this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Each Bitcoin transaction uses 4,200 gallons of water — enough to fill a swimming pool — and could potentially cause freshwater shortages (www.tomshardware.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Normal things might turn into “highly illegal” overnight - first thing that comes to mind is what happened with abortion laws. There are always vulnerable people who aren’t criminals, and saying they shouldn’t have such a payment option is kind of close to “only criminals would need end-to-end encryption”.

I'm not saying people have nothing to hide, or making that case. I'm saying the ask is so high that people who don't feel like they must use crypto don't, and this is one of the hills it would have to conquer to be taken seriously. There are obvious negatives like the environmental impact, the PITA complicated tech that is hard to understand, the slow transactions, and the difficulty of getting usable money into and out of crypto. And the vast majority of purchases, the mass adoption, aren't stuff that people care to hide or they would already be only using cash.

I'd love to pay for my VPN with crypto, but I'm not willing to spend the hours it would take to figure it out in the current form, not to mention actually make it at all actually anonymous, plus pay roughly 2x in payment fees.

Now think of people who don't even care about privacy to use a VPN...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, I don't deny there are significant negatives. But this is the closest we got to mass-adopted digital cash YET. Buying it can indeed be tricky, I did get lucky with that.

And the vast majority of purchases, the mass adoption, aren’t stuff that people care to hide or they would already be only using cash.

I don't think crypto is even supposed to be for the "vast majority of purchases". It does and always will exist alongside traditional payment options, which are, indeed, preferrable for many things.

But when it comes to learning the tech... Isn't it the same for proper privacy, anonymity and safety in general? Instead of proclaiming it as a "lost cause", I think we should lend a hand to someone who needs protection but has trouble figuring it out.

Also paying with card might just become impossible even for people who don't mind it (like me). Sure, I could go through a middleman, but their commission would far exceed Monero fees and there's a bigger chance of being scammed.

opportunities to get hacked and all your crypto stolen

Oh, forgot to reply to that one. In some cases the individual responsibility is actually preferrable to the nonzero chance that a bank or government would freeze your bank account.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

But when it comes to learning the tech… Isn’t it the same for proper privacy, anonymity and safety in general? Instead of proclaiming it as a “lost cause”, I think we should lend a hand to someone who needs protection but has trouble figuring it out.

I've gotten cynical over trying to lend a hand to people around using Linux. Masses don't want to be taught things. Heck, look at the lemmy adoption issues. Yes, idealistically maybe "digital cash" has a use, but practically people don't see it. At this point, it's not a lack of knowledge - there were super bowl commercials. It's a lack of interest. It's like the laser keyboards "of the future" circa 2010. They didn't solve an actual problem enough people had to be worth learning how to use them and deal with the clunky parts.