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He should be ashamed of displaying such a combination of ignorance and arrogance. Having alternative currencies is incredibly important for those living under c

He should be ashamed of displaying such a combination of ignorance and arrogance. Having alternative currencies is incredibly important for those living under corrupt regimes and/or hyperinflation and/or unbanked, and most cryptocurrencies don't use proof of work. They could just not accept Bitcoin and Eth1 then. A single Google Search: 1,080 J A single Solana transaction: 1,837 J One eth2 transaction: 126,000 J Watching an hour of television on a 40 inch+ LCD TV: 540,000 J https://solana.com/news/solana-energy-usage-report-november-2021 https://solana.com/news/solana-energy-usage-report-november-...

gspr 5y ago
I really do sympathize with people living under corrupt regimes. And I sympathize with them having to use a metal pipe to whack someone in the head to survive. Does that mean that non-profits should start embracing head-whacking?
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  I think the poster isn't actually living under a corrupt regime because (and I always come back to this), you can't really buy crypto with currencies outside of USD/EUR/JPY/KRW/sometimes RMB and if you have access to those, then you already have hyper-inflation protection taht has historically preformed much better than any crypto has.
mey 5y ago
I notice you are avoiding listing Bitcoin and PoW Eth here. If https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co... is to be believed 1779.11 kWh per single Bitcoin transaction would be One Bitcoin Edit: Block Mined: 6,404,796,000 J One Bitcoin Transaction on a Block: 2,287,427 J One Credit Card Transaction: 5,351 J Edit: Since the source isn't exactly clear if one transaction is a reference to one block mined or one transaction on that block, I'm going to assume it is for one block mined. I'm going to estimate one block contains 2800 transactions.
- RC_ITR 5y ago
  Also citing Eth2, which is vaporware.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    I mean the beacon chain is online, but the "merge" is always 6 months away. I think it's crazy to see so many billions locked up in a contract for software that hasn't been written yet, but hey, its all funny money anyway.
    - RC_ITR 5y ago
      To that end, it's very humorous that ETH put in a doomsday mechanism to encourage the merge, but we just keep kicking the can down the road. Kind of tells you a lot about humanity.
  - CryptoPunk 5y ago
    The first phase of the transition to ETH2 was implemented on December 1st, 2020, with the launch of the Proof of Stake Beacon Chain. The Beacon Chain has been running without problems for over a year now. The testnet for the second phase of ETH2 - which is when the execution chain is merged into the Beacon Chain so that Ethereum can fully switch from PoW to PoS and reduce its energy consumption by 99.95% - was launched on December 20th, 2021: https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/20/kintsugi-merge-testnet/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/20/kintsugi-merge-testnet/ The second phase is expected to be completed before the end of 2022.
    - RC_ITR 5y ago
      Yeah, a testnet launched in 2021 for a project that was supposed to be live in 2019, then 2020, then early 2021 feels a lot like vaporware. I mean, how many times have we had to diffuse the difficulty bomb? How many more times will we?
      - CryptoPunk 5y ago
jasonhansel 5y ago
And what could be better for "those living under corrupt regimes" than a system widely used for money laundering?
- jnwatson 5y ago
  That’s the point. Money laundering is the main feature. It is great for traditional criminals, but also helpful for folks for which money laundering is a weekly part of just surviving, because they don’t have a local reliable currency.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Do you think that ordinary people are more or less likely to take advantage of a system with such high transaction fees and personal risk exposure than the corrupt elites looting their countries?
    - peterholcomb 5y ago
      I don't think it's unrealistic to think that at some point in the near future that ordinary people in the third-world will be using crypto for their every day transactions. Crypto is going through a massive maturity phase right now. I'm certainly not blind to the massive problems with crypto right now, but seeing chains such as Algo that are actively seeking to be both low cost and carbon neutral gives me great hope.
      - acdha 5y ago
        It's definitely possible but I'm not very optimistic because the entire space is so dominated by rich people: VCs are expecting returns on the scale of many billions of USD and that would require extremely high adoption to recover from a service which can be useful in poorer countries. We haven't even seen “better PayPal” in countries like the U.S. where the existing transaction fees go a lot further.
- steelstraw 5y ago
  Illicit activities like cybercrime, money laundering and terrorist financing made up only 0.15% of all crypto transactions conducted in 2021 https://www.axios.com/cryptocurrency-scam-crime-popularity-report-63fb9757-d1c3-4103-82bd-7b68692f9f9c.html https://www.axios.com/cryptocurrency-scam-crime-popularity-r...

gspr 5y ago

I really do sympathize with people living under corrupt regimes. And I sympathize with them having to use a metal pipe to whack someone in the head to survive. Does that mean that non-profits should start embracing head-whacking?

