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Thoughts on Cryptocurrency?

I was wondering what viewpoints and opinions this community has when it comes to cryptocurrency.

Personally, I'm not against it, but I'm not for it either. I like the concept of bringing back cash anonymity, and also decentralization (obviously). Although I don't think it will be viable for at least another decade.

Kissaki ,

A public forever storage of all transactions is not good but bad for privacy.

Send money to someone and they can see your wallet and all transactions.

Identifying wallet owners may require different levels of effort. But that's kinda besides the point.

actual_patience OP ,

I thought Monero solves this issue, with a level of effort large enough that it's almost impossible to crack.

pupbiru ,

and here lies the issue with asking about crypto in non-crypto circles… everyone thinks they completely understand blockchain in its entirely. what they actually have is a rudimentary understanding of a single blockchain as it was literally 15 years ago

of course the problem with asking in crypto circles is that they’re all trying to sell you their new big thing which is probably total trash

so really there’s no good way to ask and get reasonable answers about crypto

taladar ,

Have they solved the problem yet that proof-of-work essentially makes the whole thing an environmental nightmare and means it doesn't scale to anything useful in terms of transaction rates? Or the problem that "proof-of-stake" is essentially just a "the rich get richer" scheme? Or the problem that transaction latencies are huge compared to traditional payment methods? Or the problem that blockchains do not have a defined point where a seller of some good or service can be sure the transaction is actually part of the longest chain? Or the problem that the blockchain only ever grows which means it is not feasible to work directly on it on most devices? Or the problem of uncontrolled deflation with a fixed money supply (well, shrinking really if you take into account wallets people lost access to)?

The whole concept is just deeply flawed and meanwhile 99% of actual uses that are not just research are basically scammers.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I could go through each of your concerns, but I'll just leave it at two:

  • rich get richer - someone needs to be trusted to confirm transactions properly. Requiring some skin in the game (proof of stake, mining, etc) with a reward is the way to do it in a trustless system. This exists in fiat currencies as well, with the main winners being banks and large borrowers, so I don't see it as a serious issue.
  • energy costs - mining cryptocurrencies has a high initial energy requirement, but it scales really well in terms of transactions, so if transactions double, we'll see a modest (way less than double) increase to energy usage of the network as a whole. And in theory, mining operations would prefer cheap power, so that means whatever excess green power exists that would otherwise be wasted worldwide. There's an ethical option to mining energy usage.

The reason I'm not going to go through each is because each problem has a solution, whether that's in an already existing currency, or will go away as it scales.

Here are the real problems as I see it:

  • way too many scams - which leads to...
  • way too much volatility - most cryptocurrency users are speculators, so there's...
  • no mass of regular transactions to attract vendors

Even if we get past the FUD, we're still going to have adoption issues because of the above. And I don't have a good solution for that, but we need adoption to stabilize the currency and motivate solutions for problems.

I like the idea of cryptocurrencies, but we need a large institution to normalize it before people will adopt it, and I don't see that happening. Maybe stable coins are the way forward, IDK.

One thing I'm interested in is GNU Taler, which is a relatively simple digital transaction system that preserves payer privacy. If we could get a big institution to use it (e.g. Mozilla for micro payments to websites), people may feel more comfortable experimenting with digital currencies.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

GNU Taler isn't cryto. (Which makes much better)

The problem with crypto is that there really isn't anything to give it value. It basically is a super unpredictable stock.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I wouldn't say "better," just different. GNU Taler is centralized, so it's only as reliable as the issuer, whereas cryptocurrencies are as reliable as the distributed network. So Taler can't replace a fiat currency, it's just a toolkit to create your own fiat currency.

So it's great for privacy-minded folks in stable economies, but not great for international transactions or transactions where central authority isn't trusted. Essentially, cryptocurrencies are supposed to replace precious metals and whatnot for barter.

So I'm excited to see what privacy products people make with things like GNU Taler because it can be used today, but something like Monero is preferred if it can stabilize and start being accepted in more places.

pupbiru ,

imo i actually hate the idea of a public crypto currency

people think that the government having their hands on the levers of a fiat currency is a bad thing, but it’s an incredibly useful property to make sure that we can stabilise things and push away from recession etc! without those levers we can end up in a spiral a lot easier

i think though that where these problems don’t exist is behind the scenes: what if the whole world replaced SWIFT with a private blockchain? maybe a wire transfer wouldn’t take 5 days and cost like $20 (or maybe it would because it’s probably not the technology that makes these things slow)… in this case, you have a known group of semi-trusted actors (international banks), which is actually a perfect set of properties for a blockchain: they’re all able to cooperate but don’t implicitly trust, and can verify each other but mainly use blockchain so they can all automatically agree

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I'm not saying government fiat currencies shouldn't exist, just that they aren't needed for regular transactions.

Argument that monetary policy can be harmful

The natural business cycle has booms and busts, and government interference in that cycle (i.e. attempts to prevent the busts) can instead delay the busts and result in more severe downturns.

For example, look at the recent inflationary period. We had a huge bull run largely fueled by really low borrowing rates, so when things started to crash, we couldn't lower rates to encourage expansion (or at least as refused to go negative), so we instead threw money at the problem, which is an inflationary policy. The result was rapid inflation, and we had to rush to raise rates to get that back under control, and the rapid rate hikes resulted in bank failures, layoffs, and high borrowing rates. If we had instead raised rates slowly from 2014 or so and on, we could've cut rates instead of throwing stimulus money at the problem.

But the main problem with fiat currencies is that the issuing authority has a vested interest in tracking transactions. Cash isn't really a thing for digital transactions, and if the government realizes it can discourage use of cash, it will.

Fiat and cryptocurrencies can absolutely exist. Use fiat when interacting with the banking system (loans, savings, etc), and use cryptocurrencies like Monero for keeping transactions private (e.g. shopping). The government raising rates only really impacts borrowing, so companies and borrowers will use the local fiat currency and you'll get the desired effects.

what if the whole world replaced SWIFT with a private blockchain?

I'm honestly not familiar enough with international transactions to really weigh in on this. Maybe it's a good idea, IDK.

pupbiru ,

aren’t needed for regular transactions

but that kinda defeats the point of a central authority having control: the value of any currency is entirely based on what you can use it for… unless you tied their value in a way that the government regulates - eg to have a banking license you must swap USD for eUSD and visa versa on a 1:1 basis without fees (perhaps they burn eUSD to get new USD; IDK - you can’t oversupply. it gets tricky)… anyway, beside the point: regular transactions is exactly what the government needs some control over

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Not having a fiat currency isn't really as bad as people make it out to be. But we're talking about whether cryptocurrencies make fiat currencies ineffective.

Most people will likely keep using their local fiat currency because that's what credit cards, mortgages, and paychecks are denominated in. A minority (even a sizeable one) using an alternative currency won't change that. Even if most people use cryptocurrencies for transactions, the US can still require any federally backed transactions (i.e. anything touching regulated banks) to be denominated in USD.

A cryptocurrency merely keeps the fiat currency honest. If the fiat is more stable, people will keep their savings there. If the cryptocurrency is more stable (unlikely), people will switch to that and governments will react by tightening monetary policy.

Inflation numbers won't really be impacted because they'll just use some average across money exchanges to figure out the inflation figures for the fiat currency. Inflation is already benchmarked between currencies, so this doesn't change much.

So I honestly don't see much reason for change. If people move to cryptocurrencies in droves, the Treasury will just issue fewer dollars as needed to keep inflation in check.

But what we get in return is pretty great! I can now make international transactions without going through international exchanges, so fees would likely end up being lower. I can use the cryptocurrency as cash in digital transactions to maintain privacy from my bank and potentially government. If I go to a country like Argentina or Turkey, I can avoid day to day inflation. If I go to a country like Venezuela or Cuba, I don't have to play games with black market money changers to avoid government price fixing. I'm also much less likely to get my payment into compromised, so this would make things like virtual credit card numbers unnecessary because attackers knowing my payment info doesn't allow them to initiate transactions.

