Is anyone here actually BTC positive?
I have been using crypto since 2017, made plenty of dumb trades which caused me to lose out a lot. Currently my portfolio is about 80% BTC and while the new USA admin seems they may do more damage than good to the crypto space I'm still positive about Bitcoin.
This sub seems like a meme or anti-btc sub mostly. Anybody here who isn't that way?
I am, it's a nice currency.
It's money. It's private property. I'm anti- both of those. But, I am coerced and compelled to participate in a monetary economy. So, as long as we are stuck in this situation I choose to save my money in a form that is the most reflective of my rejection of existing centralized hierarchical institutions and one that I believe can leverage those rather toxic aspects of capitalism to springboard it's value. Like, you don't have to be a monetary luddite just because you're a communist (In fact, some people are communists and socialists specifically because they understand money more intimately and exactingly than most capitalists).
So I'm money negative overall, bitcoin positive within that negative space. I'd be cool if it sucked a bunch of the inflated value out of real estate, though I don't know if it'll actually do that. Governments for sure will never allow it to hamstring their ability to raise military funding through inflation as a lot of anti-war libertarians envision.
It's private property.
Why does it count as private property and not personal property?
To be clear I am referring to marxist definitions of property and not common law definitions. It's not personal as it has no personal practical use to me, it is very purely an asset, a fungible and liquid capital. The possession of which necessarily deprives others of doing the same (Finite supply). I own it specifically to leverage it's value and that alone.
Bitcoin is a better gold than gold. It will be in central bank reserves and trade settlement currencies/mechanisms. In terms of price, gold going up is always bullish for Bitcoin, because there is a cap on gold price rise that is more gold mining, and because bitcoin is a better gold than gold, retail sales of gold for bitcoin.
I'm pro-₿itcoin
I'm an ETH-head. I understand it. It makes sense. Bitcoin? Bitcoin doesn't make any sense to me. I have severe concern about its long-term security model and the community's overall lack of desire to change anything about the protocol, including its security model.
That said, I'm overall negative about crypto in general these days. VCs, corporations, institutions, politicians, etc have all seemingly co-oped crypto in a big way. There's not much about the original cypherpunk ideals that remains anymore.
I'm part of Breadchain, a project spearheaded by The Blockchain Socialist to promote and fund left-aligned crypto projects that help workers and coops, etc. But again, these days I'm getting very jaded about the trajectory of crypto.
My biggest worry about Bitcoin is that it's still on proof of work. Even if it has shown itself to be bulletproof, it uses as much electricity as a small country and I don't think the environmentalists are going to just let that slide.
Proof-of-Stake is not a great match for Bitcoin because it fails at being neutral, it's a plutocracy system and is not as resilient as PoW.
You know what other global industries consume more than small countries ? All of them, including banking. This is an unfaire comparison in my opinion. Also the energy consumption is not the most interesting factor, the source of the energy is more interesting in my opinion.
Here is a comment I just made under OP's post to list a few academic peer-reviewed paper about the positive environmental impact of Bitcoin's PoW for financing renewable energy production and cleaning methane from the atmosphere. I've also included some articles from mainstream media.
Aside from the long term security guarantees that every Bitcoiner is just ignoring, the narrative around energy usage has pretty much gone away. Why? I have no idea. Ethereum in comparison has gone to PoS and reduced its energy usage to near trivial amounts while at the same time democratizing securing the network in a way more sustainable way.
Ethereum's long-term security model is Proof of Stake.
At best, it's economic rent with holders getting free money from workers. At worst, it's a game of musical chairs that only people who don't use the money can win. Profits from securing the network ought to automatically adjust towards zero.
PoS is why Ethereum bailed out everyone with money in the DAO. PoW is why Bitcoin didn't bail out anyone with money in MtGox. The cost of auditing smart contracts ought to be internalized to the people using them, not an external cost for all users.
Upgrading Bitcoin is a great idea. Ethereum's flexibility has been proven useful by the huge variety of projects that run on it. So we should support BIP 300 and get some of that. But I would not consider Ethereum's security model to be an upgrade.
At best, it’s economic rent with holders getting free money from workers.
The workers are the ones securing the network. Anybody can participate, providing they have as little as 0.01 ETH to put up as collateral.
At worst, it’s a game of musical chairs that only people who don’t use the money can win. Profits from securing the network ought to automatically adjust towards zero.
Ethereum base fees are in fact sent to a burn address and removed from circulation. Validators get priority tips only.
PoS is why Ethereum bailed out everyone with money in the DAO.
PoS is unrelated to the DAO hack. PoS is a consensus mechanism change from PoW. Instead of solving increasingly more difficult and energy-intensive puzzles to determine who gets to process the next block, in Ethereum it's randomly chosen amongst the validators.
Upgrading Bitcoin is a great idea
An idea that virtually NOBODY in the bitcoin community agrees with. The entire value prop of Bitcoin is that it's ossified and simple.
But I would not consider Ethereum’s security model to be an upgrade
Ethereum's model is sustainable 10, 20, 50 years from now. In order for Bitcoin's security to be sustainable, the price of BTC must rise. Each Bitcoin halving reduces the block reward for miners ... so unless the price just goes up forever as Bitcoin literally burns the planet, the result is a decrease in the overall hashrate of the network, allowing for an easier attack.
This is demonstrably true: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4727999
The DAO happened six years before Ethereum switched to Proof of Stake. Forking was probably the wrong call but the users voted with their feet and Ethereum Classic is still there if anybody wants to use it. Payments do decrease as a larger percentage of all Ethereum is dedicated to staking. Proof of Stake is not economic rent, the stakers only receive payment while they continue to perform their duties faithfully, if they fail or cheat they are instead penalized and lose their status.
Lemmy is just not a great platform if you value personal property and individual freedom, it was started by socialists/communists and it shows. It's pretty random that I even answer to this post because I check lemmy only once every few weeks. >97% bitcoin here.
Lemmy is just not a great platform if you value personal property
Personal property vs private property.
and individual freedom
Bravo! Thanks for making my point.
It's an environmental disaster where the worst people in the world use vast resources to power and cool entropy machines
Is fiat better?
We drop interest rates in order to spurn more consumption, to hit an inflation target as technology lowers the price of goods, what would you call that?
Yes, fiat is a better ledger system for currency. Proof-of-work crypto has gotta be the most energy inefficient design in the history of humanity.
I call it capitalism. As long as the bourgeois controls money - whether that's gold, fiat or crypto curriencies - then it's going to drive a system based on infinite growth and consumption
No it's more complex than that, actually Bitcoin mining could help financing the energy transition and cleaning methane from the atmoshpere.
Peer-reviewed scientific papers :
Mainstream media coverage
Edit : added more sources because I published it before finishing by mistakes