Also it’s not just Bitcoin falling in a vacuum. The entire US and European stock market is absolute garbage too (housing showing cracks as well) so it’s hard to blame Bitcoin alone although it has undeniable failed as an inflation hedge.
Bitcoin is hugely wasteful. Estimates on the power usage of the Bitcoin network have it using more energy than Sweden.
Now that might be fine if it provided more than a modicum of utility but it doesn't. The only use case I've seen is to bypass laws on where money can be moved. Some of this is moral (eg totalitarian governments with capital controls on the poor) but most of it isn't (eg scams, ransomware, otherwise illegal gambling, drugs, child abuse material and so on).
I'll agree there's probably a little schadenfreude here because of how many Crypto Andys have pumping crypto so hard for many years pretty much for no other reason than their own gain.
Most don't believe in any utility here. It's just a get rich quick scheme. AGain, that would be fine if it wasn't so horribly wasteful.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...
most crypto is actually not well suited to criminal activity. it is pretty appealing as a savings and transaction medium when your alternative looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/JcaAbC4.png
there are ways to use bitcoin with very good privacy, like chaumian coinjoin, but they are not the default behavior of the protocol. nobody describes bitcoin as anonymous besides local news anchors and other low-information audiences.
More importantly, though, it’s mostly a way for already-rich people to extract money from poorer people.
The people who “invested” in 2021 are almost all under water today, and they’re largely people who couldn’t afford to lose their investment.
Why? Because it's an effort to distract from an issue with butwhataboutism. It's a really common tactic to derail an argument. Politicians use it all the time. Consider Chuck Schumer's opposition to removing a bizarrely low tax rate (15%) for hedge fund managers, called the carried interest tax credit [1]:
> But in his conversations with Wall Street executives about the tax proposals, Mr. Schumer said, he has told them that he would oppose a tax increase as long as it did not also apply to other industries, like energy and real estate.
If Bitcoin energy wastage is bad (which is my argument) then it's bad even if there are other bad things.
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/30/washington/30schumer.html
Bitcoin isn't competing against commuting. Bitcoin is competing against governments & ACH. Against PayPal & Visa. Against wiretransfers & banks. And it's horrendously destructive at it. People commuting don't change that. Proof of Work is an environment disaster. Pointing at other environmental issues is just whataboutism, not a defense or excuse.
You're not making it look bad :)) They're all oligopolies that use their power to make obscene amounts of money and stifle any innovation that threatens their oligopoly. You want to blame somebody? Blame exactly those actors since it's directly due to them that we even need such a convoluted and horribly expensive alternative. From a strictly technical PoV you could implement micropayments in a week in a garage without any fancy blockchains.
So if it wasn’t wasteful, my question is, does a decentralized currency provide any real value? From my limited perspective it seems like it would solve some problems with things like inflation, free market transactions — but it also probably creates new problems. I guess my question is, would the world ultimately be better off or worse off if a decentralized currency was the predominant world currency?
I for one am a supporter of progress in finance, no matter the medium, but the crypto fandom is so incredibly insufferable, full of snobs, tech-, environment- and money-illiterate folks that I might as well watch the bubble burst and cheer.
I even did a POC of a smart contract back when ETH was <100$.
Ever since then I've seen very little practical applications and soo much bullshit - I would never "invest" into anything crypto related even if the payout was guaranteed - for the same reason I wouldn't go work for a betting company, hack people for money or run scams - that's not how I want to make money, and I do feel contempt for that entire "movement".
Most startups on AngelList are a waste of space, time, money, and employment. No different with blockchain.
One huge difference - crypto had the time and money to find it's market. I was optimistic at first - but then it turned out to be a toxic cesspool fueling speculation, gambling, money laundering and other illegal activities, causing HW supply disruptions, burning insane amounts of electricity.
Getting into it just because I might randomly get rich goes against my ethos.
That is the same argument that 'people wants to reduce inequality because they hate the rich'. It appeals to feelings but it is a not very realistic nor useful explanation.
> The entire US and European stock market is absolute garbage too (housing showing cracks as well)
If my house losses it's value, it's still my home. If bitcoin losses their you just got a very long number.
No, some of us are very pro-Bitcoin, but we love seeing the bubble pop so that it can return to its correct use-case: as a currency, not a speculative risk asset.
When it was a toy and people were buying pizzas with it I can sort of understand that as a bit of fun, but beyond that I just don't see the value. And if there isn't value it's just pure speculation hoping there's a bigger fool than you so you can take a profit.
Housing and stocks at least have something tangible behind them. You may disagree about the correct value, but it is most of the time non zero.
When markets grow by 20-30% a year, it's "wonderful". When they get corrected by 20% it's all of a sudden "absolute garbage".
Markets finally get back to a resemblance of sanity. Why people believed that double-digit growth without creating added value is somehow the new normal is beyond my understanding.
Even if someone missed the Bitcoin bull-run, they could have easily joined the stock market bull-run.