The main problem is many places don't accept crypto, so that's why I haven't used it much. I'm probably never going to keep a lot of my money there, but perhaps I'd load it up for a trip or monthly expenses or something.

Kindness ,

mining cryptocurrencies has a high initial energy requirement, but it scales really well in terms of transactions,

Objection. Proof of work negates this. By making rapid block solving intentionally more difficult in order to slow down said solving, energy wasted on solving increases exponentially.

More transactions means a new block is completed faster. Last block was solved too soon, so tack another zero requirement to the next hash. More computation and energy wasted when there are perfectly acceptable hashes almost instantaneously.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

energy wasted on solving increases exponentially

Which is balanced by decreased value of additional coins, so less interested miners should drop out.

But the energy itself is kind of misleading, because miners will flock to lower cost energy, which should primarily be excess green energy. If we actually adopt this at scale, I expect energy companies to help in mining crypto with their excess energy generation, which should work well since that excess should be fairly consistent I'm a global scale.

That said, I'm extremely interested in seeing how proof of stake works out for Ethereum, since it just seems wasteful to mine coins for verifying transactions. But I think it's a lot less wasteful than opponents make it out to be.

Kindness ,

I like what you're saying, but I see it differently.

Which is balanced by decreased value of additional coins, so less interested miners should drop out.

What people should do is not what people will do. Because of the hype, people are still investing into ever more expensive rigs and consuming ever more electricity competing in races they have no chance in until they realize they can compete in other races.

should primarily be excess green energy.

Yeah, it should, but it isn't. Personally I'd prefer excess energy drive electricity prices down, rather than demand increasing reliance on more stable and constant sources.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Well yeah, another problem is that there's always another cryptocurrency. Since there's no widely adopted coin (Bitcoin is closest), people jump to the next one hoping that they'll get in early before it takes off.

So the problem isn't that a given cryptocurrency takes too much energy, it's that speculators jump from coin to coin. I think that will settle down as well, and we'll be left with mostly serious miners looking for actual profit who optimize costs down with cheap excess energy.

So what we're looking at is kind of a worst case scenario. Bitcoin rewards halve every four years, and Bitcoin valuations are unlikely to keep up. Lots of cryptocurrencies are also switching to proof of stake. Both of these together should result in drastically less energy being used.

So I'm bullish on crypto energy usage falling going forward, even if it gains mainstream adoption as a currency (unlikely).

pupbiru ,

you’re saying a buzz word without understanding the trade offs in designs… POW doesn’t have to imply higher energy cost for more transactions: shove more transactions in a block and POW cost is the same… that’s a trade off sure because then a block becomes a more valuable thing to 51%

POW is also only 1 of a lot of different consensus algorithms, all with their own trade-offs… POS benefits those with money for example (although you can still form mining pools - TBH i’d argue it’s exactly the same in this respect to POW in practice - good luck mining anything of value in POW without investing $ millions)

some blockchains aren’t built to be entirely trustless and uncoordinated, merely semi trusted and loosely coordinated (think a consortium of banks - they don’t trust each other entirely but a blockchain means no individual member working alone can cheat. in this case because it’s semi-organised they can use POS with a special token and delegate those “mining tokens” 1 per member of the consortium or something… you can even set this kind of chain up as an ethereum side chain!)

Kindness ,

I wasn't going to reply because this conversation will likely no longer go in a positive or productive direction, but I'm quite peeved and decided to allow myself the gratification of issuing corrections.

you’re saying a buzz word without understanding the trade offs in designs

I understand quite well, and I resent you for not only assuming me to be an uninformed commentator, but for also having the audacity to state it as if it were fact.

