I don't know your angle, but you're coming at it from a "help humanity/improve society" angle, bitcoin's carbon footprint and energy expenditures alone make it a net negative. The fact that the latency between each transaction is so prolonged (and causes additional carbon waste and wasted energy with every transaction on the blockchain) means that anything approaching mass adoption wouldn't just further slow the system down, but it would only multiply that carbon footprint and the energy wasted to keep churning it out.
can do really revolutionary things like evade US sanctions
Bitcoin holders can and have been traced and arrested in criminal investigations, using their own blockchain transactions as a lasting (and in a way, public) record of what was done when. The "evasion" promise is marketing hype.
Also any source of energy will have miners attached to them as they can act as a buyer of last resort and therefore help fund power plants
This is a non-starter of an argument because of the sheer amount of waste that I already mentioned. "Help fund power plants" is a promise doomed by self-interest and profit motives. Bitcoin, for all but its truest believers which are a tiny minority, is a means to try to get rich, and even if it wasn't, funding a power plant with something that demands that power plant's output is like slashing and burning the rain forest while promising to use part of the revenues from the lumber and the soybean crops planted afterward to plant some trees.
Personally I think nuclear is the way to go but until then this is a good way to help transition.
That's fine to feel that way, but even "green" energy is wasted energy when cryptocurrency is involved, energy that could, should, and as time goes on, must go to other purposes unless we want a total societal collapse.
Also I think fiat and the inflation hurts poor folks harder than most people in developed countries realize.
Cryptocurrency grifters use poor people in distant lands as poster boards and marketing pitches for their latest Ponzi schemes all the time. This is a non-starter argument for me, too. Besides, with the bloated blockchain obligations behind every single transaction to verify it, how exactly are poor people supposed to benefit, let alone actually use, a speculative internet token that is primarily used for speculation and sometimes for black market trading? Are they supposed to stand around for a few hours before buying groceries, hoping not to lose their connection or for that matter to not lose their blockchain wallet to human error or deliberate phishing attempts on site at each "now accepting bitcoin" location, each and every time?
I feel like giving people an option to not lose all their money in a few years is an overwhelming benefit to their life.
Cryptocurrency does nothing to prevent this from happening anyway and in fact it already happens, no matter its "deflationary" promises because it's only rarely used as currency anyway and is (because deflationary promises) it's primarily used as a speculative asset, one that has no inherent intrisic value, you know, like a fiat asset with extra steps (including forking whenever the majority stakeholders decide on forking). It's a fiat currency with more waste and more jank and more latency promising to replace fiat currency. :nyet:
Am I crazy? I feel like I’m not being crazy when I lay it out like this.
I don't think you are, but I think you've unfortunately bought into a whole lot of hype and marketing and maybe a vague hope of getting rich while feeling good about "changing the world" with the new fiat asset, same as the old fiat asset, but with more planet-burning carbon output and energy wasted.
I don't know your angle, but you're coming at it from a "help humanity/improve society" angle, bitcoin's carbon footprint and energy expenditures alone make it a net negative. The fact that the latency between each transaction is so prolonged (and causes additional carbon waste and wasted energy with every transaction on the blockchain) means that anything approaching mass adoption wouldn't just further slow the system down, but it would only multiply that carbon footprint and the energy wasted to keep churning it out.
Bitcoin holders can and have been traced and arrested in criminal investigations, using their own blockchain transactions as a lasting (and in a way, public) record of what was done when. The "evasion" promise is marketing hype.
This is a non-starter of an argument because of the sheer amount of waste that I already mentioned. "Help fund power plants" is a promise doomed by self-interest and profit motives. Bitcoin, for all but its truest believers which are a tiny minority, is a means to try to get rich, and even if it wasn't, funding a power plant with something that demands that power plant's output is like slashing and burning the rain forest while promising to use part of the revenues from the lumber and the soybean crops planted afterward to plant some trees.
That's fine to feel that way, but even "green" energy is wasted energy when cryptocurrency is involved, energy that could, should, and as time goes on, must go to other purposes unless we want a total societal collapse.
Cryptocurrency grifters use poor people in distant lands as poster boards and marketing pitches for their latest Ponzi schemes all the time. This is a non-starter argument for me, too. Besides, with the bloated blockchain obligations behind every single transaction to verify it, how exactly are poor people supposed to benefit, let alone actually use, a speculative internet token that is primarily used for speculation and sometimes for black market trading? Are they supposed to stand around for a few hours before buying groceries, hoping not to lose their connection or for that matter to not lose their blockchain wallet to human error or deliberate phishing attempts on site at each "now accepting bitcoin" location, each and every time?
Cryptocurrency does nothing to prevent this from happening anyway and in fact it already happens, no matter its "deflationary" promises because it's only rarely used as currency anyway and is (because deflationary promises) it's primarily used as a speculative asset, one that has no inherent intrisic value, you know, like a fiat asset with extra steps (including forking whenever the majority stakeholders decide on forking). It's a fiat currency with more waste and more jank and more latency promising to replace fiat currency. :nyet:
I don't think you are, but I think you've unfortunately bought into a whole lot of hype and marketing and maybe a vague hope of getting rich while feeling good about "changing the world" with the new fiat asset, same as the old fiat asset, but with more planet-burning carbon output and energy wasted.