RC_ITR 5y ago
I think the poster isn't actually living under a corrupt regime because (and I always come back to this), you can't really buy crypto with currencies outside of USD/EUR/JPY/KRW/sometimes RMB and if you have access to those, then you already have hyper-inflation protection taht has historically preformed much better than any crypto has.

mey 5y ago

I notice you are avoiding listing Bitcoin and PoW Eth here. If https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transaction-comparison-visa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co... is to be believed 1779.11 kWh per single Bitcoin transaction would be One Bitcoin Edit: Block Mined: 6,404,796,000 J One Bitcoin Transaction on a Block: 2,287,427 J One Credit Card Transaction: 5,351 J Edit: Since the source isn't exactly clear if one transaction is a reference to one block mined or one transaction on that block, I'm going to assume it is for one block mined. I'm going to estimate one block contains 2800 transactions.

RC_ITR 5y ago
Also citing Eth2, which is vaporware.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  I mean the beacon chain is online, but the "merge" is always 6 months away. I think it's crazy to see so many billions locked up in a contract for software that hasn't been written yet, but hey, its all funny money anyway.
  - RC_ITR 5y ago
    To that end, it's very humorous that ETH put in a doomsday mechanism to encourage the merge, but we just keep kicking the can down the road. Kind of tells you a lot about humanity.
- CryptoPunk 5y ago
  The first phase of the transition to ETH2 was implemented on December 1st, 2020, with the launch of the Proof of Stake Beacon Chain. The Beacon Chain has been running without problems for over a year now. The testnet for the second phase of ETH2 - which is when the execution chain is merged into the Beacon Chain so that Ethereum can fully switch from PoW to PoS and reduce its energy consumption by 99.95% - was launched on December 20th, 2021: https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/20/kintsugi-merge-testnet/ https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/12/20/kintsugi-merge-testnet/ The second phase is expected to be completed before the end of 2022.
  - RC_ITR 5y ago
    Yeah, a testnet launched in 2021 for a project that was supposed to be live in 2019, then 2020, then early 2021 feels a lot like vaporware. I mean, how many times have we had to diffuse the difficulty bomb? How many more times will we?
    - CryptoPunk 5y ago

jasonhansel 5y ago

And what could be better for "those living under corrupt regimes" than a system widely used for money laundering?

jnwatson 5y ago
That’s the point. Money laundering is the main feature. It is great for traditional criminals, but also helpful for folks for which money laundering is a weekly part of just surviving, because they don’t have a local reliable currency.
- acdha 5y ago
  Do you think that ordinary people are more or less likely to take advantage of a system with such high transaction fees and personal risk exposure than the corrupt elites looting their countries?
  - peterholcomb 5y ago
    I don't think it's unrealistic to think that at some point in the near future that ordinary people in the third-world will be using crypto for their every day transactions. Crypto is going through a massive maturity phase right now. I'm certainly not blind to the massive problems with crypto right now, but seeing chains such as Algo that are actively seeking to be both low cost and carbon neutral gives me great hope.
    - acdha 5y ago
      It's definitely possible but I'm not very optimistic because the entire space is so dominated by rich people: VCs are expecting returns on the scale of many billions of USD and that would require extremely high adoption to recover from a service which can be useful in poorer countries. We haven't even seen “better PayPal” in countries like the U.S. where the existing transaction fees go a lot further.
steelstraw 5y ago
Illicit activities like cybercrime, money laundering and terrorist financing made up only 0.15% of all crypto transactions conducted in 2021 https://www.axios.com/cryptocurrency-scam-crime-popularity-report-63fb9757-d1c3-4103-82bd-7b68692f9f9c.html https://www.axios.com/cryptocurrency-scam-crime-popularity-r...