POW doesn’t have to imply higher energy cost for more transactions

But it does imply it for every major coin on the market today, and said coin owners seem quite content with how things are, Only the fooled are interested in investing in another new block chain, which will likely turn into a scam as soon as someone realises the money they can steal.

What the world could be is not a rebuttal to its current state. Further it's quite disingenuous to tell people problems aren't problems because of what could be.

Please have a pleasant evening. Good night.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Energy costs are magnitudes less than banks

taladar ,

Much like the claim that it improves privacy cryptocurrency has not really achieved any of its claimed advantages and its successes are mainly in the field of scamming people out of their money.

GolfNovemberUniform ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

Manual targeted identification is possible even if you use public WiFi + VPN + Tor with 100 nodes. It's just a matter of user behavior analysis. Same goes with anything digital nowadays. You're either protected only from automatic spyware (Google, Meta etc) or not protected at all. At least some entity you're interacting with (whether it's a website, a person, a company or whatever else) is going to have some sort of tracking to it unless there are no network devices and physical surveillance agents in the area. Finding someone isn't hard. It sometimes can require irl interrogation though. At least that's what I know. Even if something I said isn't true, digital cryptocurrency transactions are still a little bit better than using a credit card (maybe unless you buy a fake entity but that's still breakable). I don't know any better alternatives (cash doesn't count because it's not digital)

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Ah yes, the classic WiFi+VPN+Tor with 100 nodes trick.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Good luck, I'm behind 12 proxies

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

Ha, you left your virtual window open

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Not true for Privacy Coins

GolfNovemberUniform ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

It's a nice technology that should exist as an alternative to personally identifyable and government-ID-connected transactions. It's not perfect in any way though

Tanoh ,

The original idea was to take back control of our money from greedy and corrupt banks and politicians. Very very very few people use it as that now though. Most just see it as a get rich quick scheme.

As we are in the privacy sublemmy: All of the privacy issues have already been solved, those that keep saying that it is a log of everyone you ever paid kept forever have no idea what they are talking about. Just simple thing like that you should (almost) never use an address twice removes a lot of the privacy concerns. There are also other ways to obfuscate and stay anonymous.

actual_patience OP ,

Most just see it as a get rich quick scheme.

It sucks, I don't see how it could ever get past this.

makeasnek ,
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

Wait till you hear about stocks and derivatives. No way are they ever gonna make it big time. Only used by sleazeballs trying to get rich.

taladar ,

Just simple thing like that you should (almost) never use an address twice removes a lot of the privacy concerns.

Then how do you connect the incoming money to the outgoing money (and split it up or combine it in the process assuming most income flows do not exactly match a spending flow exactly in value)?

voracitude , (edited )

edit: since the well-akshullies are out already, I'll say this is massively simplified because anyone who cares about the actual cryptography or terminology can go read the fuckin docs; it's detail that isn't necessary here.

Wallet addresses are just the public part of a public/private key pair. You can generate another public key with the private key so the address is different, but your private key can still sign transactions for both addresses.

taladar ,

That is not how public/private keypairs work in most algorithms but even if it was, the fact that the public key is used to verify the signature comes from a specific private key means that both (or all) public keys could validate all transactions signed with that private key.

voracitude ,

I recommend you read BIP-44 since this has been a standard for years in Bitcoin. Your other crypto knowledge seems woefully out of date as well, from your questions in your other post. Time to brush up, I think.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Yes, its the change that makes block chain analysis so effective

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

You're misinformed. I recommend reading Traces in the Dark.

MisterNeon ,
@MisterNeon@lemmy.world avatar

I see no point for it to exist.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Morgan Stanley boot licker this one

MisterNeon ,
@MisterNeon@lemmy.world avatar

No, I have no love for financial institutions.

What value does a crypto bring by itself? It's not land or a business so you can't develop it. It's not a person or application so it can't perform labor. Crypto is not even physical so I can't eat it, burn it, or use it as a paper weight.

