Bitcoin boom may be a disaster for the environment

Re:Bitcoin boom may be a disaster for the environment by wildmusings on Saturday December 09, 2017 @09:17PM (#15889446)

The best way to think about it is like gold. The gold standard didn't mean that everyone was doing day to day trading in gold. While you could carry around physical gold (and coins did contain precious metals), gold-backed notes were a big part of the equation.

If Bitcoin became a major currency, you'd have banks that pay you interest for your deposits and then issue you notes (not necessarily physical). They would pay for your interest and make their profit by lending out a portion of deposits.

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Re:Bitcoin boom may be a disaster for the environment by BoiledCabbage on Sunday December 10, 2017 @12:34PM (#15892424)

So essentially Bitcoin is so terrible as an actual currency / method of transferring money that we'll need to create another crypto on top of it that fixes all of the original issues of Bitcoin. All the while Bitcoin will still be using > 15% of all energy consumed in the world. Oh and we still have to trust Banks to make the underlying transactions on the Bitcoin when we use this new currency but Bitcoin is too slow to keep up with the needed transaction rate.

This is a disaster. And like most technologists, everyone enamored with the technology is completely blind or in denial of the actual societal interaction - which will be abysmam.

Bitcoin will be society's first grey goo. It's just a waiting game until people are ready to admit it.

[ Parent | on HN ]