"Zero" is not fair only because the total sum effect has definitely been negative. Ignoring all the ponzis, frauds, scams and rugpulls, you can't discount the massive amounts of wasted energy.
> as it's clearly being used more and more for legitimate purposes such as zero fee international money transfers and providing a more cost-effective option for merchants compared to credit cards.
All of the major cryptocurrencies are pretty terrible at zero-fee money transfers, given the fact that none of them have zero fees and have laughable bandwidth. And that's not even considering on/offramp fees for turning crypto into usable money. There's very little proof to actual adoption in ecommerce, since most merchants "accepting crypto" actually accept money, there's just a middleman that does the conversion.
And for most people sending money overseas isn’t a use case at all.
Crypto is a solution in search of a real problem to solve. A Rube Goldberg machine to do elaborate things with no (legal) point.
Then crypto must be a great thing for the world, unless you believe that might makes right and it's okay for the US to boss the rest of the world around about who they can and cannot do business with. It's completely crazy, it's the US that massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians in the middle east, yet somehow the US has the moral right to force other countries not to trade with Iran, which has mostly minded its own business.
>That would make the world a better place.
Clearly your idea of making the world a better place is making it a world where the US has even more power, something that many other countries would disagree is an improvement. Just imagine, for people in parts of the Middle East every day was like 9/11, with US plans and drones flying in unstoppably, blowing up their friends and relatives.
Not the parent, but given the alternatives of which I'm aware, I'm ok with this. It's going to be someone, the US is the least worst afaik. And this is still the case even though I disagree with a lot of stuff the US government and it's voters choose to do.
tell that to ukrainians being bombed with iranian Shaheds every day.
some interesting nonsense on HN some days.
It's more like any dictator/autocrat who wants to stay in power by threatening the world will work on it. That isn't good for the world. Your statement is not a value judgement or even interested in first or second order effects of such a decision, so is essentially useless in evaluating whether something is good or bad.
There are systemic issues and I’m no friend of the USA but crypto isn’t in anyway addressing the gripes about the current state of the world.
Most importantly: the idea that technology is going to fix things is ludicrous and it shows that people don’t understand the power of politics, governments and legislations.
Most of current human suffering is still fiat.
Crypto is barely a blip in the grand scheme and I don't see how it differs from, say, gambling.
Gambling is also, almost always, a negative for society. It's why it's so heavily regulated.
Sadly, this level where people don't distinguish "A subset of B" from "B subset of A" is typical to all discussions related to crypto.
I literally started 'by that logic' to underline how broken the whole initial comment was!
Do only smart people use fiat? Like... it's not even worth dissecting your reply.
Or even about modern fiat currencies. Just look at the Turkish Lira (~343% vs EUR / 5y), Argentinian Peso (~758% vs EUR / 5y) or a dozen other currencies that lost insane amounts of value over the last years [1], mostly because of political misgovernance and resulting economic devastation.
Any investment is supposed to have a return that exceeds inflation or some other reasonable index, eventually in the eyes of some kind of reasonable investor.
If it doesn't meet that criteria then it is more likely a social phenomenon interchangeable with scam instead of a valid investment, i.e. a pump and dump OTC stock is an investment being involved in a scam if it has acquired actual rights or business that have a small probability of paying off significantly better than inflation that's not easy to disprove with basic research. It is a pure scam if the underlying company is only on paper or generally incapable of actually doing anything it claims because it was created or is pumped with just enough cash to continue to operate purely for the purpose of having a stock but is incapable of ever making a real profit.
Some coins may be different than what I described as a scam, but if you accept that only holding value remains as a probable use of BTC then any suggestion of it as a valid investment or holder of value is a scam.
And that greater fool must in turn convince an even greater fool, etc, etc
It's not a Ponzi, but it has similar dynamics to a Ponzi in that you can only gain money through other people losing money.
It's a garbage currency - fees are too high, transfers too slow. It's a garbage technology that encourages wanton energy wastage. Its only "value" is as an investment.
Bad price stability, slow transactions, high fees under any amount of load, bad privacy, terrible adoption, etc, etc
All crypto is some form of crime, money laundering, evading sanctions, funding terrorism, or just a ponzi scheme, it's just different sides of the same thing.
I wish this space would totally collapse. Maybe if Tether (which is totally insolvent) collapses the whole space just dies.
That would make the world a better place.
Yes, it's true: the dollar or any other currency can be used for nefarious purposes as well, but that's why we have so much financial regulations and oversight (which should be better). And most of all, the upsides of regular currency (if you can call crypto a currency at all) is that it's the foundation of our societies.
I just want to see all crypto die in a fire. The profound negative impact crypto has had on our world with zero benefits makes me so sad.