It's only purpose is to be speculated on for trading purposes for REAL MONEY. Crypto currency life cycle ends with it being exchanged for another currency, that's just redundant. It's a griff like speculation on old comic books was back in the 90's, except you don't even get nerd crap you're trying to offload.

Finally it's not backed by the violence of another country. Ever since USA moved off the gold standard "the faith and credit of the US government" which is a fancy way of saying the military industrial complex. That's real and powerful if not ambiguous, which is more than I can say for a list of completed math problems. You and your kind are too weak to have a currency.

You are not an economic revolutionary. You are part of an insular group participating in a ponzi scheme that is desperately trying to get mass adoption so you're not "holding the bag". In crypto there is someone always "holding the bag" because crypto has no innate value.

clearleaf ,

https://help.gumroad.com/article/156-gumroad-and-adult-content

This is a recent one that came up, but this happens every few months. If payment processors just did their jobs there wouldn't be as much of a need for other ways to do transactions. It's also still a pain in the ass to send money to individuals in other countries even when everything works the way it's intended.

furzegulo ,

fuck that utterly horrible shit

politicalcustard , (edited )
@politicalcustard@beehaw.org avatar

I use Monero for private transactions and I am thankful for the existence of a private, untraceable currency (like most cash transactions IRL). I am concerned by the amount of energy expended on crypto-mining... it is a dreadful use of energy that could be used for far more productive purposes.

shortwavesurfer ,

Honest question, since the goal of cryptocurrencies is to illuminate the banking system. Roughly how much energy does the banking system use? Because if mining uses less than that, it would be a net improvement.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

The banking system uses magnitudes more.

The big banks pushed a huge misinformation campaign to convince people that cryptocurrency was using lots of energy, but its negligible next to the banks.

Its like tobacco companies trying to convince us that smoking is healthy. You need experts to disprove the well-funded misinformation

politicalcustard ,
@politicalcustard@beehaw.org avatar

It's possible to see an estimate of how much electricity is being used for bitcoin (obviously not the only currency being mined). Higher prices results in more mining so the amount of electricity varies all the time. Here's a graph showing estimates of energy consumption. I guess you can come up with an estimate because you could have an idea of how much it costs to mine a bitcoin and you would see them entering circulation on the blockchain.

During its peak in 2021 it was using about the same amount of electricity as Norway or Argentina uses in a year (according to a University of Cambridge analysis).

Compared to these amounts the banking system would be using a tiny proportion given that fiat currencies don't need to be mined they are just created by the banks when they issue loans.

shortwavesurfer ,

Don't forget the other things that go into the banking system though. You've got the mining for minerals to make their buildings. You've got the gas that it takes to get employees to and from work, the electricity to power those buildings, the electricity to make and distribute coins and physical money, The presses and machines to make physical currency, etc. And there's probably a ton I am missing.

politicalcustard ,
@politicalcustard@beehaw.org avatar

You can certainly include all that stuff too, but the banking system provides services for 67% of the world's population. Bitcoin is owned by about 100 million people.

shortwavesurfer ,

And I don't think Bitcoin is the end-all, be all cryptocurrency. In fact, I don't even have any. What I prefer using is Monero. It is still a proof of work coin yes, but instead of using ASICs, it uses CPUs, so it uses a lot less power. Having ASICs Promotes centralization of mining hashrate, and therefore it's easier for the government to require rules be followed. A few examples are OFAC compliant transactions only, mixers, etc.Monero does not have that problem because how are you going to ban CPUs from being used by normal people without just straight out banning the use of any computing device? And that would not go over well.

hellfire103 ,
@hellfire103@lemmy.ca avatar

To be frank:

  • Good idea in theory
  • Ancaps and cryptobros ruined it for the rest of us
  • Monero is okay
karashta ,

It's not real currency, it's a token.

I can't use it to pay my taxes to the US federal government and it must be traded in for actual currency to do so.

Just like a token at an arcade.

