That's one of them. It's not tulips and 100% useless. A digital currency is interesting to explore. It's interesting enough that institutions are stuffing their cash into it because they are fearing inflation, and the old school explanations o…
Hi, thanks for the reply, makes sense what you said. I am not looking for strong stances or arguing; I just want to expand my understanding. I get from you that institutions pour real money into it and they rely on bitcoin's scarcity to overcome inflation. Makes sense. However, I want to understand why using banks or FinTech companies for money transfer is so bad? Nowadays there are low fees, way lower than what Bitc…
> However, I want to understand why using banks or FinTech companies for money transfer is so bad?
I've never done it, but when I lived abroad and I had to transfer money, I got fleeced by banks and then (a few years ago) there weren't really any alternatives. I don't have any skin in the game with Bitcoin, but I guess that left a foul taste in my mouth.
There've been other comments about Bitcoin that are a bit more nuanced and interesting, in one case there was a gentleman from Argentina making an impassioned case for the use over and against the polices of his government.
I think there's an element of institutional mistrust that Bitcoin claims - maybe wrongly, given how centralized it is - to solve.
Re: Bill Gates Says that Bitcoin is bad For the Planet
#580Blockchain is a technology in search of a problem.
Maybe as a storage of wealth it produces fewer emissions than mining gold but it's not the solution to the money problem.
Why it's still no 1 cryptocurrency? First mover advantage, a few die hard believers, many speculators and lots of FOMO.
Even I am reluctant to sell my 0.01 share of a bitcoin. What if...
When a much better solution comes people will sell it but for now the fiat-alternative market is too crowded with not much differentiation - to my best knowledge.