The insane thing about Bitcoin’s continued popularity is that out of all the thousands of cryptocurrencies out there, it’s easily the worst in every regard.
I’m not going to name names for fear of being called a shill, but if you want a cryptocurrency for just buying stuff there’s a ton that are more stable, faster, don’t cost a fortune to process, and don’t destroy the planet.
Bitcoin’s transfer fees alone are huge. It’s over $1 USD now for any transfer, and it will get much worse.
I remember launching my wallet that I hadn’t touched for years and I was hit with many days of syncing. It basically had to download gigabytes of data about blockchain since the last time I touched the wallet. I was blown away by the inefficiency and resource usage for seemingly simple things
It dominates because it’s the one that everyone knows. If you’re lucky enough to find a shop that accepts crypto it’s almost certain that the crypto they accept is bitcoin and bitcoin only. despite its flaws it is a proven technology. It might 3 hours to send an on chain payment but you don’t have to worry about a technical glitch dropping it.
I somewhat agree about it being not great though. it has serious scalability issues that were supposed to be addressed by lightning but lightning adds a lot of complexity imo. My grandma is never going to be able to figure out how to use lightning whilst still being able to benefit from a self custody wallet.
A lot of the newer coins that crypto bros bang on about seem to be centralized under private entities, “regulation friendly” and not distributed.
That’s the beauty of crypto, there’s flavour for everyone
Sure, lets replace a regulated scam with an unregulated scam, that will solve things /s
Whaaaaaa, are you talking about bitcoin, the currency developed out of pure kindness and honest intentions and promising equality and equity for all? Surely you can’t mean the grand and noble bitcoin, I was told for years that it would decentralize all currency and make all our wildest dreams come true. Any day now.
(Unless it conflicts with the predictions for AI, that it will provide equality and equity for all and decentralize skill, talent and knowledge and make all our wildest dreams come true.)
Both sides are bad
Yep. Just because one side is bad, it doesn’t mean the other is any good.
Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling. Credit card companies are still a private owned government branch with no concern for human rights and criminals-enabling.
I learned recently FedNow is a payment processor ran by the Federal Reserve, with a fee of $0.043 per transaction. Making it much, much cheaper than every other payment processor out there.
It just launched two years ago; I’m wondering if this might become more of a thing moving forward for digital payments.
Say that any louder and it’ll be DOGEd overnight.
You pay fees for transactions?
Every digital payment has transaction fees, yes.
Credit card transaction fees for vendors are generally 1-3%, for example.
Every digital payment has transaction fees, yes.
If you say so.
Which digital payment doesn’t have transaction fees?
Credit cards (vendor side), debit cards (vendor side), and crypto (consumer side) all have transaction fees. Paypal, venmo, etc all make their money from (vendor side) transaction fees as well. Is there a different type of digital payment you are using that doesn’t have transaction fees?
Nice but floundered. Call me when consumers and small businesses can use it.
It’s also a heck of a lot quicker to process, (effectively instant) and works even on holidays.
And of course, banks like Bank of America, Capital One, and tons of other financial institutions simply refuse to use it, because that would mean spending money on changing their infrastructure, and making it more convenient for people to also use accounts outside of theirs.
Seriously, it’s been ages, and they’ve refused to use it at all, even though it’s purely a financial and technical upside for every user once it’s implemented.
Yep, but cryptocurrency isn’t dictating what you can spend with it…yet at least. So if no government does anything to help us, then we must adopt a cryptocurrencies like Monero to fight back against censorship as nothing more than a private citizen.
Criminals-enabling is what they call VPNs, E2EE encrypted communication etc.
more and more good people are being called criminals
Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling.
As we all know, Visa and MasterCard have never been used by criminals. As soon as a criminal touches a card, the card turns into ash.
Reading isn’t your strong suit, is it?
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This. Corporate shit weasels or supporting human trafficking.
“We should restrict the free use of oxygen because terrorists can breath it to sustain themselves.”
C’mon. Crypto has issues, but this ain’t one of them. Pandering to people’s fear is how fascist seize power for themselves and perpetuate the horrors we feared in the first place.
