Thoughts on Cryptocurrency? (programming.dev)

submitted 8 months ago by actual_patience@programming.dev to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

72 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I was wondering what viewpoints and opinions this community has when it comes to cryptocurrency.

Personally, I'm not against it, but I'm not for it either. I like the concept of bringing back cash anonymity, and also decentralization (obviously). Although I don't think it will be viable for at least another decade.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago

Well yeah, another problem is that there's always another cryptocurrency. Since there's no widely adopted coin (Bitcoin is closest), people jump to the next one hoping that they'll get in early before it takes off.

So the problem isn't that a given cryptocurrency takes too much energy, it's that speculators jump from coin to coin. I think that will settle down as well, and we'll be left with mostly serious miners looking for actual profit who optimize costs down with cheap excess energy.

So what we're looking at is kind of a worst case scenario. Bitcoin rewards halve every four years, and Bitcoin valuations are unlikely to keep up. Lots of cryptocurrencies are also switching to proof of stake. Both of these together should result in drastically less energy being used.

So I'm bullish on crypto energy usage falling going forward, even if it gains mainstream adoption as a currency (unlikely).

this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2024

45 points (100.0% liked)

Privacy

32039 readers

904 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS