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Comment by iNane9000 | Hacker News Reader

That’s not even close to the main flaw. The main flaw is that it incentivizes crime, human trafficking and accelerates environmental destruction. None of these are huge problems if you can afford a private bunker in New Zealand. It’s a major problem for ordinary citizens, especially those of poorer countries.

Everything involving code has bugs. Bugs aren’t a reason not to use code. Bitcoin isn’t a problem for the very small fraction of the population that use it. Bitcoin users are super rich tech workers and finance guys, by and large.

The people hurt most by Bitcoin are all the people who don’t use it. It benefits the ultra-rich at great expense to the other 99% of humanity.

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From a humanitarian and economical point of view, Bitcoin doesn't hurt the poor. It allows the unbanked to finally store wealth, as a counter to a local strongly inflationary currency. Besides storing wealth, also growing wealth, as pretty much the only option they have.

Unless you don't believe the narrative that Bitcoin stores/grows wealth very well, in that case...poor people can simply not use it.

Perhaps you mean to say that the distribution of coins is uneven. That's true, but not a problem Bitcoin aims to solve or can solve. Bitcoin is fair, the same rules apply to everyone. If a billionaire has a 1,000 Bitcoin and I have 0.1 Bitcoin, we both win or lose based on price action equally, relatively speaking. That's as fair as it gets. With Bitcoin, having lots of coins doesn't give you any new free coins, unlike fiat money.

The environmental destruction is overstated and rapidly changing as we speak. Soon the vast majority of mining happens based on renewables with a specific focus on stranded energy. And this isn't a vague promise, some 60/70% of the hashrate from China, which include most coal-based mining, is being wiped out in just a few weeks.

There is approximately 0 unbanked storing wealth in Bitcoin.

Is that so?

Ever heard of the African Bitcoin community, a transnational initiative running for years now that resulted in Africa growing fastest in addresses of all continents?

Or what about El Salvador, 70% unbanked, where every single citizen will get a first small BTC deposit from the government, thereby becoming banked by the millions?

And what about Libya? You know, that country with a crashing currency that next blocked access to bank accounts for months, it all going up in smoke? Looked into the BTC numbers there?

So tell me, were you completely unaware of this at all, or do you find these people not important enough to count as more than zero?

> With Bitcoin, having lots of coins doesn't give you any new free coins, unlike fiat money.

Fiat money doesn't give your free money either. You have to invest in something - and there's plenty of fee-limited options in the cryptocurrency world as well.

> And this isn't a vague promise, some 60/70% of the hashrate from China, which include most coal-based mining, is being wiped out in just a few weeks.

Because the price is so low, not because they want to help the environment. At the next peak everyone will be happy to burn whatever fuel is cheaper than the payout again.

Fiat money does give you free money. We happen to live in exceptional times where interest rates are close to zero, but in general, simply owning fiat gives you free new fiat. The same is not true for Bitcoin in itself.

Nobody wants to help the environment. The typical US lifestyle would require 8 planets if it was rolled out across the world's population. Just leaving your phone plugged in uses more energy than all of crypto mining combined.

So don't preach about caring, nobody cares. They say they do, but don't. So yes, miners seek out cheap renewables, which is motivated by profit, not helping the environment. As said, none of us are better. We don't care. But if a profit-based incentive leads to renewable energy usage and helping the environment as a side-effect, I'm all for it.

Owning fiat does not give you free money. Giving it to a bank which will pay you interest on the account (or various investments) is what gives you more.

But the same applies to BTC with BlockFi / BIA.

You're grasping at straws when you imply people have piles of cash at home whom then "give" it to a bank. It's already in the bank. You get paid directly to your bank account and get additional fiat without a single action on your behalf, with full legal protection. Interest, growing fiat from fiat, is directly integrated into fiat itself.

Not true for Bitcoin. Neither owning your coins in a wallet nor leaving them on an exchange grows your amount of Bitcoin.

Can you give away your Bitcoin to some rogue, fully unregulated party claiming you get back more Bitcoin? Yes, in the same way I can give my fiat to some shady character in the streets. I may get back more fiat. Or I may be permanently parted from my coins.

These things are not the same. Bitcoin does not have interest built in. Not at bank level nor at central bank level. This is radically different from fiat.

> You're grasping at straws when you imply people have piles of cash at home whom then "give" it to a bank.

Into an interest paying account - yes. A savings account like that may be the "don't even mention it" default for you and me. But not for:

- unbanked people in the US (~6%)

- and in the world (much larger https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/raw-data-unba...)

- people with non-interest-paying accounts for religious reasons

- people in countries where interest is ~0% or negative (https://dqydj.com/negative-savings-accounts/)

> Bitcoin doesn't hurt the poor

The impacts of climate change, which Bitcoin unquestionably contributes to, skew significantly towards poorer countries.

And the consumer protections built into the regulations around fiat currencies are there to protect people who can't afford teams of accountants and lawyers.

>accelerates environmental destruction

Ethereum is working on moving to proof-of-stake within the next year, which completely removes its need for energy-intensive proof-of-work mining.

Ethereum keeps kicking the can on this, and not for technical reasons.

> “One of the biggest problems I’ve found with our project is not the technical problems, it’s problems related with people”. - Buterin

https://tokenist.com/buterin-explains-why-ethereum-2-0-upgra...

Given that the reasons are political rather than engineering in nature, there's no way to put a timeline on them.

That it incentivizes human trafficking and crime is pure hyperbole. Also turns out that the barrier to entry for crypto is lower in the 3rd world than you might think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvHN0MEBoZo

I believe the synagogue shooter was paid in Bitcoin. So not pure hyperbole.

Edit: might have the details confused about above point, but the general thrust of things is pretty clear. https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/19/neo-nazis-banked-on-bit...

Well in that case, nothing incentivizes more crime than USD.

It’s more regulated though. That’s the point is there’s some control in usd, for better and worse.

Cash is the ultimate anonymous method of payment.

Not necessarily. Bills have serial numbers on them. They can also be marked.

Cash is a physical thing that needs to be taken somewhere if you're using it to pay someone off or receive a payoff. That gives means to be apprehended at some point in the chain. Crypto on the other hand you just hand over the coins. The coins are sent to an exchange's wallet, mingled, then pulled out on another anonymous wallet. This is what makes it so great for ransoms.

Their complaint was not with your premise but the language. Rather than incentivizes perhaps facilitates.

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