Lmao, crypto tech bros coming out of the woodwork trying to get popularity for their bag holder’s game…
Also pretending that shit hasn’t been bought up by wall street
What? They have like 5%. You should revisit your stance
Isn’t this a right wing meme about centrists, but with the text changed?
The Bitcoin side wouldn’t catch you, because that interferes with the user’s choice to hit the ground.
Perhaps the original is right-wing, though this happens a lot (e.g. the “change my mind” guy). This meme seems anti-collective shout, so I’d place it left wing.
Last time I checked, BTC transaction fees were prohibitively high to pay for 80$ AAAA games with them, and WAY too high to pay for a 5 USD single-developer itch.io game.
I haven’t looked at other Crypto in a while. I made some money off BTC, but I think it is wildly overvalued for a long time, and I’ve been disappointed in how un-currency-like other alternatives were, even those that have been around long enough that they are unlikely to be rug-pulls.
That said, if you need to get paid and Visa/MC won’t let you use them, I’m not going to attack you (too hard) for accepting Crypto. They are bad systems, but we live in Captialism, so you gotta get paid. They might be the least-worse system that is global and isn’t Visa/MC. I’m unlikely to buy your product that way, tho; I’m more likely to pirate than I am to participate in cryptocurrency again.
Credit card companies should be nonprofits under democratic control.
Could’ve would’ve should’ve
So many things could be so much better.
Poverty could end tomorrow if we wanted to.
War could end tomorrow if we wanted to
Healthcare could be free if we wanted to
Same for schools and education in general
“If we wanted to”
Let me rephrase that: if either the top 1% would let us, or if the 99% would just stand up and take what’s theirs, we could…
Euro has PSD2 which seems to be a step in the right direction
Yes let’s definitely side with the scam that’s been around for two decades and its only practical use is to rug pull chumps yes this is good advice
Bitcoin is a lot of things, it’s not a scam. Some cryptocoins aren’t scams either or didn’t start as one.
A lot of crypto coins are scams
Bitcoin and any blockchain based payment system is not a viable alternative to payment processors at world scale. Unless power requirements per transaction go down literally exponentially, it will never be.
Having said all that: Bitcoin does work on the current limited scale, it works better and easier and faster han all payment processors, and most importantly: Bitcoin isn’t a giant dick wanting to insert itself into every orifice of your body
Fuck Visa, fuck MasterCard, fuck American Express, fuck all of them you fucking psychopathic narcissistic assholes
Bitcoin may not be a scam per se, but its main usage is to facilitate scams. The biggest of which is being a market that speculators can manipulate to make the currency they actually want.
It’s not a scam requires a huge Wikipedia <citation needed>
I’m not saying it’s great, it’s shit, but at least it’s not as evil as visa or MasterCard
Bitcoin bros are acting like little pushed around victims now?
I think this is bit what the post is trying to say.
A few days ago, visa and MasterCard forced steam to stop selling some games they didn’t like, and is not the first time. For many of us (I’m not a bitcoiner nor a crypto bro, my entire crypto wallet is 1usd) the first thought was “this is ridiculous. They have a duopoly so they get to decide the rules of the internet. This can be solved with crypto to remove all the unnecessary middlemen”. I felt the push. It reignited my interest in the tech and am once again seeing what’s out there, fees, and transaction times looking for a good balance
Needlessly antagonistic interpretation presented not for good faith discussion but for your own fragile emotional needs. Reap what you sow.
Trying so hard to sound smart, just like a bitcoin bro
I can dumb it down if you want.
Yeah, but one is extra bad for our enviroment while being a scam.
That’s what i thought, too. I would never believed if someone telled me some years ago that there will be another scam (ai) that wastes even more power.
Just wait until somebody proposes an AI powered blockchain…
The ultimate techbro venn diagram.
💀. Thats darker than anything else.
Stop giving them ideas
I seriously thought your punchline was going to be the pacific garbage patch from all that extra consumption we’ve encouraged.
Over 52% of the bitcoin network is renewable energy and growing. Y’all need to update your info, damn
Yes, but that still means that the other half is fossil fuel.
