This place was flooded with extremely biased nocoiners long before energy consumption was a hot topic.

I truly believe it’s simply that they want it to fail since they missed the boat, and their ego is on the line as a forward thinking, “ahead of the curve” technologist.

It can’t be the biggest development of the last decade, what would that say about them? Therefore, inefficient ponzi that’s only used for drugs!

It wasn't this bad in early 2013 when the price of BTC was $70. Actually pg's comments here persuaded me to buy a lot of Bitcoin (with a few other influential people, like Chamath Palihapatiya and Max Keiser, and the Cyprus bail in). Usually I missed all the good early startup investments, as I'm not an American, so Bitcoin was the first exciting thing that I had the ability to invest in early.

I was on the boat in 2010. I got off it early when I decided the whole thing was a speculative bubble.

I don't really have a lot of regrets about that though. I have more regrets about selling other things too early, like stock positions I once owned.

Cryptocurrency has indeed been through several speculative bubbles, and we may even be in the midst of one now.

However, I think the speculative bubble valuation of 2010 is well justified now. The thing about speculation is that sometimes the speculators are right. Tesla is almost certainly in a speculative bubble, too, but every day they arguably justify a higher base value.

That said, you seem relatively balanced for a crypto critic, and didn’t miss the boat but rather jumped off, so I’m not sure you’re part of the cohort I’m describing.

It's great for you, I love Bitcoin, but there are a lot of other exciting things happening in the world that people should invest in depending on their understanding of the world and their priorities.

I'm also very excited about Moderna's mRNA pipeline for example, building new vaccine for cronic illnesses (vaccines are trivial important application at this point of course), and Tesla's mission of decarbonizing the world and getting rid of air pollution. It's just Bitcoin is what I believe will give me the highest ROI right now to invest later in other important technologies.

Of course you don't have the problem because your government is currently not oppressing you and nobody is targeting you. But if that were to change I believe you'll start appreciating Bitcoin more.

The idea that some made-up money that only exists on the internet is some kind of weapon against oppressive governments is so out of touch with reality, that it's incomprehensible how somebody can actually believe that.

For me it is the only reality that exists. I have been using Bitcoin for a long time, travelling a lot, and I see a lot of currencies, and none of them feel close to my ideology. I accept them at the same time, and work around the tax laws imposed by my country by getting a loan against my BTC (which I wouldn't need to if I would live in another country).

You wouldn't think that if you were Chinese, Syrian, Lebanonian, and many other states

Of course I would.

Maybe, but even if it is, does it deserve to be banned as the top comment (as of now) suggests?

I certainly don't think so.

Only if you have no savings. Petrodollar not as healthy as it used to be.