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Comment by voidray | Hacker News Reader

If you take every long-refuted criticism of Bitcoin along with cherrypicked examples of cringe celebrities endorsing it, and you combine that with misinformed neo-Marxism and an unquestioning acceptance of government officials, you get this article.

If your average sports writer actually wanted to understand the space, they could read something with real data: https://nydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/NYDIG-Bitcoin-N...

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> Since 1920, at least 55 hyperinflation events have taken place, destroying savings and creating economic hardship... Bitcoin offers the world an alternative – a sound monetary system outside the control of governments and central banks.

The paper you linked doesn't exactly get off to a good start, considering there are ~1600-2200 dead/worthless cryptocurrencies (see below) and Bitcoin itself is incredibly volatile. It's somewhat absurd to claim Bitcoin is the stable alternative to fiat currencies, or the solution to cases of currency collapse. The rest of the summary is just speculation on how the carbon footprint of Bitcoin might be reasonable in the future. Would you mind pointing out the parts that you feel refute the article's criticisms?

https://www.coinopsy.com/dead-coins/ https://deadcoins.com/

> Bitcoin itself is incredibly volatile.

Largely in the right direction.

Good point, but you have to consider that if we're talking about a scenario in which it's being used in the place of a national currency, the bigger picture matters less. If your paycheck can lose 20% of it's value in a few days you may not have the option to wait for it to possibly regain that value. Even ignoring the short term issues, I'm not convinced Bitcoin is any more protected from becoming totally worthless than any given fiat currency. I just can't see the scenario in which it solves or even helps the issue of hyperinflation in a way that fiat currency couldn't.

BTC specifically has seen it's volatility drastically reduced. It's not hard to find several stocks with a much higher volatility in the last month, particularly the last week.

Many other cryptocurrencies still experience extreme volatility on par with BTC's early history.

This is the exact kind of utopian fantasizing that the article talks about. Charming!

Can you be more specific?

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