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Comment by prox | Hacker News Reader

Can’t agree more. The tech is interesting, but it is the same greed behind it which is old as mankind. It solves absolutely nothing, does nothing of value and adds none. Crypto is quickly becoming a failure of immense proportions.

The externalities of cryptocurrencies include:

Massive carbon emissions. Funding "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran. Tax evasion. Laundering the proceeds of crime, including the drug trade, theft and fraud, and armed robbery. An epidemic of ransomware. A wave of securities fraud targeting the greedy and vulnerable. Shortages of products including graphics cards, hard disks, and chips in general as limited fab capacity is diverted to mining ASICS. Abuse of free tiers of Web services. Noise pollution.

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Please read the article and study the underlying technology. Most of your statement is incorrect and lacks insight and facts.

Solana uses proof of stake and does not have the energy consumption issue, or does not use graphics card. It is cost and energy efficient alternative for Bitcoin and other proof of work public blockchains.

More about the history of proof of stake here:

https://capitalgram.com/posts/history-of-cryptocurrencies/

> Most of your statement is incorrect and lacks insight and facts.

You expertly avoid all arguments except that Solana uses proof of stake. Who cares. Prox's point still stands: folks will continue to use blockchain-powered "pseudo-currencies" for illegal drugs, murder-for-hire, money laundering, ransomware, and speculation. No one's buying groceries with BTC.

Replace ‘blockchain-powered “pseudo-currencies”’ with “cash”, and the same is true. Better outlaw cash.

This thread is not about BTC…

Isn't that why we don't have $10,000 notes? Or even $500? To make illegal activity more difficult?

> Replace ‘blockchain-powered “pseudo-currencies”’ with “cash”, and the same is true. Better outlaw cash.

You can't be serious. Ad hoc cash transfers are regulated (can't bring more than $10k across borders without declaring, for example), supply is limited, and bills have literal serial numbers on them.

Crypto is a relatively new technology. Illegal money is as old as civilization.

Yes, there are regulations to make it harder to carry out elicit business, but that doesn’t change history, nor does it invalidate the point I was trying to make.

And yet a ton of illegal activity is performed with cash.

On one hand, some cryptos (not Solana) are useful for illegal activities. On another, they’re also useful for privacy, censorship resistance, and financial freedom.

It’s no different than the argument against E2EE, but I’d rather live in a society with E2EE than without.

We have Paypal / Bank Transfers to send money quickly, BTC is a slower way of sending money.

What is your point?

Again, this thread is not about BTC, and limitations that are specific to BTC (like transaction rate/speed) are irrelevant.

There is more than just bitcoin

My favorite Bitcoin joke: "so it's full of fraud, scams, Ponzi schemes, money laundering, and is heavily used to buy drugs and contraband... so this means it's a real currency now?"

> avoid

Because I am typing on a mobile.

Happy to answer later if you are genuinely curious and not just ranting.

Like real money, it can be used for fraud and for legitimate usecases. Your generalization made up from thin air brings nothing to the conversation.

So then what's the point of this thing then? All these crypto things reek of ponzi schemes and I have yet to see an application of it that makes me think the technology is good/needed. So far, crypto is a solution looking for a problem.

You’re entitled to your opinion. But the rest of the world doesn’t care about it. People use something because it is useful for them.

Way to not answer the question.

What’s the point of money? Really?

How can you create a coin, get investors into a private token sale (or even allocating pre-mined coins), hype the trojan horse onto the public to get them involved, then getting the coin on main exchanges and then investors dumping the coin causing it to be worthless. All this being unregulated by the way.

This happens all the time with these projects most recently ICP (Internet Computer) and just one of the reasons why this is all a complete scam.

There is a name for this type of rinse and repeated scheme.

There is no reason why this can also happen to Solana, rendering cryptocurrencies even more worthless than real money.

> Funding "rogue states" such as North Korea and Iran

Not a big fan of crypto, but this is one of the less convincing arguments against it—as the current situation where the US more or less gets to decide who are the rogue states, because of the global financial system’s dependency on the US dollar, doesn’t seem all that great.

For example, the US have ruled: “Saudi Arabia good, Iran bad” for a long time now. Since the signing of the nuclear treaty with Iran, the EU had been trying to normalise trade relations, but this has proven exceedingly complicated since the US pulled out, since most financial transactions at some point pass through a US based financial institution that are beholden to sanctions towards Iran.

I don’t think crypto is the ideal answer for this problem, I would prefer a financial system that can deal with multiple fiat currencies and has less reliance on the USD, but that won’t happen overnight.

cf https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-finance-idUSKBN29O1ZI

Obviously many people disagree.

Just to pick on one issue, carbon emission is negligible (unless you talk about bitcoin).

Many people also rely on transfers of cryptocurrency. Just not you or your entourage.

Obviously people who have money to launder don’t like the idea of stopping money laundering. The same for people doing drug trade, avoiding international sanctions, tax evasion, etc.

Yes, the people who disagree are those pumping and dumping and the bag holders.

And cryptocurrency mining consumes as much electricity annually as the country of Argentina. Country scale emissions is not at all negligible, particularly in light of catastrophic global warming.

That’s your opinion. And I guess that’s all you have when you can’t talk about the tech.

In reality, nobody actually cares about the tech, Not even the VCs care, they're just buying into a project for an exit.

The general public are even more oblivious to the tech, all they want. to know is 'How do I 100x my money? When is coin X going to the moon?'.

They all want the 'moon' more than the tech.

I care. I thought HN would as well.

You are in the .00001% minority that cares about the tech and everyone else is making millions on the backs of cryptocurrencies.

I guarantee you that you engage in activities that provide far less benefit to humanity but use far more energy than cryptocurrency.

Global warming needs to be sped up in my view.

is this copypasta for every crypto thread?

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