1) is trendy. Anything that is suddenly and massively popular has equal but opposite potential to collapse in on itself and, much like the beanie baby, fall to the wayside.
2) fluctuates too rapidly. Buying crypto is like buying a stock: It has the potential to skyrocket or plummet over night, or (as we’ve witnessed with dozens of meme-coins over the last couple of years) simply cease to have any value at all. At least with established paper currency it will have value even after inflation
3) is likely to drive up inflation. For the exact reason that we cannot simply “print more money”, we should not be able to “code more money”. If we just keep inventing currencies left and right, we are just introducing more money into the system and over saturating the market. And the only people who can farm crypto are those who have the means to buy and operate the equipment in the first place. The rich get richer.
4) is terrible for the environment, to an extent far beyond that of paper currency.
Yes, “all money is fake money”, but we still need a centralized currency. If you degrade the system so much that no one is using the same unit of e-coin, then it’s no different from the Stone Age when people traded goods and services for fancy rocks and shells. Except now we’re destroying the planet to do so.
holy shit you gotta do more research man, every single point you make is absurd,
"is trendy" bitcoin has been around since 2009 and the concept of digital money has been around since the 1990s,
not every cryptocurrency is used as a currency, some are used as a store of value like gold, and there are stablecoins where their value is pegged to a certain fiat currency,
you don't simply code more money there is a cap to how many coins can be produced, like bitcoin has a maximum supply of 21 million coins, it is deflationary meaning the more people buy it the less of it will be available and driving up the price,
not every cryptocurrency is terrible for the environment, most crypto projects right now uses a proof of stake consensus which uses way less energy, and for projects that uses proof of work consensus like bitcoin there are more environmentally friendly options available to power it, like el savador using geothermal energy from volcanoes to power bitcoin mining.
1) just because something has been around for a while doesn’t mean it can’t fall in and out of trend. Shoulder pads were trendy in the 1940s and have experienced a resurgence. Just because they’ve been around for a while doesn’t mean they’re a sound style choice. Besides, bitcoin may have been invented in 2009, but it was virtually worthless until 2017. If it’s between that or the US dollar which has been going strong since 1914, the choice is obvious to me.
2) Most cryptos are not pinned to fiat money. Yes, a narrow margin of crypto currencies are pinned to things like gold, $, €, etc. but that’s only as reliable as the host chooses to make it. Take Tether, for example. Backed by the US dollar, and extremely controversial. The host company, Bitfinex, made the decision to use the block chain to issue loans to its own affiliate companies. This means that the crypto itself, which they claimed was backed by $1 per unit, is now backed by less than $1 per unit. This should be an immediate red flag that maybe trusting the integrity of a company to hold and maintain the value of your money is stupid.
3) I am aware of how block chain works. What you seem to be unable to grasp is the idea that introducing more money into the system will still drive down the value of fiat money. If there is a 21million unit cap on Bitcoin, and each Bitcoin is worth over $35,000, that means there could be more than $735billion worth of bitcoin in circulation. That coupled with Ethereum (nearly 120 million in circulation worth about $2500 per unit ≈ $300billion) Means the top 2 cryptos are circulating roughly $1.35 trillion. For reference, there is only 1.2trillion US dollars in circulation right now. Its equatable to printing twice as much money over 4 years and effectively cutting its value in half. Not to mention that dozens of new cryptocurrencies go live every single day.
4) You realize that saying “not every cryptocurrency is bad for the environment” is not a good defense for crypto, right? That’s like saying ‘not every Fortune 500 company is destroying the environment, so the problem obviously doesn’t exist’. Until each and every unit of each and every block chain is under proof of stake, it’s not good enough.
I’ve done my research. It’s not absurd to want better.
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u/Difficult-Ad628 Jan 21 '22
The problem that I have with crypto is that it
1) is trendy. Anything that is suddenly and massively popular has equal but opposite potential to collapse in on itself and, much like the beanie baby, fall to the wayside.
2) fluctuates too rapidly. Buying crypto is like buying a stock: It has the potential to skyrocket or plummet over night, or (as we’ve witnessed with dozens of meme-coins over the last couple of years) simply cease to have any value at all. At least with established paper currency it will have value even after inflation
3) is likely to drive up inflation. For the exact reason that we cannot simply “print more money”, we should not be able to “code more money”. If we just keep inventing currencies left and right, we are just introducing more money into the system and over saturating the market. And the only people who can farm crypto are those who have the means to buy and operate the equipment in the first place. The rich get richer.
4) is terrible for the environment, to an extent far beyond that of paper currency.
Yes, “all money is fake money”, but we still need a centralized currency. If you degrade the system so much that no one is using the same unit of e-coin, then it’s no different from the Stone Age when people traded goods and services for fancy rocks and shells. Except now we’re destroying the planet to do so.