5 hours ago
(6 hours ago)Kevin Kofler Wrote: Cryptocurrencies are a money laundering tool for criminals of all kind (weapons dealers, drug dealers, ransomware scammers, child abusers, etc.) and one of the worst energy consumers next to generative AI (hence indirectly causing global warming). Think twice whether you really want to support that ecosystem.
Proof of work cryptocurrencies already exist like conventional banking, and boycotting it by a few will not affect the ultra-billionaire speculators. It still falls far behind the banking system in all forms of evil except perhaps the wasted energy. There are users of Pinephone who want to interact with and use cryptocurrency to buy stuff which is what cryptocurrency is supposed to be for same as national currency; and yes the energy waste is staggering. Though it seems it provided the processing tools for the (wannabe)AI bubble which is still providing some useful tools to us.
FWIW I am not against people buying/owning/using whatever they want as long as it is not abusing others.
I always wonder what secret purpose the devs behind the various proof of work protocols could have conspired to do with that much raw processing power; there was a sci-fi short story about how one POW update began to interact with trans-dimensional intelligence causing problems. It is hard to fathom the stupidity of over-valuation of BTC and similar by speculators chasing tulip bulbs. I suppose I am a bit jaded, I once mined 30btc over a month with a borrowed GPU when the python mining scripts first came out, lost the keys a few years later when it was maybe US$40 loss. For the most part crypto is still too hard to buy, too tightly regulated, and too hard to spend; playing with it for speculation is for greedy chumps.
I am interested in the history of money and finance I feel like people who want to be entertained should read/listen to Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson.
