Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by armchairhacker | Hacker News Reader

Awesome

If crypto wasn't contributing causing a crash in the GPU market and contributing even more to climate change, I don't think it would have nearly as much hate as it does. Sure it's largely used for scams and money laundering, but at least it's used for scams and money laundering in a way I can ignore.

Right now Bitcoin and Etherium, the leading cryptocoins, are absurdly slow and expensive, on top of causing all sorts of issues. Maybe blockchain is the technology of the future, maybe there are smaller coins, but right not whenever I hear "crypto" it's always something bad. Actually carrying this out and switching to a system which doesn't lead to absurd amounts of wasted computation is a great start to actual crypto usefulness.

> at least it's used for scams and money laundering in a way I can ignore.

I thought this, and then my mom got scammed. She realized one day later, and the bank was able to recover the portion sent via bank transfer. But they also tricked her into sending money via bitcoin ATMs, and that portion was not recovered.

Use a bank. That the bank uses bank deposits, or crypto, or central reserves, shouldn’t matter to the user. As long as the bank can provide fraud insurance.

The energy part of crypto is a pretty small part of why I hate on it. More of a cherry on top. I'll stop hating on crypto when it becomes useful for anything other than committing crimes.

It is by far the cheapest and fastest option to send money internationally, fees from using SWIFT are ridiculous and the banks always use terrible exchange rates, I used to lose about ~4% of the money I sent to my family in another country

International money transfers cost money because complying with international financial regulations costs money. Crypto transfers are cheaper and faster because they evade these regulations, which is just a downstream effect of committing crimes being the only real use case for crypto.

To be clear, I don't think it's bad for you to use crypto for this purpose. I would do the same. I just think systems that allow anyone to evade laws are a net negative for society.

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