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Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

thehill.com

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Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#71

Post by trident5000 »

agloeregrets wrote: post #58
trident5000 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on HN. Crypto isnt liked because it might steal jobs/shake up the status quo. More threads will be posted as user adoption continues and especially when price rises. Last temper tantrum was like 6 months ago so its probably about that time.

Crypto in general isn't liked because it generally is BS propped up by holders to others to help their position like an MLM coworker. It isn't green (in it's current form for most). It doesn't solve real world problems(in it's current form for most). And it has effectively no avenue to ever being supported by major governments because lol, shocker, they would rather regulate money. The thing about it all is that it h…

Ok. While you're in denial - its being adopted by social media platforms (twitter), ecommerce platforms (Amazon), its on corporate balance sheets (tesla, spacex, microstrategy, some others), all major payment vendors, banks (JMP), and something like 70 million americans, hundreds of millions globally own it and disagree with you.

Its useful to have a money system that isnt abused by central banks, destroying what you've worked for your whole life. The problem is accelerating and people seem to have found a solution. And energy "waste" is 1) an opinion of its utility and 2) more a function of grid structure. If the energy grid globally was all green then btc would be all green. It also less than 1% of global energy usage and does not scale with usage. It scales with price discovery which eventually maxes out long term.

You dont need to participate if you dont want to but sweeping it under the rug as all a scam is head in sand behavior.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#72

Post by agloeregrets »

myhf wrote: post #62

banning bitcoin is actually GOOD for bitcoin

Good for bitcoin the concept, bad for the gold-chasing crypto-geeks who want their 10,000% return get-rich-quick scheme.

If mining was banned, it would force a move to a POS system like ETH 2.0 and would solve most of the environmental problem. Just the people who hold it and the miners would lose their income source. This should make it clear that you have the people who want crypto as a currency and people who just want profits and they don't know they are enemies.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#73

Post by Jasper_ »

briefcomment wrote: post #53
Jasper_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewables Bullshit. When one coal mine in a remote region of China flooded, the Bitcoin hash rate measurably dropped by 30%. Keep in mind this was just one coal mine. Not all of China's production. https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-env... > it's more apt to call it Web 3.0 than cryptocurrency at this point. I've said this so many…

> I've said this so many times: But what does it doooooo??? Are you asking about Bitcoin or Crypto? Bitcoin doesn't do much atm, but Ethereum does stuff, and Bitcoin Cash is pretty practical as a currency at the moment. There's plenty that can be done, but the market will have to decide what to converge on.

OK then, what does it do? Feel free to tell me. I've asked a lot of times and have never gotten a good response.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#74

Post by legulere »

Lukeas14 wrote: post #15

> But dollars, euros and yen are backed by nations’ respective treasuries. If someone invents a cryptocurrency, any value is based solely on convincing others it has value. They lost me here. Most countries indeed have currency that is backed by their nation's respective treasuries. However, those treasuries are filled dollars, euros and yen. All fiat money no longer backed by gold or anything tangible and whose valu…

The big difference is that states use force to convince people of the worth of their currencies: If you don’t pay taxes you will go to jail.

The reason people believe in the worth of cryptocurrencies is greed and fear of missing out.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#75

Post by neurotrace »

snejad123 wrote: post #66
Jasper_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewables Bullshit. When one coal mine in a remote region of China flooded, the Bitcoin hash rate measurably dropped by 30%. Keep in mind this was just one coal mine. Not all of China's production. https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-env... > it's more apt to call it Web 3.0 than cryptocurrency at this point. I've said this so many…

just because you don't use it or put in the effort to look at different decentralized projects doesn't mean there are "no use-cases". I think with the amount of activity on AAVE and yearn, plus the growth these projects have received have killed that argument. Very 2017 argument that no longer makes any sense and is presented by luddites. Most the bottlenecks right now to why you don't have day-to-day apps deployed o…

I'm not OP but this doesn't seem to answer the question. You presented a lot of speculation and mentioned two things that I've never heard of

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#76

Post by Jasper_ »

coralreef wrote: post #70
Jasper_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewables Bullshit. When one coal mine in a remote region of China flooded, the Bitcoin hash rate measurably dropped by 30%. Keep in mind this was just one coal mine. Not all of China's production. https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-env... > it's more apt to call it Web 3.0 than cryptocurrency at this point. I've said this so many…

>Bullshit. When one coal mine in a remote region of China flooded, the Bitcoin hash rate measurably dropped by 30%. Keep in mind this was just one coal mine. Not all of China's production. FYI, China kicked out crypto miners, which is why hash rates tanked in the last few months: https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate So we don't know what percentage of mining is even left in China. Also, dirty energy is a regul…

> FYI, China kicked out crypto miners, which is why hash rates tanked in the last few months:

The coal mine flood happened about a month before the widespread ban of Bitcoin in China, and we can see both events on the hashrate over time chart.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#77

Post by underseacables »

I’m making an excellent side income with cryptocurrency. The Bitcoin boom and bubble allowed us to get a down payment for the house we live in. I don’t know where the money came from but cryptocurrency investment has been a boon for out fiancees.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#78

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 »

Jasper_ wrote: post #33
nscalf wrote: post #12

This is some of the worst junk writing I've seen on the hill. Some pretty wrong things in here, like insinuating that the only value of crypto is to criminals, and all but saying that the reason there are hackings to things like critical infrastructure is because crypto exists, which is just silly. Then it flags bitcoin as an environmental hazard, though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewabl…

> though estimates seem to be ~50-70% of BTC energy use is from renewables Bullshit. When one coal mine in a remote region of China flooded, the Bitcoin hash rate measurably dropped by 30%. Keep in mind this was just one coal mine. Not all of China's production. https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-env... > it's more apt to call it Web 3.0 than cryptocurrency at this point. I've said this so many…

> But what does it doooooo???

The blockchain is just a platform. You have to build projects on top of the platform. Asking what does it do doesn't make any sense. It's like asking what does a piece of paper do.

The real question to ask is not what does it do but whether the trade offs of using decentralised tokenised platform for building real world apps is useful or scalable. The answers to which are still being discovered.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#79

Post by kjksf »

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”

We're at the "they fight you" stage.

Yesterday it was energy usage FUD. Today it's cybercriminals FUD.

I'm buying because there's only one stage left: "you win" and we're not there yet.

Re: Bye-bye, Bitcoin: It's time to ban cryptocurrencies

#80

Post by abeppu »

If "banning" bitcoin really meant saying that exchanges can't let you turn dollars into bitcoins and vice versa ... could that finally make bitcoin an actual currency, where to get it you exchanged a good or service for it? Would the disconnect from the rest of the financial system mean that it wouldn't just be a vehicle for speculation?

I still think it's a silly system, where an extravagant amount of work is done so no one has to trust any central party (but all the speculators had to trust the exchanges). But I wonder if "banning" it could be the thing that actually lets it fulfill a little more of its original promise.

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