SvennoJ said:
bowserthedog said:
It's designed to appreciate over the course of time. Sure with anything that gets big the early you go in the better it is for you. I think it's a bit presumptuous to suggest that when someone creates something new they should build features into it that is sure to benefit a poor person in a 3rd world country. That's a straw man argument if I've ever seen it. Many things could be dismissed automatically if that standard was applied equally to all creations. And oddly enough Bitcoin is indeed benefitting those in 3rd world countries. El Salvador is getting big into it and are finding a way to monetize natural volcanic energy to mine for bitcoin. It's creating an industry in a 3rd world country where opportunities for new industries and jobs are limited. The early adopters are of course doing well if they held their bitcoin but they also took tremendous risks. There was no certainty that it would take off the way that it did. Had there been certainty many more people would have invested at that time. |
What a waste of energy, it could be used for a lot more useful things. But at least they'll have that capacity left after bitcoin crashes.
You can defend this huge energy waste all you want, but you're not going to convince me bitcoin is there for altruistic reasons. It's not a stable currency either, but it is one that has been increasing in value so far and will as long as people keep buying into it. Tremendous risks is also a bit far fetched. Maybe the actual creators took a risk, a lot of the early buy ins just got a couple bit coins for the novelty factor or got into mining to have their idle gpu do something.
It created an industry build on wasting energy. The very principle it's rooted in is in that it has to cost enough energy so no single group can tamper with it. You don't fix something (corrupt governments manipulating money) by replacing it with something much worse. |
I never suggested that Bitcoin was a stable currency. I was clearly talking about US dollar backed stablecoins.
There is more energy used in the traditional monetary system as well as trees being cut down etc to create paper money. The large picture value to crypto existing is that when the traditional system fails we will have a backup system in place. Which is actually pretty important. You do the math and tell me how the US dollar with all the debt and money printing has a safe long term outlook.
