I think some of the concerns are bitcoin as currency vs money vs asset. Im personally thinking of bitcoin as an asset (and money in the store of value sense). I think of it like a digital gold.
doodle wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 9:03 am
Efficiency....namely it is incrediblely inefficient... Kwh per transaction is absurd. How many Kwh per transaction does it use? Do you think that is sustainable?
If you compare bitcoin to gold, mining bitcoin actually consumes less resources and has less environmental impact. Check out page 10 onwards from this recent writeup:
The estimated CO2 emission for producing new gold is more than 100 million tons per year. Estimates vary, but recent studies put Bitcoin’s around 30 million tons annually. That’s less than one third of gold’s CO2 emissions. And as renewables increase in the mix, Bitcoin’s CO2 emission intensity should drop significantly. Note that this is still disregarding the cost of refining and storing gold, as well as the negative impact land excavation in less compliant regions of the world has on both people and the environment.
https://www.seetee.io/static/shareholde ... 632722.pdf
The dollar standard and all that supports that too is costly. Remember its backed by men with guns, right?
doodle wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 9:03 am
It isn't nearly capable of handling transaction load necessary to be functioning world currency.
The issued paper ("dollars") on top of gold was a sort of "layer 2" on top of gold to facilitate the ease of transactions. There are similar "layer 2" solutions on top of bitcoin. For example the Lightning Network can scale to larger-than-Visa-payment-network levels. The deadly flaw with paper issuance against gold, and part of golds downfall, was there was fractional reserve. In Lightning, the transacting is all in bitcoin so there is no opportunity to inflate or fractional reserve.
Lightning is still new, but shows promise, and there are other layer 2 networks being built on top of Bitcoin's hard money base. I suspect the payment network functionality on top of Bitcoin to grow.
doodle wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 9:03 am
There is nobody to appeal to in case of error or mistake or fraud or theft or whatever. That sucks. I'd much rather be able to call my bank if I forgot my password than lose all my money.
There are bitcoin banks out there. There are also folks like Lloyd's of London insuring these banks/custodians. I suspect the ecosystem around Bitcoin's hard money to grow. Bitcoin users can opt in to such services if they would like their protections.
doodle wrote: ↑Wed Mar 10, 2021 9:03 am
There is no mechanism for expanding money supply so it is heavily deflationary..not to mention additional deflation caused by lost tokens which will continue to increase. This poses a huge range of problems if your goal is to extract maximum productivity out of economy.
Bitcoins hard cap is not amenable to central planning of the money supply, no. But this argument largely applies to gold as well.
There are many good articles, books, and threads on this topic on the Internet and I dont think Id do a good job articulating the arguments pro-deflationary currency here.