I'm sorry, I was nodding along when I stumbled over the 'bitcoin' word. That's a big no from me and the reason is probably not hard to guess in light of this project.
Google 'cryptocurrencies louwrentius' to understand my position.
> Cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value. They are only worth what people are willing to pay for them.
How is this any different from US dollars, gold, or anything besides food, medicine, and shelter?
> Cryptocurrencies facilitate crime
Once again, the same argument could be applied to US dollars
At the moment, I do not think major cryptocurrencies have any of those qualities. Though it could change if all major governments have a favorable view towards it.
https://www.loc.gov/law/help/cryptocurrency/world-survey.php
For bitcoin at least, it's an intrinsically deflationary currency. There's no incentive to spend a bitcoin today if it will be worth more tomorrow, so it ends up being primarily a currency of choice for transactions which are unfeasible in any other way, which ends up being primarily illegal transactions.
I agree with this, of course. But there is also a method that allows me to convert my AUS dollar in to US dollar. I just paid my taxes with $AUS?
Does the logic follow: $BTC->$USD->USTAXES ?
As long as there is a means of conversion you can start with anything and end up being able to pay your taxes. You can’t directly pay taxes with your time and skills, but you can trade your time and skills for USD, and then pay your taxes. You can’t directly pay your US taxes with the AUS dollar, but there is a market where you can exchange that for USD, then pay your taxes. The logic is inclusive of BTC, which makes the ideology that BTC is bad because you can’t pay your taxes with it, at very least, murky.
Taxes provide [part of] the reason to believe a market to exchange Aussie dollars will exist in two years time: tax and Aussie-dollar denominated debt mean a lot of people need Aussie dollars. That's the only reason the Aussie dollar is worth more than the plastic its printed on. BTC doesn't have that reason [to any meaningful extent; credit is a tiny part of the economy and nobody needs BTC to pay taxes] and unlike the fruits of your labour [which I'd hope are more useful or entertaining than an alphanumeric string even if they can't be exchanged in future], it doesn't have any non-exchange-related reason to be worth anything either. The some-people-need-it-to-pay taxes argument is why Aussie or US dollars aren't bad despite being as intrinsically useless as BTC.
So the argument is that BTC is bad because both intrinsically useless and almost entirely lacking a mechanism [similar to taxes] to create a stable flow of future demand to acquire it
You can pay taxes with dollars and buy oil anywhere in the world. And the US government will send the strongest army in history against anyone who will try to decline US dollars for their oil.
>gold
Gold is naturally rare and has a much wider network of places that will accept it as payment.
>food, medicine, and shelter
Because you can use those for actual real-world things? How is that even comparable?
would be a cool little project, and it falls to you to decide which side of the ethics of it you subscribe to.
I would love to have a little cryptocurrency miner, completely self sufficient, just doing its own thing until it dies. but I would also love a cryptocurrency that didn't have the same kind of environmental impact that bitcoin has. maybe another application? selling computing power?
They destroy the planet. And on a personal scale, over-reliance upon them encourages lack of exercise and a needlessly stressful life spent in traffic.
I reckon we could make a big dent in pollution and obesity rates by having most people reduce their car usage.