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Comment by jeanlucas | Hacker News Reader

It's from 2018 and has been discussed many many times. Funny how fast it got to the front-page today.

Is that what we call FUD? News to try and scare people from a specific company or technology? There's literally no new arguments, just fear mongering.

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Fear of global warming ending civilization.

No biggie though, eh

Ignore the millions of 1-ton chunks of metal that move 1 person slower than a bike on average. It's the bitcoin network's fault.

No disagreement about cars. Bikes and bike infra are cheaper, healthier and less deadly in all senses of the term. Electric bikes are great too. So are three wheelers.

But that is whataboutery: bitcoin is still extremely bad.

Both cars and bitcoin are insanely wasteful.

Ever heard of "whataboutism"?

Here in the UK we call it "whataboutery"

Yeah, but ask yourself: why are you reading this _now_?

The article is 2 years old. Bitcoin and the overall cryptocurrency ecosystem are near all-time high values. Shining a light into this article is probably a maneuver made by someone interested in decreasing the value of Bitcoin. It's possible that this person is a concerned environmentalist, but Occam's razor suggests that this person is someone that wants to buy Bitcoin at lower prices, or that shorted its value in an exchange and wants to increase the benefits before executing the options.

Maybe it's just because people care about the future of our planet and don't care about those crypto-stuff?

Assuming this forum has enough clout to swing the price of BTC is probably a bit of an overstatement...

Wait, you can short Bitcoin now?

Of course, find somebody to loan you some coin, sell it at current prices, buy some in a week when prices fall and return the coin to the lender, pocketing the price diff. Any fungible product can be shorted, all you need is a willing lender.

Assume my rhetorical question boils down to “is it possible to find a willing BTC lender with a decent enough size and non loan-shark rates”?

Or even “is there a consensus yield curve for BTC?”

Probably because the network is consuming more electricity than ever right at this moment.

Prediction, Bitcoin (and decentralisation in general) will be attacked as a vessel for circumvention of financial establishment right-wing censorship next. We must regulate it to prevent fundraising for another insurrection.

You can agree with decentralization and also agree that bitcoin is a terrible protocol.

Kind of how you can think the internet is great but think google is a blight.

ahh so you're for laying down whatever narrative gets you to your end goal. Right, I always trust someone with dishonest motives like that.

I'm not condoning the narrative, rather the opposite. Technocrats will attack decentralisation as it threatens their hegemony. My claim is they'll sell it under the guise of preventing domestic terrorism.

ah, my apologies for misunderstanding you.

First part already started by ECB boss last week.

Yep it’s fud. For those who aren’t aware let me let you in on a secret. Some people who hold crypto push fud for the coins/tokens they hold to make others not buy them. This seems counter intuitive but gives people whose cash flow is low a longer period to get a decent stake. Then you have sad 4channers who do it just to be mean. Beware the fud. If people are pushing a negative view in something always ask what’s in it for them.

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