[nkuttler]

> the BTC network uses a staggering amount of power

Actually, bitcoin uses a ridiculously small amount of power for what it provides. See for example here https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ for an introduction to clear up this misconception.

[plopilop]

If you really believe that something that is 1 million times less efficient than Visa/MasterCard for a fraction of the service, and that miners really use residential energy when they are active 24/7 and thus by definition a continuous strain on the grid, I have so many scams^W interesting products to sell you

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

[RestlessMind]

Comparing Bitcoin network to Visa/MasterCard is as pointless as comparing Gold mining to those cc networks. Fair comparison would be Bitcoin network vs Gold mining/storage/securing/transfer activities.

[plopilop]

The convertibility between money and gold has stopped in the 70s.

Bitcoin allows for instant money transfer, and so does Visa.

The fact that bitcoin has no collateral is a whole other topic.

[RestlessMind]

Bitcoin allows for instant Bitcoin transfer. The fact that it can be converted for money is a separate angle.

> The fact that bitcoin has no collateral is a whole other topic.

That's actually the main topic. Both Gold and Bitcoin are valuable because we as a society decided that they are valuable.

[parineum]

Instant?

[manuelabeledo]

What exactly does it provide?

So far it seems that Bitcoin mainstream use is to create speculative markets. Any other intended objective is a drop in the bucket.

[nkuttler]

If your country's money and banking works for you I don't think I can explain to you why bitcoin is useful, you simply have no use for it. That your peers primarily use it for speculation says more about them than about bitcoin.

[manuelabeledo]

I would like to hear more about those use cases.

Because I cannot fathom a system where either currency or banking does not work, and the preferable alternative is to rely on a highly volatile asset that requires vast amounts of energy and time to work.

> That your peers primarily use it for speculation says more about them than about bitcoin.

We are not in 2011 anymore. Bitcoin did not become a widespread vehicle for commercial transactions. Countries with defenestrated economies did not find an alternative in Bitcoin. Instead, we have whales, among them large banks and corporations, controlling over a third of the market, and most transactions are made in exchanges with arbitrage or speculation purposes.

Suffice to say, I don't consider JPMorgan or Goldman Sachs my "peers".

[RestlessMind]

> I would like to hear more about those use cases.

Here you go, I have compiled some examples for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095

> Because I cannot fathom a system where either currency or banking does not work, and the preferable alternative is to rely on a highly volatile asset that requires vast amounts of energy and time to work.

May I ask you where you were born and raised? A lot of people do actually have to face shitty systems where Bitcoin is a godsend.

[manuelabeledo]

> Here you go, I have compiled some examples for you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32406095

Isn't it a bit disingenuous to think that common people have moved $50bn in Bitcoin out of China? Or have moved ~$2.4bn worth of Bitcoin in Nigeria in a single month?

> A lot of people do actually have to face shitty systems where Bitcoin is a godsend.

I would say that a handful of examples, of which some are highly questionable, constitute anecdotal evidence, at best. Some of these scenarios are indistinguishable from using any other stable foreign currency, or even commodities, with the added difficulty of requiring certain technology literacy most people don't have.

> May I ask you where you were born and raised?

I could ask the same, because I haven't found many ardent defenders of cryptocurrency outside the tech circles of the so called developed world.

[RestlessMind]

> a handful of examples

Well, Bitcoin price is still 30K USD and the market cap is almost 600B USD. That is a very good macro proof that people value Bitcoin.

> I could ask the same

I was born in a third world country where the leader decided to demonetize 87% of currency in circulation on a whim. And the society doesn't trust government at all - people buy gold or land as soon as they can. Where are you from?

> I haven't found many ardent defenders of cryptocurrency outside the tech circles of the so called developed world.

Have you actually bothered to talk to anyone? I have had in-person conversations with people from multiple despotic or shitty regimes (Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Iran) to understand how and why they use Bitcoin. You talk to them, understand how it is used and you will also realize that Bitcoin is here to stay and grow.

[nkuttler]

> I could ask the same, because I haven't found many ardent defenders of cryptocurrency outside the tech circles of the so called developed world.

Not surprising, you live in a media bubble filled with people from the "developed world".

[acaloiar]

When that list reaches the length of https://web3isgoinggreat.com/web1, a great point will have been made.

[RestlessMind]

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/ is already a great counter-list to your list.

Btw, lumping Bitcoin with web3 is as pointless as lumping penny stocks with AAPL or BRK.A.

[nkuttler]

Bitcoin has absolutely nothing to do with web3, so you provided an empty list.

[patmcc]

Give me a ballpark for the relative market share of "bitcoin as speculation" vs "bitcoin as currency".

