Each Bitcoin transaction uses 4,200 gallons of water — enough to fill a swimming pool — and could potentially cause freshwater shortages

I can get behind "uses a lot of water". But where the headline loses me (to the point where I won't be reading the article) is "potentially cause freshwater shortages".

If someone is using water to mine bitcoins... that's because they can't think of anything more useful to do with that water and likely means they are operating somewhere that has an abundance of water.

And if they're wasting a resource that is needed to grow food, well that's something the local government can easily stop.

You think having thousands of bankers use their car twice a day is better? It's so much worse

I guess my point had less to do with cryptocurrency and more to do with currency in general. It's not a defense of bitcoin as much as it's a critique of how much energy the system in general uses, either way.

However, it's also one that's not easily solved. Even with paper/coin money, you're still using finite resources to produce the bank-notes.

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

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Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

Yeah it counts water that flows into streams that makes no sense

Yeah, whataboutism is essentially telling on one's self; an implicit recognition that one has no better arguments than to try to distract.

So by your definition the current banking system is equally flawed because bank transfer aren’t enough (Bitcoin main layer) and a second, faster and more scalable option on top of that is needed, I.e. for example Visa (Lightning Network).

Also exploding problem is a rather flawed or better incorrect way of comparing it. For example the current banking system also took its time to ramp up and I assume the 28 months you mention are for the entire US population (because there’s no source) and not all of that population has a bank account, which is a problem with the current system. So it isn’t “fair” to present bitcoin as infeasible to solve a problem that the current system hasn’t yet solved with its decades of existence.

Regarding those difficulties about the LN, I’m not the person you replied to but it’s still very much in development so it’s normal to have issues. Google it and you will find the same for the whatever system you think is the best atm. Heck some of those problems are there by design. But I will have a look at those links you shared.

let's stop it all.

Do you mean 3/12/2023?

I'd prefer they both stopped.

Sorry, I meant than using Zelle, a credit or debit card, Paypal, etc. Last time I looked, most crypto is completely traceable because of the public ledger (monero does built in illegal in the US money laundering style transaction mixing to try and make it less traceable, not sure how well that works, but the rest apply to it), and the distributed public ledgers are the only way it works. I'd argue the way most people can get crypto requires a bank account tied to something like Coinbase, so that's a link from your bank, to your crypto wallet, then the rest is even more public.

However, for most people, crypto doesn't work like cash, and does work like a stock. You need a special broker, you need to move money with fees into the crypto account, then pay fees to buy the crypto. This is way more analogous to stocks, so that's how people think of it, than cash or bank transfers.

Assuming you can figure out the right crypto to buy, now every time you spend it or try and send it to a different wallet, there's stupid high fees for the common Bitcoin and Etherium networks (I haven't actually tried to use the other ones as they get very obscure). We tried to move $30 dollars in Etherium to a different wallet (granted this was 4 years ago) and it cost $15 in "gas fees". This makes me long for the 3% credit card processing fee.

After the fee, it takes quite a while to transfer, I recall Bitcoin took over an hour, and it was like several minutes or more for Etherium. Paypal, Zelle, Card are all instant, or maybe seconds.

Basically if you're not buying something highly illegal, there's 0 benefit to a normal person and masses of costs, complexity, opportunities to get hacked and all your crypto stolen, and exchanges to either collapse or also steal whatever money you had in there. It doesn't solve a problem, and so normal people are right to not use it. I'd suggest after 13 years it's only been used by speculators and scammers "successfully".

Its original purpose was always Gold Standard 2: The Digitalisation for Austrian School-influenced ancap wankers.

PoW is inherently unavailable while also a system of dimmishing returns. PoS is bad IMHO too, but from a sociopolitical aspect and not from tech standpoint.

People can talk all day and say things could have been used for something else or something better. Most of the time people can think of an idea but nobody does it. Don't be hateful towards BTC miners because they actually did it. Like someone else mentioned in another comment, water would be much better utilized by not going into thousands of pools and golf courses or watering lawns. You would probably need investors to have a large operation but it doesn't make these people elite or whatever whales are. The people I know who mine using oil exhaust are wholesome good people just making it by like everyone else is and trying to live their dream. The difference is BTC (not other cryptos) using renewable energy puts it in a unique position to be a good product for everyone as it's a money that is equal for everyone to use, unlike traditional fiat currencies.

It's called "agrivoltaic" farming. Be sure to checkout the hyperlinks in this article too: https://theconversation.com/how-shading-crops-with-solar-panels-can-improve-farming-lower-food-costs-and-reduce-emissions-202094

Bitcoin is the ur-cryptocurrency, the Original Sin from which all of the other flaws from cryptocurrency arise.

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