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I have a pro-cryptocurrency stance. I’ve profited from it and it is responsible for a significant portion of revenue in my business, especially when working wit

I have a pro-cryptocurrency stance. I’ve profited from it and it is responsible for a significant portion of revenue in my business, especially when working with clients unserved by the likes of PayPal and Transferwise. I remember, not so long ago at all, it felt as though my position was more or less the only position I saw reflected by others online and offline. Practically everyone I knew who had something to say about Cryptocurrency would have the same basic points— giving power back to the people, providing an alternative to the traditional (read: banks/finance industry) methods, hedge against inflation, hedge against government overreach, etc. Nowadays, it seems like popular opinion has really switched. Obviously, with just about anything, there’s going to be some negatives and some downsides. From day one with Cryptocurrency, for example, the most obvious use case was for criminal activity and moving value outside the prying eyes of whatever 3-letter agencies that are applicable in your jurisdictions. I understood that counterpoint to Cryptocurrency just fine. I agreed with it, as well. Criminals do use Cryptocurrency, it’s just a fact— it’s explosion in popularity has certainly opened up and/or made more reliable and easily available many new revenue models for the seedier folks amongst us. Ransomware, for example, has greatly benefited from Cryptocurrency’s creation and gradually increased adoption into the mainstream. Bringing me to my point, or I suppose question, rather, is the argument that Cryptocurrency uses a ton of energy and is bad for the planet. While this is also true, especially for proof of work stuff like Bitcoin and Ethereum, it feels like whenever I hear discussion of Cryptocurrency using this argument, there’s often little to no genuine conversation being made about how to improve upon it. I’m sure all of us know about other transaction verification methods that don’t eat nearly as much energy, so I’m not going to dive into that now. To state my opinion bluntly, it feels like the whole energy / electricity usage argument of Cryptocurrency has came about rather abruptly and inorganically. I don’t remember hardly anyone talking about this issue with nearly as much (seemingly blind) passion or negative attitude in, say, 2013-2020~. Furthermore, while yes— the energy usage of cryptocurrency is a problem, and a damn near inherent problem at that— it seems to me like it’s such a minor drawback comparatively speaking to the other evils in the world. 14 trees burn in the Amazon Rainforest every second. A kid dies in Africa from starvation or malaria every 15 seconds. Oil companies cover up their emissions and pay for favourable regulations that allow them to continue to pollute at industrial scale with little to no pushback. I am no tinfoil hat wearing cryptobro, don’t get me wrong, but considering how little pollution cryptocurrency produces comparatively speaking to $insert_megacorp_here, and how weak of a logical counterpoint that seems to be against the inherent positives of cryptocurrency, it seems to me like this argument is one that is almost wholeheartedly emotional in nature and one where I wouldn’t be surprised if the roots of it were astroturfed by a select few who did not want to see crypto succeed. As an analogy, certainly we all remember the marketing BP put in to the “reduce your carbon footprint; *we ALL have to do our part* to reduce global warming” slogan thing they got going. Meanwhilst, they were spitting out pollution at rates that even if every single one of us lived like Taoist monks still wouldn’t have made a dent in. Am I the only one that thinks this way? I would love to be proven wrong if there’s any counterpoints to my perspective that I could be made aware of. /rant