I'd estimate it as...oh...98% speculation, and I think I'm being generous.

[RestlessMind]

What is your estimate about Gold? I say Bitcoin and Gold serve roughly the same purpose.

[patmcc]

Looks like gold mined gets diverted to:

47% investment and central1 banks

45% jewellery

7% tech/industrial applications

See https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-in... and https://natural-resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/mi... - don't exactly agree, but close.

(and, importantly, it doesn't require terawatt-hours to maintain gold once you've mined it).

[RestlessMind]

So basically, 92% of gold is purely due to social conditioning and invented belief.

> (and, importantly, it doesn't require terawatt-hours to maintain gold once you've mined it).

I am pretty sure collective security spent on gold worldwide exceeds terawatt hours once you account for all the physical security as well.

[the_gastropod]

This article is basically like arguing: “Sure, using the Infant-Chipper 9000 results in the deaths of infants. But it’s a rounding error if you consider how many infants die in the world every year!”

Bitcoin purposefully wastes lots of energy to provide something of extremely dubious value.

[willcipriano]

It's literally an infant chipper insofar as it enables the sale of (and thus the production of) CSAM.

[ardme]

Yet obviously, some people find it useful. Who are you to tell people how to live their lives?

Maybe you should stop flying on airplanes for the rest of your life?

[red-iron-pine]

The people finding it useful are overwhelmingly moving money illegally, such as how you can peg BTC shifts to Xi's anti-corruption crackdowns in China, or MBS in Saudi. Or moving drugs. Or hyping something to sell more made up money to rubes.

[ChainOfFools]

When how people live their lives depends on them shoveling millions of joules s of externalities onto my environment and that of my kids, in addition to propping up a rube goldberg Ponzi scheme that has a non-zero chance of ensnaring people I care about either directly or indirectly through financial mismanagement, you better believe I'm going to tell you how to live your life.

I'll tell lots of other people how you live your life is hypocritically contributing to a massive increase of financial leverage on the part of "rationally self interested" sociopaths and criminals at everyone else's expense( in direct opposition to its putative purpose of undermining predatory central bankers, yet is simply shifting the power to predatory anon-ish ransomware purveyors and sex traffickers and bullshit gambling token insta-twit "influencers" seeking to exploit the naivety of children for their own financial gain), and generally promoting the enshittification of everything that touches the internet, and should be mocked and discouraged at every opportunity.

You don't like the free market of ideas when it turns against you? tough.

[crtified]

"When how people live their lives depends on them shoveling millions of joules s of externalities onto my environment and that of my kids, in addition to propping up a rube goldberg Ponzi scheme that has a non-zero chance of ensnaring people I care about either directly or indirectly through financial mismanagement, you better believe I'm going to tell you how to live your life."

This is no defense of Bitcoin/crypto, but the above paragraph relatively concisely describes how I feel as part of the underclasses in the traditional world. Except that all the fears it encapsulates have already occurred for my family, generations back.

There are people in this thread who get a yearly payrise (which translates to increased selfish expenditure on plastic toys and air flights and fancy petrol burning machines) that's greater than my entire household's income, and I'm just an ordinary person in a western country. How many household bitcoin miners does that equal, environmentally speaking? For that one person?

The hypocrisy embedded in fervent hatred of crypto, as though extravagant & hugely unbalanced wastage of resources wasn't practiced by us all daily, implies a moral distance that, imo, barely exists. Bitcoin and crypto are mere reflections of the wastage that we as a species have normalised, and still do, via our lifestyles.

It's "industry" and "business" that have fucked this world.

[ChainOfFools]

I'm not advocating for the "industry" side as if it's a dichotomic industry against crypto, or banking against bitcoin. I'm specifically criticizing crypto and especially Bitcoin because the entire ideological mission of the project is to disrupt and disintermediate all of these well-known predatory Industries, when it has done none of this whatsoever. In fact has actually contributed both to incumbent disproportionate inequality of wealth, as well as creating new classes of disproportionate and malignant, aggressively unaccontable wealth. It has backfired in the worst possible way and all the fallout is on the people that was supposed to benefit.

And the and the relative handful of people at the center of the so-called decentralized crypto world are well aware of this and don't give a flying f**.

[crtified]

I wonder that we couldn't say similar about the TCP/IP protocol.

It's the human behaviour, what our species turns the protocol to, that we're really complaining about.

[the_gastropod]

“Some people find the infant-chipper useful. Who are you to tell people how to live their lives?”

<insert improve the world somewhat meme here>

[thedrbrian]

All that electricity so that 3 to 7 people a second can buy some drugs.