Bitcoin mining’s distribution makes it difficult for researchers to identify the location of miners and electricity use. It is therefore difficult to translate energy consumption into carbon emissions. As of 2025, a non-peer-reviewed study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) estimated that bitcoin consumed 138 TWh (500 PJ) annually, representing 0.5% of the world’s electricity consumption and resulting in annual greenhouse gas emissions of 39.8 Mt CO2, representing 0.08% of global emissions and comparable to Slovakia’s emissions.
I think people should really reconsider using PoW cryptocurrencies. Ethereum was able to reduce their energy consumption by 99.95% by switching to PoS and it’s still doing fine. IMO Bitcoin is outdated technology that is just used as a pyramid scheme due to its name recognition.
Compared to our current system though? How much does the entire banking and credit card industry contribute to emissions for almost the same service? Bitcoin incentivises energy companies to mine BTC with excess energy.
The current systems used by VISA use significantly less energy compared to PoW cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin
Ethereum was able to cut their energy usage down drastically by moving away of PoW. Windmills and clean energy aren’t the solution, getting rid of PoW is. Why build more solar farms if you could just not use so much electricity?
BULLSHIT.
You aren’t computing the cost in blood, censorship, wasted time, the lives employed by these evil orgs wasting their lives scamming people, the loss of revenue from value-producing business, the waste of banking cards, and the COUNTLESS other energy-guzzling mechanisms involved.
Bitcoin eliminates ALL these problems. It is by far more efficient, it isn’t even close. Also, it isn’t a payment system like visa, what an ignorant ass comparison. It is literally a sovereign currency with publicly auditable minting & ledgers. It replaces MONEY. Payment processors are built on top of it.
Yea, even the shit visa and mastercard can switch to payment processing on top of Bitcoin. It would actually be beneficial. When they decline a transaction you just directly use the network instead.
Btw PoS is also bullshit, in a completely different and inferior class of crypto. It requires HUMAN CONSENT to enter the network. PoW requires COMPUTATIONAL CONSENT. PoW lets anyone into the network if they can follow the rules of minting. This is HUGE when talking about a freedom-preserving system.
Put more simply, PoS systems are aristocracy owning an apple orchard (you ask an authority if they are allowed to take an apple), PoW is like an apple orchard deep in the woods that anyone can take from (you just have to walk there). Understand the difference?
One OWNS THE ORCHARD. They will protect it from people they deem unauthorized. They demand people go through them for permission. It is no different than what we have now, abstracted further and digitized.
What a bunch of bullshit Bitcoin is not more efficient and gets less efficient the more coins get mined.
Yeah, somebody hasn’t refreshed their browser since 2010.
Btw PoS is also bullshit, in a completely different and inferior class of crypto. It requires HUMAN CONSENT to enter the network.
That is specific to delegated proof of stake, not PoS in general.
Proof of Stake = I have a stake in preserving this network, and I am rewarded by receiving an increased stake in the network.
You cannot organically enter a PoS network without having a stake in it. That requires acquiring the network’s token somehow. That means you must use a different token to purchase it, do work for someone who will pay you in it, or otherwise perform an operation organized by people in order to acquire the token to have a stake.
That’s what I mean by human consent.
I think I haven’t explained myself properly. I will admit it seems bitcoin uses more energy in this case. However, we’re comparing Bitcoins entire currency system with that of a processor of fiat. I’m on mobile right now but I would like to see that comparison for arguments sake, bitcoin ecosystem vs fiat ecosystem (including mining, storing and transport of gold)
Ah, moving the goal posts, aren’t we?
Did you know that gold has nothing to do with the fiat ecosystem? In fact, the whole point of the word fiat in fiat ecosystem means that it is not based on gold at all. And if you include gold in the equation because some people use fiat to buy or sell gold, then you need to include gold in the energy costs of bitcoin as well, since people also use bitcoin to buy/sell gold.
They’re not moving the goalposts.
How much does the entire banking and credit card industry contribute to emissions for almost the same service?
The current systems used by VISA
bitcoin ecosystem vs fiat ecosystem
Ah, moving the goal posts, aren’t we?
fiat ecosystem (including mining, storing and transport of gold)
Gathering / transporting valuables is not a part of the fiat ecosystem. The value of fiat currency does not depend on any underlying materials (like gold, silver, etc.) like the currencies before.
