[chill1]

My understanding of the space contradicts each of your points. So without either of us providing citations, both of our opinions are pretty useless to the casual reader. But I will add some thoughts here.

> The [humongous] energy wastage of the network should be the biggest cause of concern, but most proponents shoo it away by buzzwords like lightning network etc.

Lightning Network is a second layer payment network that is working today. Its goal is to take the transaction pressure off of the base layer (blockchain). Its design has privacy built-in, so it's not possible to generate statistics [3] on its total transaction thru-put. That's also why articles like the one on which we are commenting are so disingenuous. The source they cite makes a direct comparison of the total transaction volume of the Visa network with the Bitcoin blockchain while completely ignoring layer 2 networks built on-top of Bitcoin.

> Bitcoin is popular in the west and the US specifically because it lacks the cutting edge financial networks rest of the world has. Citizens in China, India, Kenya etc can do transactions in a jiffy using their existing bank accounts, whereas ACH clearance takes longer time.

Bitcoin is not "popular" anywhere. The total number of Bitcoin ATMs [1] and physical shops/vendors [2] transacting with Bitcoin is still quite limited. The vast majority of commerce occurs online. But what I do see is that there is slow, steady growth globally. The infrastructure is still developing to support larger volumes of users - and with more diverse levels of computer skills.

[1] https://coinatmradar.com/

[2] https://coinmap.org/

[3] https://1ml.com/

[FlyingSnake]

> My understanding of the space contradicts each of your points.

I am a casual observer and have no investment in BTC and the comments are what I feel based on the news that reaches me. For me the most critical aspect is the energy waste, and the lack of regulation. I know crypto-anarchists distrust the govt, but if I've to choose between the r/WSB like extreme evangelism (HODL!) and Fed, I would chose the later safe option.

> Bitcoin is not "popular" anywhere.

But it is quite popular in the technological discourses and it comes up often as the future of payments. That's quite a big mindshare IMO.

> The infrastructure is still developing to support larger volumes of users - and with more diverse levels of computer skills.

I would love to be proven wrong and learn something new about the sector that increases my confidence.

[chill1]

> I would love to be proven wrong and learn something new about the sector that increases my confidence.

That's great. Having an open mind is a good thing. What areas are you specifically interested in? The industry is vast with deep niches and history - mining, exchanges (online/offline/p2p), scripting ("programmable money"), private key security (software/hardware/multi-sig), BIPs/forks/governance, ATMs, end-user apps, scams and shills, cypherpunk history and lore, and so on.

[FlyingSnake]

There are some things I would like to know more:

1. Energy efficiency of the transactions and the network 2. How democratic the process to mine new coins is. 3. What steps are taken to manage frauds, speculations bubbles etc. to protect malicious actors from gaming the system.

[chill1]

Those are not really specific questions. But I will try my best to somehow provide useful information.

> 1. Energy efficiency of the transactions and the network

If by "transaction" you mean a single economic exchange between two agents, then the energy cost of a single transaction is impossible to measure. Many of the on-chain transactions in Bitcoin today are "batched" to reduce their total size thus saving on fees. Each of these batched on-chain transactions can easily represent dozens of individual economic exchanges. Lightning Network (LN) takes this even further with bi-directional payment channels now representing potentially tens of thousands of transactions over the lifetime of a single channel. It requires one on-chain Bitcoin transaction to "open" a bi-directional payment channel, and another transaction to "close" it. Closing is not strictly necessary and will be less so as infrastructure and tooling improves.

Bitcoin is not really one single network. It is a few different networks operating in their own niche with their own specific optimizations. Miners can operate as dumb hashing computers with no visibility or knowledge about the blockchain other than the next chunk of data to hash. Full-nodes are typically operated by the "users" that wish to carry on the mantra of "don't trust, verify"; value their personal privacy; or are a large commercial entity. The last estimates that I saw were about 10,000 publicly reachable full-nodes and another 100,000 private or non-reachable. There are also mobile wallets that can be custodial or "light clients". Then the Lightning Network (LN), which consists of public and private nodes, mobile and custodial apps, nodes backed by full-nodes and LN's version of light clients.

> 2. How democratic the process to mine new coins is.

Mining appears much more centralized than it is - due to the success of mining pools. Mining pool operators do not control all the hash power that congregates in their pool. Instead the owners of mining rigs/operators can point their rigs at the mining pool that offers them the best ROI. Of course sometimes other reasons override the profit motive but usually only temporarily - see the SegWit political / governance drama from a few years ago. Corporations (and governments) have already started investing in mining equipment in an effort to secure their own interests in the space. They will compete with each other here just as they have competed with each other over territory and natural resources for hundreds of years.

> 3. What steps are taken to manage frauds, speculations bubbles etc. to protect malicious actors from gaming the system.

Bitcoin is governed today by the same laws and rules as other systems. Fraud is fraud is fraud. Criminals, scammers, and fraudsters use banks and cash too. From the sound of it, you would prefer to err on the side of institutions and regulation. I disagree, and would prefer that individuals take personal responsibility for their own education and finances. The world is a messy place and there is no answer for 100% of the people 100% of the time.

[yownie]

oh look. he didn't actually.