I would rather outlaw cryptocurrencies for being a harm for the planet with their crazy energy demands, besides also fueling criminals.
Of course, criminal organizations could still use it, but I believe it would be harder to launder money using crypto if banks no longer supported it.
It's crazy how banks are willing to scrutinise anything related to sex work to an extreme extent yet seem perfectly willing to support the latest weekly pump and dump by letting people exchange money for cryptocurrency at random exchanges.
That ship sailed decades ago, in fact.
And in none of these cases, by the way, is computation prohibited. LHR cards are still capable of mining. A 290X can still run Solidworks. The choice of "prohibited" here is deliberately inflammatory - a word like "slowed" or "reduced" is more appropriate.
(But it is true there are cases like ECC on AMD APUs where it actually is fully prohibited.)
The configuration of transistors through which electrons are punched is obviously not the problem (at least I hope it's obvious).
So it must be about proof of work chains, right? That they create high demand? That's about the only point I do understand, but I think you'd be hard pressed to meaningfully translate a bitcoin transaction to a carbon cost. There are some mining farms powered by green energy (less altruistic and more about being off grid).
But if we're talking about energy usage and environmental damage, we have to talk mining.
There is just no debate that mining is THE singular (keyword) greatest threat to the environment. Fracking, acid mine drainage, offshore drilling, sonic bombardments of coastlines, the ridonculous requirements of smelting. The list goes on and on.
We are stuck with that industry for a long time though. I'd argue the minerals that constitute the technology you're using to view this comment may have done more damage than bitcoin and co have.
In a nutshell, here's my problem with this argument: To suggest that demand is responsible for the damage caused by supply is just a crazy warping of reality. That absolutely does not make sense.
There are other, more pressing issues with crypto (like the lack of regulation around fiat exchanges and how they constantly get rugged) and those criticisms are valid, but they get lost in the noise of "how we generate energy is not as bad as how we use it". I just can't get on board with that point of view.
That service is useful for some people.
You can of course disagree. Just like you can disagree that building and fueling yachts for rich people is useful.
On the point of double spend - collusion in bitcoin mining is very possible and decentralization is not as strong as claimed. There are tons of studies about this.
https://cowles.yale.edu/3a/parlour-miner-collusion-and-bitco...
Agreed, they have essentially nothing in common apart from the name.
> Have one look at one photograph of a crypto mining farm for one second and this will be obvious to anyone.
Why? You can get pretty bad pictures of eg factory farming, too; still that doesn't mean people will stop eating factory farmed meat.
> On the point of double spend - collusion in bitcoin mining is very possible and decentralization is not as strong as claimed. There are tons of studies about this.
The pdf you linked says nothing about double spending.
I don’t know if it’s your English, but you just said you agreed that crypto mining is an offender on the level of other forms of mining.
> Why? You can get pretty bad pictures of eg factory farming, too; still that doesn't mean people will stop eating factory farmed meat.
Except there are people who stop eating meat, reduce their intake, and there are advances in meat alternatives in the market. This is whataboutism 101. It’s quite frankly ignorant.
> The pdf you linked says nothing about double spending.
The PDF I linked is about bitcoin mining collusion, one of bitcoin’s flaws. If you knew anything about collusion and the consequences of a potential 51% attack, double spending is one of the central topics.
Your entire post sounds like paid misinformation.
I wish.
At least with crypto we know where the money is going and potentially how it is spent.
I can’t believe people still argue against cryptocurrencies in 2022 when it has completely proved itself superior to fiat in every way possible, including overall energy usage.
You would be mistaken to think that Musk fans are in large part anti-crypto. It’s a weird notion for you to even submit.
However, that doesn’t excuse cryptocurrencies wasting egregious amounts of energy on top of those inefficiencies.
By its design, it’s antithetical to serious energy and performance optimisations (e.g. won’t do away with mindless hashing, so their TPS will be lower by definition) so even if we are able to drastically improve the energy efficiency and minimise the environmental harm of our resource extraction and processing, crypto currencies will still have the worst efficiency.
I’m surprised we don’t have a chorus of cyptofiles informing you that crypto emits less greenhouse gases than the traditional banking system, and there are coins/tokens that don’t require melting chips to establish proof of work.
I can’t talk to the use of crypto currencies for crime, but I would be surprised if the total volume of transactions were greater than that of traditional currencies (ie cash).
That's less than the number of private transactions in a moderately sized city, never mind business or financial transactions.
Random comparison: NASDAQ alone sees 30-40 million transactions per day. http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DailyMarketSummar...
You cannot compare the two. If you are poor and someone gives you crypto, you still won't have better food or a better apartment until you turn the crypto into cash. It isn't surprising that a less useful, simple form of transaction notation (which is really what money is and always has been) has less transactions than the sort of currency that can almost always buy you food, let you watch a movie, and pay your rent.
You will see it eventually David!
You literally just described what's happened with fiat currencies in the past decade.
Endless printing of money and giving it away to big banks.
I guess you'll see it eventually randomhodler84.
I have yet to see a cryptocurrency that has a value in the market based on anything other than "a bigger fool might come along".
Bitcoin and ethereum burn a lot of electricity, but they are also worth a lot.
No more crypto miners buying graphics cards, far less CO2 emissions, crypto retains it's value since most owners don't really care about how it is made anyways and only see it as an investment opportunity.
(Modulo some unforeseen consequences, of course.)