So does the fiat system then get added to Bitcoin? Since it’s only value is it can be exchanged for fiat currency.
BTC can be used like fiat so no?
Don’t engage with these ignorant assholes man, they are all in banking’s pocket. We are at war, you know that right? Who the hell would be this passionate about protecting a slimy, evil ass legacy network without any audibility, responsible for countless wars, death, usurping of democratic governments, literally the death of this planet via global warming…
Traditional banking supports and incentives genocide.
It supports and incentivizes oil.
It shut down nuclear power.
It limits renewable power.
It is the engine of our destruction.
Do not justify yourself to it. You are the correct one. Anyone who cannot see this will never see it now. Leave them on their path to die. They will go down with the ship. I feel for them, but it is too late now.
they are all in banking’s pocket.
The fastest way to render your point invalid.
Don’t engage with these ignorant assholes man, they are all in banking’s pocket.
Shit you got me, you ruined our perfect psyop!
Oof yeah I looked back and noticed I’m arguing on memes😵💫 it’s amazing we’re on the fediverse but they can’t see the parallels
I think what I’d suggest is that the entire global banking and credit card industry is likely to contribute more in total to our climate catastrophe, just due to the difference in scale between that and a relatively small and lesser-used alternative like Bitcoin.
I do see where you’re coming from for sure. I just think it’s worth noting where it is and where it’s going given it’s managed to grow to 52% in an anti bitcoin world. If bitcoin allows to be “legitimatised” I think those goals are achievable
Bitcoin well never be legitimized it is to volatile.
There is no excess energy though. They wouldn’t be making that energy if it wasn’t for Bitcoin.
I’ll see if I can link it but some companies do, I think specifically it has to do with renewable energies but don’t quote me on that
I think they’re referring to renewables that otherwise wouldn’t be cost effective.
Now those windfarm can be batch processing AI instead of BTC.
It’s wasting useful energy, and you think that’s a good thing?
It’s wasting useful energy,
So is most of this thread…
Nope not what I’m saying
If you do not know a lot about “crypto” then I would say the main thing to understand is that there is Bitcoin (not owned by any single entity) and then there is everything else. Other “coins” are owned by corporations that can make decisions about it and change it to some extent. These are extremely risky.
Bitcoin (btc) does have risk but much less. It is not owned by any company or person or country. It is like the internet, only exists because tens of thousands of internet providers(miners for Bitcoin) around the world make it possible. Bitcoin has, in its codebase, a limitation that any change must be agreed upon by 95% of these providers(miners). This way security patches and bug fixes can be added because everyone agrees those are good. Other harmful changes would never reach 95% agreement therefor could never be implemented. There is a limit of 21 million Bitcoin and this number can never increase unless 95% agree to it… which they never would. This is in stark contrast to normal money which is constantly printed(at random rates depending on who happens to be in control at that moment) so that the supply increases making its value drop.
Scamming happens with cryptos, Bitcoin, euros, dollars,yuan… and always will.
What about Ethereum? I always thought Bitcoin was something to avoid since it’s proof-of-work.
yeah, to me bitcoin is rather a interesting pioneeing project which now is obsolete. there are a ton of decentralized DLTs that re not bitcoin and not even a blockchain in some cases (like Holochain for example)
Monero should be used. It’s the only really private/secure coin, although I think it’s proof of work too.
I’m really hoping we figure out an alternative to monero that is less energy intensive though. It’s bonkers inefficient compared to other coin to mine, super anonymous though, so trade offs
Etherium, Solana…etc are the next level of more risky networks. They have distributed upgrade/change protocols as well but are not as decentralized as bitcoin. As for how efficient a coin is, I am not comparing that metric as efficiently does not correlate to risk. This post was just referring to risk.
Crypto is still a scam.
Bitcoin is not crypto
it’s literally called a “cryptocurrency”.
Yes but they are still very different things.
only if you change the definition of “crypto”.
