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Bitcoin isnt the future of money – its either a Ponzi scheme or a pyramid scheme
- MildlySerious 11y agoThe headline says it's a ponzi/pyramid scheme, which doesn't get mentioned until the second to last sentence, in the form of a speculative question: "In the meantime, though, Bitcoin is still a little bit of a Ponzi—or is it a pyramid?—scheme that its libertarian early adopters are trying to cash in on." The general statement of the article is that Bitcoin is not as good as it seems because it's infrastructure takes energy to run and lacks some features banks have. While every other aspect gets compared to banks, the infrastructure of them doesn't even get mentioned. Yet, the costly infrastructure of the Blockchain is one of the main concerns raised in the article. The Blockchain costs a lot of energy. So does every Google search you make, if you remember that comparison to how many hours of light you could generate instead of a single search. How much energy does it take to run the parts of banks that the Blockchain could replace, globally? No one knows. My guess is that it puts the Blockchain to shame. As more and more things go digital, the biggest cost aspect of a lot of things will be electricity. If it's not the Blockchain, something else will need that much energy. More than likely whatever industry develops around VR will eat loads of energy. That doesn't necessarily mean we shouldn't go for it, or that it's bad.
- jondiggsit 11y agoA rambling, pointless article. Possibly the worst article I've ever read on the Washington Post. No substance to question of illegal scheme. Suggests we don't know the true cost of Bitcoin because of the environmental impacts of the energy use... even though the previous sentence explains that some miners are located in Iceland because of abundant energy and cold temps...