One was what happened in Lebanon after the port explosion. An Australian who had married a Lebanese wife and moved to Lebanon reported the couple had decided the move was a bad idea, and were saving for a relocation back to Australia. Then the explosion happened, and the government literally ran out of money. The solution was apparently to raid the citizens savings accounts. From https://www.aa.com.tr/en/economy/lebanese-cannot-access-mone... :
> As a result of monetary policies implemented by central bank Governor Riad Salameh, people are currently unable to withdraw money even from local currency accounts, she added.
I don't know if their savings were permanently taken or merely "borrowed" for a while, but in any case the move to Australia was taken off the table when it looked most desirable.
In that scenario, the non-reversibility of Bitcoin transactions looks real attractive. I think it is fair to say crypto currencies look most attractive when the traditional trust networks we humans have crafted out of out of bankers, institutions and laws break down. While the crypto currencies have their weaknesses - the 51% attack is very real and the power consumption of Argentina can seem over the top, they provide a very concrete, measurable level of trustworthiness. You know what it will take to break it. The soft human trust networks can and do break in a myriad of ways, so often we given them a name - "black swan events".
How do we balance it so it can provide a net positive for humanity?
Legitimate democracy can't be undermined by an international currency not controlled be the government. In fact, it can be reinforced by it.
This issue is very similar to free speech: the good it does by making the government unable to silence political opponents far outweights the harm done by extremists and lunatics of all sorts.
And no, it is not at all similar to free speech. Cryptocurrencies do massive harm - to the environment, to innocent people losing their money to scammers and frauds, and to the entire economy through enabling ransomware - and tiny, tiny amounts of good, which dwindle in comparison to the harm.
If you provide numbers, we can compare this massive harm with some other types of massive harms.
As for tiny amount of good - reclaiming control over storage of value from The Man is such a tremendous achievement that will help us fight tyranny everywhere. Bitcoin donations was the only type of funding russian government failed to stop when it started to clamp down the opposition. For me, this capability trumps your concerns about environment and crime any day.
If that is not massive harm I do not know what is.
A single home PC from 2004 could run the bitcoin network, but instead, it uses 0.1% of all the energy in the world.
It is by a wide margin the most ridiculously inefficient thing ever created. And it won't improve, because it is built that way by design.
As for "7 transactions per second", sure, 7 on-chain transactions with the current block size. You don't need them for things like buying a cup of coffee. So this FUD is somewhat outdated.
And that price is ridiculously, stupendously high. Much, much, much too high. It is in no way worth that price.
If it is not worth the price for you, nobody is forcing you to pay it.
Those that do, buy electric power from energy companies at the commercial rate. If you what to forbid people using bought power as they see fit, I suggest you start with yourself: do not use electricity, stop eating meat, stop traveling, stop using any items produced with electricity or burning trees.
Bitcoin is.
I see arguments of this form everywhere:
Law-abiding, tax-paying, responsible citizens use Tool X for legitimate purposes. Criminals also use Tool X for crimes. Therefore, we should ban Tool X.
Tool X = {cryptocurrency, encryption, firearms, drugs, etc.}
Tools that have legitimate uses should not be prohibited to law-abiding citizens.
Absolutely prosecute people who use the tool to hurt other people, but don't prohibit the tools that both bad people and good people use.
"... but but Drugs! Criminals!" is what common people say at this point, to which I answer that drugs and crime flourished long before Bitcoin came to exist.