Many would argue that there needs some distinction between them. The ongoing joke is “Shitcoin” as many have abandoned the benefits of bitcoin.
Wtf are you talking about??? Bitcoin is THE cryptocurrency.
And specifically bad for this.
Only way out is communism. Pick yoir flavor.
What…
The only way out of crypto is full blow communism? Those are the two options?
Crypto has all the same vices as government and corporate currencies, just arranged a little differently. It’s not the revolution.
You can do various flavors of anarchism or centralism or the weird shit in between, but the only way for someone to not be able to say what you can spend your money on is to abolish money or get rid of all the people who could tell you what to do.
I honestly never understood how Lemmy, a privacy and decentralisation focused community, is so vehemently anti-crypto. It’s worse than genAI. Every time it is mentioned, everyone goes “crypto is a scam”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any good faith discussion around it, just “scam”, “pyramid scheme”, and “only criminals use it”.
Let’s get something out of the way immediately: shitcoins are a literal pyramid scheme and a scam. Anyone can make their own cryptocurrency in an evening, and anyone who throws money at them is either a fool or a gambler.
But I really don’t understand what people mean when they say Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or Monero are a scam. Sure they can be used to scam you, just like Amazon gift cards can. Maybe it’s about the price volatility, but the price of all 3 mentioned before is up on a day, week, month, 6 months, year, and 5 year scale. It’s volatile, but is not a scam. If you bought and sold at two random points in time, it’s more likely you made a profit than “got scammed”. You know what actually is a scam? Credit scores, overdraft fees, having to pay to check your balance, and so many other fucked up practices in the US banking system.
“Criminals use them” is just the worst fucking argument, especially in a space like this. Are PGP, VPNs and TOR for criminals too? Do you think getting rid of crypto would stop crime?
And yes, proof of work fucking sucks. The energy consumption of Bitcoin mining is a problem. I am not a cryptobro who spends all his time making trades and is here to tell you that crypto is the salvation. They are far from being “good” for everyday use. I just wanted to point out how it seems that critical thought gets shut down at the sight of those 6 letters, and I hope someone can explain to me what they find so terrible about crypto (aside from environmental concerns and shitcoins)
Lemmy is quite left-leaning, and the impetus behind creating Bitcoin was right-wing Austrian school economics. Now, it’s being pushed by literal fascists.
I can’t say I’ve ever seen fascists pushing Bitcoins, but then again I don’t frequent those spaces. I struggle to see how they are ideologically similar though. Doesn’t seem like a very authoritarian concept
And can we really say we know what brought about the publication of the bitcoin whitepaper?
Trump, Bukele, Milei, Orban, Thiel, Musk, etc. It’s the “Dark Enlightenment” and “Network State” type of fascists that want to replace democratic government with stuff like corporate-controlled city-states, and crazy shit like that. They see it as a means to starve the government so they can run their own corporation-like governments.
The message in the genesis block alludes to the ideology (as that kind of stuff was a major talking point for right-wingers back then), though I guess it’s not definitive proof. The early community was definitely Austrian-school adjacent right-wingers though.
The Republicans in US congress just forced through a bunch of pro-crypto crap, if you’re looking for undeniable proof.
I think we can. Have you not heard of this phrase before?
The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks
Satoshi Nakamoto put it in the zeroth block of the Bitcoin blockchain.
Have you noticed that people who work in tech tend to be less excited about cool new flashy tech developments than the average person?
It’s similar to how people who have worked in fast food aren’t quite as keen on eating out than the average person.
Same as watching your co-worker who hasn’t washed his hands after his last shit collect the pieces of a burger that dropped on the dirty floor to sell them to a customer isn’t exactly appetizing, knowing what goes on behind the scenes with tech developments doesn’t really get you on board for that either.
I think the Lemmy userbase is too small and its easy for a few vocal voices to dominate the conversation.
There are often contradicting points that the Lemmy hivemind holds.
Like Lemmy wants to abolish the police but also wants to empower the police to take away people’s guns??? (Talking about the US btw)
Lemmy loves their doublethink
The internet loves to hate, it’s that simple.
You forgot shoes! Criminals use shoes, too! So everyone wearing shoes must be a criminal. Either that, or they were scammed into wearing shoes.
Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme because it only keeps its value as long as people are constantly buying it. If no one wants to buy it, the value of any amount of bitcoin is zero. This is why people who have bitcoin are trying to convince anyone else to keep buying.
Your local government-backed currency does not have this problem, because you get paid with it, you pay taxes with it and vendors in your country have to accept it.
After a few cycles people start to realize blah blah blah explanation is really just when is the price going up. We’ve all heard it all by now. It starts feeling like being sold on a timeshare. We aren’t new clients to try to sell this topic too
We already know all the explaination and blockchain crap. We know the spiel and sat through it all through multiple cycles. It’s at this point like trying to sell a car to a car salesperson using tactics they already know.
So that’s the lack of enthusiasm. We are less likely to be new to this.
But then why still be anti bitcoin?
Because (like genAI) crypto-coin people as a general population will not shut up and it gets annoying to keep hearing the same spiel. And it’s an insulting one, about how everyone not on the Bitcoin train is a stupid loser and we’ll be kissing their ass and wishing we were them when the whole thing really rockets off. Sometimes that part isn’t entirely explicit, but I hear it in almost every pro-Bitcoin rant.
The entire concept is fundamentally flawed
You are basing a economy with real economic stakes on something that is massively unstable and very resource intensive.
I was excited for Bitcoin but the more I learned and the more the public used it, the more I hated it.
EDIT: FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH IS A BADLY PHRASE EXPLANATION, PLEASE READ MY COMMENT BELOW TO UNDERSTAND MY POINT
Bitcoins timestamp only supports dates up to 2106 because they decided on an UNSIGNED value. You don’t need negative values… You know when the network starts, that is 0. Without network, no Bitcoin.
That is how bad it is engineered.
And we are not even talking proof of work or whatever. Crypto is a scam because the creators made it very obvious that they didn’t really care about the project and the community is just gambling.
I don’t get why using an unsigned value is bad in this context. Like you’ve said yourself, why would you add support for dates that happened before the creation of the network?
Sorry my phrasing was bad and made it confusing. Let me explain it in detail.
They correctly choose a unsigned int for the time but they based it on Unix time, and Unix time is signed. So they choose a system that would require an conversion from Unix time to Bitcoin time (or the other way around) anyway. But you don’t need to be able to have a timestamp for 1970, which their timestamp system supports, because instead of counting from 2008 (the invention of Bitcoin) they count from 1970. Wasting 38 years and as you know Unix time is hitting a limit in 2038, 68 years after its start, Bitcoin time is unsigned and so it gets to 2106. 2106-1970= 136 years. And they are wasting 38 years!!! Why? You need a conversion between both after 2038 anyway. And if they really care for cheap conversion, a signed 64bit value would be much better, because after 2038, that will probably be the standard. So they chose to waste 38 years for compatibility which will break after 2038, instead of choosing compatibility after 2038 for 292 billion years.
And if size was the reason and 64bit timestamps would have been too big, just start counting from 2008 (or better 2009 when the network started) and get all those juicy 136 years instead of 98 years.
It is stupid.
The choice of a
uint32_tfor time saves 4 bytes per transaction. That doesn’t sound like much, but with 1.2 billion transactions recorded, it adds up to almost 10 GB of space saved.They could, ultimately, just replace it with a
uint64_tsome time in the 22nd century without much fuss. In the late 2000s when Bitcoin was created, storage space was at a significant cost, but now it is quite cheap and in the 2100s it will undoubtedly be even cheaper.10gb, on a 670gb big Blockchain. Those 10gb are super important.
And again, size would an ok argument if they didn’t go for uint32 instead of int32. Because they broke compatible with Unix time for no reason at that moment. Unless they wanted to min/Max every bit and then why did they start with 1970? And not 2008/2009?
It makes no sense.
Also in 2008, 10gb would have cost you around $1. Ofc, each node would have required the 10 additional gb, so each node would be $1 more. Of course, there weren’t that many transaction in the chain and it wouldn’t actually cost that much, but ok.
Neither side makes good points except about how the ither sucks. There arent any.
I really like Taler
