[prox]

This is really the heart of the matter. On hand , yay, great we can subvert nasty states using cryptocoin, but also could undermine legitimate democracies. Swords cuts both ways. No one can deny the wave of ransomware and cryptocoin are not related.

How do we balance it so it can provide a net positive for humanity?

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Yeah, nobody ever asked for ransom before cryptocoins. /s

Legitimate democracy can't be undermined by an international currency not controlled be the government. In fact, it can be reinforced by it.

This issue is very similar to free speech: the good it does by making the government unable to silence political opponents far outweights the harm done by extremists and lunatics of all sorts.

[user-the-name]

People tried ransomware before cryptocurrencies. Payouts were minuscule compared to what cryptocurrencies are now enabling.

And no, it is not at all similar to free speech. Cryptocurrencies do massive harm - to the environment, to innocent people losing their money to scammers and frauds, and to the entire economy through enabling ransomware - and tiny, tiny amounts of good, which dwindle in comparison to the harm.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Do you have some numbers to back these claims about massive harm? Without estimates this sounds like a typical fear-mongering.

If you provide numbers, we can compare this massive harm with some other types of massive harms.

As for tiny amount of good - reclaiming control over storage of value from The Man is such a tremendous achievement that will help us fight tyranny everywhere. Bitcoin donations was the only type of funding russian government failed to stop when it started to clamp down the opposition. For me, this capability trumps your concerns about environment and crime any day.

[user-the-name]

0.1% of all the power generated on the entire planet is being destroyed by bitcoin mining.

If that is not massive harm I do not know what is.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Pffff, several orders of magnitude more energy is "destroyed" by dumb heating, because there is a lot of places where humans can't survive without warmth. It is only a matter of time when byproduct heat generated by mining will be used to heat water and homes.

[user-the-name]

There is a whole world of difference between heating homes across the planet, and running a network that can do 7 transactions a second.

A single home PC from 2004 could run the bitcoin network, but instead, it uses 0.1% of all the energy in the world.

It is by a wide margin the most ridiculously inefficient thing ever created. And it won't improve, because it is built that way by design.

[panarky]

> Payouts were minuscule compared to what cryptocurrencies are now enabling

I see arguments of this form everywhere:

Law-abiding, tax-paying, responsible citizens use Tool X for legitimate purposes. Criminals also use Tool X for crimes. Therefore, we should ban Tool X.

Tool X = {cryptocurrency, encryption, firearms, drugs, etc.}

Tools that have legitimate uses should not be prohibited to law-abiding citizens.

Absolutely prosecute people who use the tool to hurt other people, but don't prohibit the tools that both bad people and good people use.

[user-the-name]

Bitcoin hurts many, many people who never use it. Everyone who uses Bitcoin is contributing to this harm.