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Comment by schappim | Hacker News Reader

Why? I saw a good use for this week when journalists used it to purchase a car in war torn Ukraine.

Thats wonderful. Im sure a handful of victories can be listed. I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though.

Anyway, I need not remind you of how big a boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists. I think it should be pretty clear to anyone on this site why someone would be against them, just like it's clear to me why someone would be for them.

> I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though

There was no cash. ATMs we’re dry.

> boon cryptocurrencies have been to criminals and con artists

It is probably overstated.

Orders of magnitude more criminal activity would be going through cash and even orgs that are meant to KYC, such as Western Union or even iTunes gift certificates. How many grannies are sending crypto vs providing logins to their bank accounts?

I’m not a crypto-apologist, I just haven’t heard any solid arguments against it that can’t also be said about cash or the traditional banking system.

> There was no cash. ATMs we’re dry.

paypal, venmo, cashapp etc would have worked the same. for all of them and for crypto you need to be in the ecosystem (need wallets, accounts, apps etc) and internet access.

All very US centric apps (with the exception of Paypal), but PayPal would gouge them on fees.

I guess what I want to get across is I’m not evangelising crypto, I just don’t necessarily want the space to die. I want them to keep iterating on the concept and see what other benefits can be generated.

I highly doubt they wouldn't have found another way to purchase a car, though.

Exactly this. I'm guessing if they needed food they'd be out of luck.

You’re probably not wrong.

If war broke out in my country I’d be glad I could take my money across the border by memorizing some words rather than dragging silver or possibly now worthless currency.

Got a link to that? Cryptocurrencies seem to me to be a poor choice in a situation where there might be issues with infrastructure like the electrical grid or internet connectivity.

> Got a link

  Got a car today. Bought it with #bitcoin  as all ATM's are almost cleared out and the credit card terminals are down. Hopefully, it will allow us to report a little from #Donbass while also keeping us safe and granting us an escape if things starts heating up here. [1]

[1] https://twitter.com/efmikkelsen/status/1497283116028686336?s...

They did end up both getting shot in the leg(s), but are now safe

Afaik, you send bitcoin by radio waves from a transmitter.

To run that transmitter, you will need electricity. The electricity can be made in such situations via a generator/inverter by burning diesel.

Was that single car worth the energy waste equivalent of a small country?

Detonating a nuclear bomb to kill one person isn't exactly a praise for its effectiveness, either.

A single transaction does not use the energy equivalent of a small country. Last estimation I've seen said they used around 1719.51kWh. That's still a whole damn lot (around 60 days of energy use of an average US household), but you won't power a country with it.

> Was that single car worth the energy waste equivalent of a small country?

What if this energy waste enabled the purchase of 1,000 cars for people in desperate need? Would it then be worth it?

What if it were a million cars, or a billion?

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