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>> I am most certainly not worried about fraudulent blockchain companies becoming a major part of the economy. I struggle to think of a single blockchain proje
by cryptica 6y ago
>> I am most certainly not worried about fraudulent blockchain companies becoming a major part of the economy.
I struggle to think of a single blockchain project which is not at least partly a scam. You can start at the top with Bitcoin.
Bitcoin handles 3 to 4 transactions per second max (this is tiny), consumes the electricity of Ireland but it's the most valuable blockchain. I get it, PoW is more decentralized. But is it worth the entire electricity of Ireland? No. Even Ethereum aren't deluding themselves about this; that's why they're moving to PoS. But even Ethereum is kind of scammy... How many times did they say that sharding would be ready soon? Seems like years ago now.
Lightning network is brittle and not practical. In real life, most financial transfers are unidirectional so you constantly have to re-open new channels after they become depleted. Also it locks up most of your funds. Also Lightning requires high availability - Without it, scammers can roll-back channels to an earlier state. Lightning is so complex that if something does go wrong, it will be extremely challenging to understand what went wrong.
And no, Bitcoin is not more valuable because it costs more money to run. If a car consumes more fuel than all other cars, that car is clearly less valuable than the others. If I can complete the same work twice as fast and same quality as someone else, then I should get paid twice as much. Economic value is rooted in efficiency, not in inefficiency. Technology which does basically the same thing but which does it more cheaply should be more valuable. Why are the top 2 projects both PoW?
I could go on about pretty much any cryptocurrency project from the top 100. Just because some project has been legitimized and is valuable, it doesn't mean that it's not a scam.