[arcticbull]

I realize the appeal of it: it's just complicated enough it makes normal people think there's something to it. It's just full enough of tough technical challenges engineers have something to bite into. It's just futuristic enough to make everyone believe it's the future. And it's just ancap enough to inspire those fearful of the government and the world. Then it made a handful of people wealthy and inspired fomo.

But at the end of the day it's just a negative-sum solution in search of a problem, riddled with holes big enough to drive a dump truck through, wasting the world's resources, likely created by a Bond-villain-esque racist narcotics trafficker to move his money around [1]. And all the "pricing" of every single coin is controlled by a giant fraud perpetrated by Bitfinex and Tether that bagholders are intrinsically disincentivized from exposing -- all to avoid anti-money laundering / AML/KYC regulations.

It's twelve years of solution in search of problem, with nothing legal to show for it. Except Sia, I guess, I dunno, that's what some people have told me, but that still seems better solved by AWS to me.

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte...

[unethical_ban]

I have never seen someone dismiss the ideas behind cryptocurrency or the failings of modern banking as blindingly as this post. Your criticisms are a tautology - any defense put against it will be disarmed by your pre-rejection of anarchism, decentralization, applied cryptographic research, or real-world improvements to banking and the exchange of currency.

Some of your assertions could even be correct (who invented it, problems with architecture, energy consumption) and you would still be out of line with the wholesale dismissal of all its concepts.

[arcticbull]

I can take another stab at it if you like, but just because my defense is irrefutable doesn't make it a tautology ;)

> decentralization

Decentralization of currency is provably less efficient than centralization. Trust is a huge optimization, as you can see by the sheer overwhelming inefficiency of proof of work algorithms. It's tens of thousands of times less efficient. With reference to [1] a single BTC transaction releases 332 KILOGRAMS of CO2, consumes 700kWh of power and generates 87 GRAMS of e-waste. That's enough to drive a Tesla Model S from San Francisco to New York, and throwing half an iPhone out the window en route. And that's without paying for the fill-ups on the way.

Then there's the pragmatic: every stumble down the timeline winds up with all coins lost. We're at 20% of BTC lost already, since there's nobody to appeal to, you're just SOL.

> anarchism

Anarchy is not an effective way to ... anything. If there are some proven successes of anarchy at scale please do cite them.

But without that, the entire "anarchist" crypto space has shown as soon as you open the door to the architecture, scammers and schemers follow through immediately. [2] The entire pricing structure of all cryptocurrencies has centralized thanks to anarchy and is centrally controlled via Bitfinex' totally oversight-free generation of billions of dollars in fake money in Tether. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

> applied cryptographic research

Doesn't matter if they're pointing in the wrong direction.

> real-world improvements to banking and the exchange of currency

Everything crypto does can be done better, faster and cheaper with traditional currency since it's not boat anchored to the inefficiency of decentralization.

Not to mention, it fails at even the most basic aspects of modern currency theory by being deflationary.

[1] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

[2] https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...