They are also vehicles of wild speculation... And unlike stocks (where I gain partial ownership of a company) and bonds (where I gain a claim on their monetary inflows and primacy if the venture crumbles), crypto gives me... What exactly?

I don't get to be an owner or a creditor. I become... Holder of a mining incentive?

I'm sorry it's not what a lot of people seem to think it is.

LemmyHead ,

You can also not use euro to pay for your federal taxes in USA. You can however convert your euros to USD in order to pay for them. If you think euros are more trustworthy and give you full self custody, then it's a good reason to hold your money in euros . Plenty of people do that in the world; they store their money in USD rather than their inflated less reliable national currency.

Victim to speculation? Unfortunately yes, but same thing goes for stocks, even basic foods and raw materials nowadays. What do they give you? Whatever matters to you: full privacy? Full ownership? Freedom of movement for your money? Not one central entity deciding on the amount that's printed? Voting power in the tech that's being built? Most stocks nowadays don't give you anything as well, but the fake belief on how much it's worth and a lot of people agree nowadays they don't represent true value of the company in many cases (Apple, Facebook, Tesla, etc.). You don't get voting rights, you don't get dividends. A lot of Cryptos do give those.

Having said those counter-arguments, of course there's flaws too and frankly more with the majority of them. It's those select few that could matter on long-term

frogmint , (edited )

BTC, ETH, and XMR are the only ones that matter. Some stable coins (USDC, GUSD) are okay, too.

BTC (Bitcoin) is good because it's the most widespread. If a vendor accepts crypto, odds are they accept BTC. However, the blockchain is easily traceable.

ETH (Ethereum) is good because its blockchain is far more versatile, so it can be used for other things than just crypto payments. However, it's less widely used for payments than BTC and is also easily traceable.

XMR (Monero) is excellent. It's extremely difficult to track an individual user. Your transactions are private. There are some possible attack vectors for the future, but they'd require that you be an actual target to be worthwhile. Someone that's going to track you is going to find a different way than XMR to do it. XMR isn't as widely used as the others, though, and it's also not on as many crypto exchanges. Kraken has it.

However, crypto as an investment is not a good idea. Spend your crypto.

banghida ,

Ethereum is unregistered security token.

SomeBoyo ,

I dislike it being misused for gambling on it's value, but see the importance of currencies like Monero.

shortwavesurfer ,

Use Monero. Since the amount you send is private, who you send to is private, you are private when you send. Unless you are targeted specifically, it's unlikely that your transactions will be figured out.I use Monero a lot and I don't really care about the fiat value of it because I'm using it as a currency to buy my food, pay my insurance, pay for my phone bill, etc.So what happens is since I have to pay bills in it, I end up buying it every single month and then spending what I need on bills and saving the rest.I am not it for number go up like the rest of these crypto bros are. I want to ditch the manipulative government fiat system entirely, and that's the end I hope to achieve by opting out.

enviousCardinal ,

I'm using it as a currency to buy my food, pay my insurance, pay for my phone bill, etc.So what happens is since I have to pay bills in it, I end up buying it every single month and then spending

how do you do all them things, if it's not too much trouble?

shortwavesurfer ,

For my food I buy an Instacart gift card and then just go pick it up when it's ready. My insurance is through a friend who pays dollars and I pay them back in Monero and the phone bill is another gift card.

Edit: I am very seriously thinking about launching a phone service that accepts Monero only and would be a stable price in Monero.You can get some pretty decent deals from the carriers if you have more than a few lines on a business account.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

I feel like people already top up phones with crypto. Its always one if the top ads on those gift card sites

shortwavesurfer ,

From what I've seen, it's mainly prepaid. With post paid, there isn't a way to do it that I'm aware of besides buying a Visa or Mastercard prepaid card.Plus, the whole point would be to have a stable price in Monero. Those gift cards change price all the time with the fluctuation of the market. So, this would be more expensive, sure, but it would also be completely stable.Effectively acting as a price ceiling in Monero.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I'm going to have to look into it again. Can you recommend any services that accept it? Most only support Bitcoin, if any (e.g. ProtonMail).

shortwavesurfer ,

Monerica.com. Is a business directory of other businesses that accept Monero? A green checkmark means somebody has successfully used that business. A red X means that somebody tried and it was a scam.

