Then they will ask why nobody wants to use their payment cards
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About the "nobody can take your money" part.
Etherium Classic exists because somebody hacked an extremely valuable wallet and funneled 13% of all eth into their wallet. The people who control the mining pools, (rich assholes) wanted that transaction reversed, so they hard forked. Classic is the main fork that didn't reverse that transaction. It's much less popular, despite being run by people who are demonstrably more principled.
Paraphrased from Dan Olson's video "line goes up" about crypto's history and affect on the world. Spoiler: it's a scam, and a tool for the wealthy to get even richer. Computing power can be bought with dollars.
Technically true, but chains nowadays aren't really vulnerable to that same kind of attack just due to their sheer scale and diversification of controlling stakes compared to what they used to be, so I wouldn't consider it a particularly relevant issue today.
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Yeah, but one is extra bad for our enviroment while being a scam.
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you can prevent getting scammed with crypto by using something like escrow
Doesn't protect against:
- Social engineering
- Contract code vulnerabilities
- Untrustworthy/Compromised controlling stakes in that escrow, whether they be people or autonomous systems
- False reversal claims made against the escrow
It has the same possible issues for your financial sovereignty as a regular, centralized financial institution, plus technical issues with the way the underlying infrastructure is built.
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Cryptocurrency is still dependent of a pyramid scheme and criminals-enabling.
As we all know, Visa and MasterCard have never been used by criminals. As soon as a criminal touches a card, the card turns into ash.
Reading isn't your strong suit, is it?
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It's not porn availability that's threatened, but freedom. I don't want to use bitcoin and I still think it's a scam and a sort of gamble, but if Visa or Mastercard can deprive us of freedom, we may have to consider using bitcoin.
wrote last edited by [email protected]The don't use Bitcoin.
I like Etherium cause it doesn't waste electricity and you don't need to buy expensive proprietary hardware to mine it. All you gotta do is press the "stake" button and enjoy that 4% APR. I made $500 in two years simply by sitting on my ETH and letting it grow. Just like how banks used to work back in the day. It's nice; you're missing out.
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Crypto has its issues, but when used as an actual payment system, it’s a great alternative for online payments, and can give more privacy and anonymity if used correctly
Perhaps, but bitcoin isn't exactly the best example of that.
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I guess the dollar might need to end, but for different reasons.
As long as Trump is in power, he can in principle just print as many dollars as he wants to and spend them on what he likes.
The mechanism is by (ab-)using the Federal Reserve bank. It hands out "loans" to the government, the government never really has to pay them back. (it's called national debt)
Ending the existence of the dollar seems to be the only real way to take a money-printing machine out of Trump's hands.
I'm not saying this lightheartedly, just considering the options.
Assuming that Trump fires Powell
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Lmao, crypto tech bros coming out of the woodwork trying to get popularity for their bag holder's game...
Also pretending that shit hasn't been bought up by wall street
What? They have like 5%. You should revisit your stance
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Crypto is still a scam.
Bitcoin is not crypto
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Yeah, but one is extra bad for our enviroment while being a scam.
Over 52% of the bitcoin network is renewable energy and growing. Y’all need to update your info, damn
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Honestly, what's the point of a credit card? Why don't people mostly use debit cards? It gets just directly wire transferred from your account. No sort of junk fees or monthly subscription needed. Genuine Question.
I’ve just got rid of my credit card after 10 years in NA. Yes it can come in handy if you need a couple grand all of a sudden but damn, what a ball and chain, I hated it
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Yeah, I'm going to buy my games with bitcoin now.
Oh shit, the fee is higher than the price of the game, can I use Litecoin ?
Lightning network exists too
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Over 52% of the bitcoin network is renewable energy and growing. Y’all need to update your info, damn
wrote last edited by [email protected]Yes, but that still means that the other half is fossil fuel.
Bitcoin mining's distribution makes it difficult for researchers to identify the location of miners and electricity use. It is therefore difficult to translate energy consumption into carbon emissions. As of 2025, a non-peer-reviewed study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) estimated that bitcoin consumed 138 TWh (500 PJ) annually, representing 0.5% of the world's electricity consumption and resulting in annual greenhouse gas emissions of 39.8 Mt CO2, representing 0.08% of global emissions and comparable to Slovakia's emissions.
