[RinTohsaka]

> Maybe in a whitepaper. In the real world, it's mostly about speculation and enabling crime.

Speculation I could agree with... however,

Crime? Really? Got anything to back this up? The vast majority of crime is performed using cash.

https://hodlhard.io/blog/bitcoin-crime/

[perardi]

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333388187_Sex_Drugs...

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/darknet-markets-cryptoc...

Anecdotally: people buy lots of drugs using cryptocurrencies. Not that I would ever do such a thing…

[thesz]

I performed a napkin calculation about percentage of criminal transactions using $100 bills [1].

[1] https://twitter.com/sergueyz/status/1365040381155491841

Quote: "$100 bill spans 22-23 years with about 20 operations per year, 450 operations in total, 220 for median. We need to calculate probability p that operation is not illicit. p=0.2^(1/220)=0.9927. Probability that operation is illicit is 1-p=0.0073 or 0.73%."

I was answering clearly biased twit about "only 1% of transactions using bitcoin are criminal and 70%-80% of $100 bills are used in criminal transactions". The calculation above is for worst case of 80%. For best case of 70% of transactions are illicit, the probability of single transaction being illicit drops to 0.55% (fifty five hundredths of percent).

Thus, bitcoin carries from one and a third (1.36=1/0.73) to almost twice (1.8=1/0.55) more percentage of illicit transactions than money.

[tubbyjr]

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

[boc]

> Just last week, the United Nations alleged that North Korea was funding its nuclear weapons program using funds from hacked cryptocurrency exchanges, alongside other thefts. The U.N. believes that over $300 million in crypto assets have been stolen by various North Korean hackers.[1]

> Iranian thinktanks have also emphasized the need for the nation’s government to use cryptocurrencies to circumvent US-led international sanctions. It now appears that the Office of President Hassan Rouhani has become more serious about using crypto. [2]

A rapidly growing percent of nuclear weapons proliferation is being funded by crypto. That's way worse for the planet than crime performed using cash.

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/doj-charges-3-north-korean-hackers-...

[2] https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2021/03/172786-iran-is-repo...

[celticninja]

What's the issue with Iran using it? Or is it that Iran are just "bad guys" therefore if they use it must be bad.

In that basis let's get rid of nuclear power because Iran use that. I think they also have the internet so while we are at it let's get rid of that.

[chrischen]

> In that basis let's get rid of nuclear power because Iran use that.

That’s exactly what they did.

[celticninja]

Exactly what who did?

[chrischen]

US and allies got rid of nuclear power for Iran.

[Nasrudith]

Can we actually show that nuclear weapons are bad for the environment? Obviously there is a baseline production cost and various detonation costs plus issues of trying to get a scalar judgement from a complex systtem but they could perversely be helpful theoretially by stopping other polluting activities.

Isn't it perversely possible that the environmental impact of another two more Iraq War scale conflicts plus end of ongoing middle east presence means that ironically Bitcoin and nuclear weapons combined could help the environment net in comparison.

Sort of the logic behind a joke "They say that nuclear weapons kept the cold war cold, they say want peace in the middle east yet when I give Palestine Iran and Palestine nuclear ICBMs suddenly I am now the bad guy here?"

[boc]

When 99% of people say "good for the environment" it's implied that the point of protecting the environment is to sustain human life on Earth. Nuclear conflict is not compatible with sustainable human life.