crypto in and of itself is a really cool and valuable tool. the hype bubble around it and subsequent power/environmental consequences are not good - but the tech is cool and should be appreciated. blockchain is also a great tool for the right usecases (distributed ledger)
the hype bubble around it and subsequent power/environmental consequences [...]
The energy consumption is not the result of anything, it is a fundamental design element. [1] To reach a meaningful consensus, you have to give all participating users equal or at least similar voting power. But Bitcoin does not want a central database of users which opens the door for Sybil attacks - you can just invent an essentially unlimited number of users out of thin air and have them vote the way you want. The solution to this problem in case of Bitcoin is to tie votes to computing resources for calculating hashes. While you can invent users out of thin, you can not invent computing power out of thin air. This gives each user voting power in proportion to the amount of money they are willing to invest in computing resources. Not really equal voting power for all users but close enough in practice. If miners would not burn enormous amounts of energy, anyone could come along and influence or alter the transaction history or just mine empty blocks and with that block all transactions.
[1] For Bitcoin and similar proof of work systems, there are alternatives.
You can't understand why people want to be free from the shackles of government issued money? Arguments can reasonably be made about the viability of crypto, the stability and how useful it actually is, but it should be crystal clear why many people are desperate for mediums of exchange and stores of value outside of the government-controlled medium (crypto, gold or otherwise).
That governments can't control access to cryptocurrencies and gold is the biggest fantasy that crypto rubes believe. That people in developed countries don't want governments to control money to claw it back from fraudsters is the second biggest fantasy.
>That governments can't control access to cryptocurrencies and gold is the biggest fantasy that crypto rubes believe.
Cryptocurrencies are math. Governments cannot control math, as much as authoritarians wish they could.
>That people in developed countries don't want governments to control money to claw it back from fraudsters is the second biggest fantasy.
The assumption that most people in developed countries want government to "control money" is delusional at best. There are certainly many people in developed countries who want the government to control money, control speech, control political discourse and control everything else - but there are just as many who oppose all of that.
Governments can't stop you doing maths, but they can make it very difficult to either do it at scale, or convert your maths back into government issued currency.
> Cryptocurrencies are math. Governments cannot control math, as much as authoritarians wish they could.
And there's the misconception. Trading government money for cryptocurrency is subject to regulation. Do you think you can hack the President's communication and send it to Putin because it's math? Do you think you can set the interest rate on a loan to 500% because it's math?
> The assumption that most people in developed countries want government to "control money" is delusional at best.
How strange then that every single developed democracy has implemented it. I must have just imagined the entire field of tort law and people clamoring for relief from the courts.
You are trying to retcon the reason why (e.g.) Bitcoin was created in the first place:
> Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model. Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions, and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non- reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need. A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments over a communications channel without a trusted party.
What's strange about it? The creator of Bitcoin could not predict that volatility. The inflation of fiat currency is one major reason why crypto exists. Bitcoin has a 21 million BTC supply limit. That's the point.
However even with the volatility, it's way more stable than the Venezuelan currency. Crypto is widely used in Venezuela.