Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index

Yeah I don't really understand -- normally people buying things (energy) at a price the supplier is willing to sell is good. If energy is priced appropriately, this shouldn't be a problem.

Are people concerned with the negative externalities of energy usage? If so, it seems like the real issue is that all energy use is "bad", anything that causes people to severely increase their energy usage is especially bad, and bitcoin is one such thing.

But even though it's bitcoin in practice, the real issue seems like not being able to correctly price energy.

That’s ignoring the middlemen who run the mining network, who you pay for every transaction, and the middlemen on both ends who convert to and from the real current which you use to buy and sell the things you actually use.

Similarly, any government which wants to can block the network entirely or require everyone exchanging into real currency to avoid transactions involving people who’ve violated local laws. Since Bitcoin by design helpfully gives them a full list of your past activities anyone considering ignoring those demands has to consider the risk of consequences for their participation at any point in the future.

The public know that USDT is not fully collateralised with real life assets. This has been publicly stated on Tether page as well. So can we please stop parroting this USDT bullshit, nobody cares how tether is backed and with all the alternatives to USDT there is no reason to use it but from a perspective of ease-of-use and wider offering of trading pairs. You have DAI, USDC, TUSD, BUSD.... You can check which one is audited (USDC and TUSD) and will credit you fully if you need so. You can also work directly with USD at various reputable crypto exchanges (eg Bitstamp, Coinbase, Kraken).

This tether FUD always resurfaces as price goes up as people are butthurt that they did not buy the last dip. No worries, history will repeat itself. This year we'll see BTC hit 100k+ and end the massive bull run in 250k teritory by 2022. After that we'll see everybody dumping their cash in BTC and the bubble will burst on the wings of massive FUD & regulatory bullshit. Bitcoin willl drop to ~20k and cycle will repeat.

For those that weren't watching, this repeats itself every ~3 years for past 10 years. Keep watching the news... USDT stories will become more regular, next will be China bans, Russia bans... then we'll continue with EU regulation push, US regulation push, new tax laws....

The only smart thing you can do is start investing a small amount every week and forgetting about it. Cancel two lattes (or lottery cards, donuts) per week and buy BTC and ETH instead. Imagine starting doing this in 2016, when ETH was launched. You bought ETH for 1 USD. Today it's hitting ~1700 USD. You would retire easily.

Too bad you're so hard at work telling the world that crypto is a scam.

> I simply can't answer what BTCs and other crypto coins are actually good for.

Everybody here is missing out why Bitcoin was made in the first place: the 2008 crash.

The benefits of a globally liquid asset (not USD) will only be appreciated if you're living from a country that has a weak Central Bank.

- Nigerians use it to import goods from China. This guy can't source USD to purchase imports for his mobile phone business, so he uses BTC [0]

- Venezuela remote workers getting paid in BTC, because their central bank clamped down on USD inflow. They also didn't want to be paid in the worthless local currency. [1]

- Remittance shops in Hongkong are using BTC to settle remittances by batch. Buy and sell to the last mile instantly, no exposure to volatility. This gives them way better FX fees and faster settlement (30mins vs. 1-3 business days). They pass the savings down to their customers as marketing spend, or they pocket the change to increase profit [2]

- Argentina Central Bank is hoarding USD due to dwindling reserves. So they imposed a $200USD/month cap on individuals transacting with USD. People are flocking to BTC for remote settlement. [3]

- Iran hit with sanctions cant use USD. So they're working on laws to use BTC for settling imports with China. They even issued BTC mining licenses for private companies. [4]

I come from a country, where if you remit more than $10K outbound you'd have to: pay big fees ($200+), suffer bad FX rates, wait for 2-3 days, do a physical appearance at the branch for and pay documents/notarial stamps, sign forms, present and print out government ID's, just to say: "This is my money, I just want to send money to my dad overseas for medical purposes".

December 2020, my mom had received USD in her dollar account. She wanted to withdraw and convert it to help build float for the family business, the local bank didn't have enough USD. They told her it was a 6-week wait, lots of people lined up. Lol.

People from first-world countries have it good.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-africa-...

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47553048

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-crypto-currencies-remitta...

[3] https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-is-booming-in-economically-c...

[4] https://asiatimes.com/2020/10/iran-to-use-bitcoin-to-fund-im...

Good luck with that. The bitcoin core folks can't even agree to change blocksizes to increase transaction throughput. Switching to PoS is highly unlikely.