Fiat money doesn't give your free money either. You have to invest in something - and there's plenty of fee-limited options in the cryptocurrency world as well.
> And this isn't a vague promise, some 60/70% of the hashrate from China, which include most coal-based mining, is being wiped out in just a few weeks.
Because the price is so low, not because they want to help the environment. At the next peak everyone will be happy to burn whatever fuel is cheaper than the payout again.
Nobody wants to help the environment. The typical US lifestyle would require 8 planets if it was rolled out across the world's population. Just leaving your phone plugged in uses more energy than all of crypto mining combined.
So don't preach about caring, nobody cares. They say they do, but don't. So yes, miners seek out cheap renewables, which is motivated by profit, not helping the environment. As said, none of us are better. We don't care. But if a profit-based incentive leads to renewable energy usage and helping the environment as a side-effect, I'm all for it.
But the same applies to BTC with BlockFi / BIA.
Not true for Bitcoin. Neither owning your coins in a wallet nor leaving them on an exchange grows your amount of Bitcoin.
Can you give away your Bitcoin to some rogue, fully unregulated party claiming you get back more Bitcoin? Yes, in the same way I can give my fiat to some shady character in the streets. I may get back more fiat. Or I may be permanently parted from my coins.
These things are not the same. Bitcoin does not have interest built in. Not at bank level nor at central bank level. This is radically different from fiat.
Into an interest paying account - yes. A savings account like that may be the "don't even mention it" default for you and me. But not for:
- unbanked people in the US (~6%)
- and in the world (much larger https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/raw-data-unba...)
- people with non-interest-paying accounts for religious reasons
- people in countries where interest is ~0% or negative (https://dqydj.com/negative-savings-accounts/)
Ever heard of the African Bitcoin community, a transnational initiative running for years now that resulted in Africa growing fastest in addresses of all continents?
Or what about El Salvador, 70% unbanked, where every single citizen will get a first small BTC deposit from the government, thereby becoming banked by the millions?
And what about Libya? You know, that country with a crashing currency that next blocked access to bank accounts for months, it all going up in smoke? Looked into the BTC numbers there?
So tell me, were you completely unaware of this at all, or do you find these people not important enough to count as more than zero?
The impacts of climate change, which Bitcoin unquestionably contributes to, skew significantly towards poorer countries.
And the consumer protections built into the regulations around fiat currencies are there to protect people who can't afford teams of accountants and lawyers.
Unless you don't believe the narrative that Bitcoin stores/grows wealth very well, in that case...poor people can simply not use it.
Perhaps you mean to say that the distribution of coins is uneven. That's true, but not a problem Bitcoin aims to solve or can solve. Bitcoin is fair, the same rules apply to everyone. If a billionaire has a 1,000 Bitcoin and I have 0.1 Bitcoin, we both win or lose based on price action equally, relatively speaking. That's as fair as it gets. With Bitcoin, having lots of coins doesn't give you any new free coins, unlike fiat money.
The environmental destruction is overstated and rapidly changing as we speak. Soon the vast majority of mining happens based on renewables with a specific focus on stranded energy. And this isn't a vague promise, some 60/70% of the hashrate from China, which include most coal-based mining, is being wiped out in just a few weeks.