Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by down | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

down

Bitcoin saves lives in Venezuela, you people need to get your head from your asses, first world is not the only world.

View on HN

We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive comments and ignoring our request to stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_emotion

Appeal to emotion or argumentum ad passiones is a logical fallacy characterized by the manipulation of the recipient's emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence.

And bitcoin also pays for murders, launders money, etc. I feel, just as cash, it is quite ethics agnostic. Not knocking cryptocoin, just don't pretend it is a singular force for good. It is representation of capitol, albeit in a unique way.

I highly doubt Bitcoin is much used for laundering money, transactions are all happening in clear and if you try to hide traces by creating multiple addresses you are going destroy your capital in transfer fees (which are very high right now). It's clearly not the best currency to hide untraceable money.

Wouldn't it be possible to temporarily switch to an intermediary altcoin (eg. ethereum, btc) ? I'm not invested nor an expert in any crytocurrency, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

Monero I think can be used for this, other main coins have a public ledger.

I'd argue it's easier to use BTC securely when you're already laundering money than when you want to use it legitimately. Just use throwaway wallets to receive BTC, pay for goods that can be converted to physical cash and proceed laundering that cash as usual.

It's no surprise all the cryptolocker viruses asked for bitcoin payments or cash equivalent cards.

>And bitcoin also pays for murders, launders money, etc.

From scientific perspective this is not true. Bitcoin is way more open and traceable than good old dollars.

And destroys lives by contributing heavily to CO2 emissions which, funny enough, have an outsized impact on the citizens of third world countries.

Look up energy consumption of other worldwide services, like gold mining. Then get back to me.

Look up whataboutism [1], then get back to me ;-)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

lol, touche

It is not fault of bitcoin you are burning oil/etc for mining it. Use renewable energy.

I'd love for that to happen! But as it stands, when you use electricity, you're using whatever the grid supplies. And for Bitcoin miners especially, this power largely comes from burning coal.

...which could have been used to replace productive fossil fuel expenditures. It doesn't matter how you fuel egregious waste; its still a pointless thing to do?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com