I think people should really reconsider using PoW cryptocurrencies. Ethereum was able to reduce their energy consumption by 99.95% by switching to PoS and it's still doing fine. IMO Bitcoin is outdated technology that is just used as a pyramid scheme due to its name recognition.
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The don't use Bitcoin.
I like Etherium cause it doesn't waste electricity and you don't need to buy expensive proprietary hardware to mine it. All you gotta do is press the "stake" button and enjoy that 4% APR. I made $500 in two years simply by sitting on my ETH and letting it grow. Just like how banks used to work back in the day. It's nice; you're missing out.
You can't earn more than you worked.
The $500 isn't real. You earned that by gambling, by taking the unnecessary risk.
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Yes, but that still means that the other half is fossil fuel.
Bitcoin mining's distribution makes it difficult for researchers to identify the location of miners and electricity use. It is therefore difficult to translate energy consumption into carbon emissions. As of 2025, a non-peer-reviewed study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) estimated that bitcoin consumed 138 TWh (500 PJ) annually, representing 0.5% of the world's electricity consumption and resulting in annual greenhouse gas emissions of 39.8 Mt CO2, representing 0.08% of global emissions and comparable to Slovakia's emissions.
I think people should really reconsider using PoW cryptocurrencies. Ethereum was able to reduce their energy consumption by 99.95% by switching to PoS and it's still doing fine. IMO Bitcoin is outdated technology that is just used as a pyramid scheme due to its name recognition.
Compared to our current system though? How much does the entire banking and credit card industry contribute to emissions for almost the same service? Bitcoin incentivises energy companies to mine BTC with excess energy.
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Bitcoin is not crypto
it's literally called a "cryptocurrency".
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Yeah, but one is extra bad for our enviroment while being a scam.
wrote last edited by [email protected]totally agree re bitcoin, and also am very sceptical of crypto as a mass-adopted currency in general
however there are plenty of networks that don’t use proof of work to validate their chains, and they aren’t bad for the environment to nearly the same degree
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Compared to our current system though? How much does the entire banking and credit card industry contribute to emissions for almost the same service? Bitcoin incentivises energy companies to mine BTC with excess energy.
I think what I'd suggest is that the entire global banking and credit card industry is likely to contribute more in total to our climate catastrophe, just due to the difference in scale between that and a relatively small and lesser-used alternative like Bitcoin.
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I honestly never understood how Lemmy, a privacy and decentralisation focused community, is so vehemently anti-crypto. It's worse than genAI. Every time it is mentioned, everyone goes "crypto is a scam". I don't think I've ever seen any good faith discussion around it, just "scam", "pyramid scheme", and "only criminals use it".
Let's get something out of the way immediately: shitcoins are a literal pyramid scheme and a scam. Anyone can make their own cryptocurrency in an evening, and anyone who throws money at them is either a fool or a gambler.
But I really don't understand what people mean when they say Bitcoin, or Ethereum, or Monero are a scam. Sure they can be used to scam you, just like Amazon gift cards can. Maybe it's about the price volatility, but the price of all 3 mentioned before is up on a day, week, month, 6 months, year, and 5 year scale. It's volatile, but is not a scam. If you bought and sold at two random points in time, it's more likely you made a profit than "got scammed".
You know what actually is a scam? Credit scores, overdraft fees, having to pay to check your balance, and so many other fucked up practices in the US banking system."Criminals use them" is just the worst fucking argument, especially in a space like this. Are PGP, VPNs and TOR for criminals too? Do you think getting rid of crypto would stop crime?
And yes, proof of work fucking sucks. The energy consumption of Bitcoin mining is a problem. I am not a cryptobro who spends all his time making trades and is here to tell you that crypto is the salvation. They are far from being "good" for everyday use. I just wanted to point out how it seems that critical thought gets shut down at the sight of those 6 letters, and I hope someone can explain to me what they find so terrible about crypto (aside from environmental concerns and shitcoins)
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totally agree re bitcoin, and also am very sceptical of crypto as a mass-adopted currency in general
however there are plenty of networks that don’t use proof of work to validate their chains, and they aren’t bad for the environment to nearly the same degree
Why use them and not.. normal fiat currency?