Also, if you have a GitHub and use a business that has not been used before and has no checkmark or crossmark, then please tell them about it with your GitHub. And you can always use services to convert from Monero to Bitcoin if necessary such as Trocador.app.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Cool, I'll check it out! I've never actually used crypto to pay for something, so this will be a fun learning opportunity if anything.

shortwavesurfer ,

It's so fun because you really get the chance to use it and realize that you don't need government currencies and permission from third parties to do what you want.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Yup, I'm going to start small with a VPN since Mullvad supports Monero. I've been meaning to get it set up on my router for a long time on a VLAN, and this seems like a good excuse.

Not sure what's next, but might as well get started with just one.

shortwavesurfer ,

Welcome to the dark side, my friend. You're in good company.

BrightCandle , (edited )

I have used Bitcoin a number of times for international purchases. Its not really got to the point of currency so much as a medium mostly of speculation and often interchange for crime but it can improve your privacy. The user experience of the payments isn't the best but international transfers are often hard to do anyway and in that particular field it can often be a lot quicker, cheaper and easier.

possiblylinux127 ,
@possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip avatar

No as it pretty much a scam

rambos ,

Its awesome if you have some, its basically all time high price these days 😉

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Well it was until today. It just went on sale

makeasnek , (edited )
@makeasnek@lemmy.ml avatar

I use it on a regular basis. I also run a non-profit that funds open source tools for scientists, it makes accepting donations a lot easier for us among other benefits for our donors (they don't have to pay capital gains on the coins they donate, just like stocks).

Bitcoin is pretty incredible and offers decent anonymity which continues to improve, Monero offers more. Lots of scams in the "crypto world", but Bitcoin has faithfully kept its fiscal policy promises for 15 years:

  • Fixed supply of 21 million coins. Your money's value is not diluted by supply inflation.
  • You can send funds to anybody in the world with a smartphone and a halfway reliable internet connection in under a second for pennies in fees (with Bitcoin lightning). And you can do it from your couch, no banks required.
  • It has operated 24/7, 365 days a year for 15 years without a single hour of downtime, bank holiday, or hack, and has survived attacks from many angles including nation-state actors.
  • At every possible turn it has chosen decentralization and security. I can't say the same for most other coins.
  • And it has done this with < 1% of global electricity usage, mostly from renewables and other "stranded" supply. Pretty powerful stuff.

Monero's privacy features can be absorbed into the Bitcoin protocol whenever Bitcoin decides it wants to, that is the biggest long-term risk to Monero IMO. That and centralization of block production due to increased block size. Bitcoin worked around this block size problem with L2s like lightning, Monero chose bigger blocks though of course it could always add an L2 if it wants to.

LemmyHead ,

"Monero’s privacy features can be absorbed into the Bitcoin protocol whenever Bitcoin decides it wants to"

I think that's the biggest flaw in your thinking. Monero has this built-in from the start and everyone using it knows it and supports this approach. It affects how legislators can manipulate the coin because they can't, it will keep on living. It already affects the true value of the coin with all privacy included, because you can see how exchanges are unwilling to list it or are delisting it if they already did so, so there are no (or hardly any) institutions or billionaires manipulating the price because of the high risk factor of losing their money. You're forgetting that people in power nowadays are brainwashing us to accept that a wanting a fundamental right like privacy equals you're doing criminal activity or have plans to do so. There are A TON of reasons why bitcoin will never include such strong privacy features, because there are so many factors that influence this decision to make it possible, and the dominant reason you see that matters to btc holders (or any other crypto token for that matter) is NUMBER GO UP. Privacy is not a number go up reason. So it's not a tech issue, it's a people issue

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