pjc50 4y ago
> Nowadays, it seems like popular opinion has really switched. The superbowl ad, and the subsequent crypto crash. The scam ecosystem enabled by cryptocurrency really took off, and a lot of retail "investors" have lost money as a result. This takes away a lot of the positive sentiment. The advertising means that everyone has heard of crypto now; there are far fewer "meh" or "who" people. But there's far more people who themselves or friends have lost money to it. And you'll hear more of this in tech circles. It still isn't all that big on mainstream news either way.
rvz 4y ago
> Furthermore, while yes— the energy usage of cryptocurrency is a problem, and a damn near inherent problem at that— it seems to me like it’s such a minor drawback comparatively speaking to the other evils in the world. 14 trees burn in the Amazon Rainforest every second. A kid dies in Africa from starvation or malaria every 15 seconds. Oil companies cover up their emissions and pay for favourable regulations that allow them to continue to pollute at industrial scale with little to no pushback. Yes. PoW's energy issues is indeed a problem in which efficient alternatives like PoS, Hashgraphs and Byzantine Fault Tolerant systems, already exist if not for years. We can use a similar case with electric cars as an alternative to petrol and diesel ones. The same is true here. > I am no tinfoil hat wearing cryptobro, don’t get me wrong, but considering how little pollution cryptocurrency produces comparatively speaking to $insert_megacorp_here, and how weak of a logical counterpoint that seems to be against the inherent positives of cryptocurrency, it seems to me like this argument is one that is almost wholeheartedly emotional in nature and one where I wouldn’t be surprised if the roots of it were astroturfed by a select few who did not want to see crypto succeed. Totally correct. I have seen the same anti-crypto folks not disclosing their associations or competing interests and deleting their history off the internet [0], where they are actively dedicating everyday to 'stop crypto' or complaining about the environment and tarring all of them with the same brush. Their logic is simply: We should stop everyone from driving all cars and vehicles because there are more petrol / diesel vehicles than electric cars to offset the CO2 that these petrol / diesel cars are emitting into the atmosphere. See how not only that is impractical, but it makes absolutely no sense? On top of that, the tech bros don't want to complain about the deep learning systems (DLS) used for training purposes and mass surveillance which is no better or no efficient than PoW cryptocurrencies burning the planet as well. The difference is, these DLS have no efficient alternative for re-training or re-learning on new data since 2012 and always requires tons of data centres to achieve this in a shorter space of time. The fact is, 13+ years since Bitcoin, we have working and efficient alternatives to it. 10+ years in with deep learning and there are no efficient ways to train large amounts of data without causing data centres to catch fire. I'm lead to believe that the environment reaction against cryptocurrencies today is one that is not only emotional, but an extreme response boosted by the ones that have a vested interest to laughably attempt to 'destroy all of them'. [0] > Am I the only one that thinks this way? No. Just avoid the extreme positions that either pro-crypto folks or anti-crypto folks set themselves in. [0] https://medium.com/@johny.codes/private-blockchains-even-worse-crypto-babble-scams-478e9c783b1b https://medium.com/@johny.codes/private-blockchains-even-wor...

pjc50 4y ago

> Nowadays, it seems like popular opinion has really switched. The superbowl ad, and the subsequent crypto crash. The scam ecosystem enabled by cryptocurrency really took off, and a lot of retail "investors" have lost money as a result. This takes away a lot of the positive sentiment. The advertising means that everyone has heard of crypto now; there are far fewer "meh" or "who" people. But there's far more people who themselves or friends have lost money to it. And you'll hear more of this in tech circles. It still isn't all that big on mainstream news either way.

rvz 4y ago

> Furthermore, while yes— the energy usage of cryptocurrency is a problem, and a damn near inherent problem at that— it seems to me like it’s such a minor drawback comparatively speaking to the other evils in the world. 14 trees burn in the Amazon Rainforest every second. A kid dies in Africa from starvation or malaria every 15 seconds. Oil companies cover up their emissions and pay for favourable regulations that allow them to continue to pollute at industrial scale with little to no pushback. Yes. PoW's energy issues is indeed a problem in which efficient alternatives like PoS, Hashgraphs and Byzantine Fault Tolerant systems, already exist if not for years. We can use a similar case with electric cars as an alternative to petrol and diesel ones. The same is true here. > I am no tinfoil hat wearing cryptobro, don’t get me wrong, but considering how little pollution cryptocurrency produces comparatively speaking to $insert_megacorp_here, and how weak of a logical counterpoint that seems to be against the inherent positives of cryptocurrency, it seems to me like this argument is one that is almost wholeheartedly emotional in nature and one where I wouldn’t be surprised if the roots of it were astroturfed by a select few who did not want to see crypto succeed. Totally correct. I have seen the same anti-crypto folks not disclosing their associations or competing interests and deleting their history off the internet [0], where they are actively dedicating everyday to 'stop crypto' or complaining about the environment and tarring all of them with the same brush. Their logic is simply: We should stop everyone from driving all cars and vehicles because there are more petrol / diesel vehicles than electric cars to offset the CO2 that these petrol / diesel cars are emitting into the atmosphere. See how not only that is impractical, but it makes absolutely no sense? On top of that, the tech bros don't want to complain about the deep learning systems (DLS) used for training purposes and mass surveillance which is no better or no efficient than PoW cryptocurrencies burning the planet as well. The difference is, these DLS have no efficient alternative for re-training or re-learning on new data since 2012 and always requires tons of data centres to achieve this in a shorter space of time. The fact is, 13+ years since Bitcoin, we have working and efficient alternatives to it. 10+ years in with deep learning and there are no efficient ways to train large amounts of data without causing data centres to catch fire. I'm lead to believe that the environment reaction against cryptocurrencies today is one that is not only emotional, but an extreme response boosted by the ones that have a vested interest to laughably attempt to 'destroy all of them'. [0] > Am I the only one that thinks this way? No. Just avoid the extreme positions that either pro-crypto folks or anti-crypto folks set themselves in. [0] https://medium.com/@johny.codes/private-blockchains-even-worse-crypto-babble-scams-478e9c783b1b https://medium.com/@johny.codes/private-blockchains-even-wor...