This is a huge win against predatory monetization
One more step towards removing shitty in-game currency with awful set bundles and conversion that forces you to spend more than you want to
Virtual currency that you purchase with real money should have been banned a long, long time ago.
Should get rid of crypto while we’re at it.
Why?
Bitcoin alone uses more electricity than the entire country of Norway.
It’s a REALLY REALLY wasteful way to do transactions and is terrible for the environment.
Other than that, it’s fueled the black market and illegal business, it doesn’t really have any real world benefits you can’t get from regular banking for the vast majority of people.
One bitcoin transaction is estimated to use between 50 and 700kwh of electricity. Your average dutch household uses ~2000kwh, so ~10 transactions burn more electricity than a whole household.
And to add to how bad that is, Norway is a small country, but we use really, really much energy per capita, since our energy has always been so cheap due to hydro power and politicians in 1905 going all in on that the benefits of our nature should benefit us all. Only in the last few years, prices have aligned more with the rest of the continent, though that price hike is supported for the many by the government, since the continental standard is so foreignly high for us.
Bitcoin is basically a prototype, though. (Some) other cryptos are far more efficient.
The illegal transactions complaint is legit, but there’s cases where that’s not a bad thing.
I get that it’s very nice during a revolution or something like that, but there are also massive downsides and to me it looks like it mostly benefits criminals and people taking advantage of others.
Trump has made a fortune on his shit-coin, it’s a great way for people to get around regulations and hide things they usually wouldn’t get away with.
I’m open to have my opinion changed, it’s just what it looks like to me
https://coinshares.com/nl-en/insights/research-data/closer-look-environmental-impact-of-bitcoin-mining/ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/jul/26/climate-hero-villain-fossil-fuel-frenzy-challenges-norway-green-image https://www.dw.com/en/norways-big-green-lie/audio-74144534
Bitcoin is a far superior way to control your own finances. Transactions are more transparent helping to prevent corruption for one thing. As long as we let the banks control everything, we will never be able to fix most of the problems causing climate damage. If you are still intent on complaining that Bitcoin is evil, it is a necessary evil. It has unfortunately been adopted by the big companies at this stage so they will benefit immensely from it, but taking everything and the alternatives into account, it should actually help the environment in the long run.
Bitcoin doesn’t have the arbitration that banks can offer. Bitcoin also uses ridiculous amounts of energy, so much so that I don’t think the network could even handle taking over the volume that the banks currently handle. The idea that it is somehow a saviour for the environment is laughable.
I don’t think that anyone claimed it is somehow the saviour for then environment. There is a lot more to bitcoin than was possible to reply.
I would Like to see you try… How would you bann blockchain tech? The reason why bitcoin exists, believe it or not, is for you. To have an alternative to current world banking, which is screwing us all over with fake valuta. A factional number on your bank account, that is worth whatever the banks say it is. Bitcoin is an alternative to world banking, so we wouldn’t end up in a financial crisis like 2008 again.
Bitcoin was supposed to be an anonymous, secure, digital currency.
If you actually want that, its called monero, not bitcoin, and even it has problems.
Bitcoin, ethereum, all the forks and clones of them with different stupid names?
Not anonymous, not secure.
Oh, right, and they’re all massively tied into that financial/monetary speculation machine that they were supposed to be an alternative to.
Now, you just have a crypto balance that is whatever your coin exchange says it is, untill oops, turns out they were double holding ‘your’ coins in some way, you actually have none, or, a market swing or crash wipes out your ‘store of value’, because you actually invested in a complicated ponzi scheme.
For all the bullshit fraud and dangerous speculation of traditional finance, the crypto space is a million times worse.
Crypto now largely just is a speculative asset.
It never took off as an actual medium of exchange for anything other than basically illegal guns and drugs… its just a new, more insane kind of stock market, a new kind of speculative asset.
Every crypto video game is a fucking joke.
NFTs are a fucking joke.
Everything you dislike about traditional banking and finance?
Crypto is that, but much worse.
Where do I write anything about anonymity? I am talking about an alternative to the current world banking system, which sucks.
A core component of the original pitch of Bitcoin was that it would enable anonymous transactions, thus circumventing discriminatory practices from banks, things like being debanked.
But… turns out, you can fairly easily and fairly anonymously deanonymize a bitcoin wallet, in many situations.
You didn’t specifically mention anonymity, but I was reading ‘the white paper’ within days of it being published by Satoshi.
That intended design element has functionally failed, unless you wanna move over to Monero, basically, but Monero has other problems, from a currency standpoint.
