[EP182] - Bitcoin's haters really hate.
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A guy at work highlighted that the majority of Bitcoin has been used for illegal acts and ascerted that by supporting Bitcoin you're supporting terrorism.
While I've seen lots of anti-Bitcoin arguments over the last couple of years, I hadn't seen such specific data so I had to go searching myself...
We're all used to Bitcoin being slammed in the media. It makes sense. It's basically a disruptor for financial systems around the world that are the current methods to move money from the poor to the rich... rich people and rich companies can afford to influence media organisations to slam anything that threatens to dethrown them.
Usually the people arguing for or against Bitcoin have a financial vested interest one way or another. They either have some Bitcoin and want it to rise in price so they can profit, or they have assets it could threaten so they want it to fail.
I feel like I'm a little different... I personally would have no issue if it dropped to $1USD tomorrow (that'd sure help increase decentralisation) if it meant it would stabilize and help adoption.
Bitcoin is important to me as a person of the world. There are so many people that can't get bank accounts because they're just not profitable to those banks... which denies them access to a range of facilities. I love the idea that companies and small businesses would no longer have cash flow problems if they adopted Bitcoin. I love that it's overall deflationary and more can't be printed to help a Government or their friends out. I love that you can send Bitcoin to anyone without paying crazy fees.
My move from Australia to the US was extremely eye-opening on the power that banks have over everyone. It was incredibly difficult to move my own money around, and I've had to pay huge amounts in fees to both get my own money and receive my own money between countries. My bank in Australia pulled out all the tricks to keep my money; they insisted I needed to visit a branch to sign it out (no branches in the US), they insisted I only move small amounts per day (so small that I would have missed a couple of key transactions) and, the weirdest thing, when I became incredibly super annoying, I got what I wanted... which means those other rules were all made up.
Bitcoin doesn't have that. No one can deny you access to your own money. You can help so many people around the world, and open up really poor areas for investment with Bitcoin. You want to help a family in Uganda buy a bicycle, which would literally mean the world to them, they can have it in 20 minutes.
The USD potentially only has 12-18 months before it completely crumbles under the weight of extremely poor management and super dodgy deals between the Federal Bank and financial institutions, and Bitcoin is a means for normal people to protect themselves somewhat from that chaos.
These are the reasons why I think Bitcoin is important and why I'm super excited by blockchain technology... so the data in the comments of that post were just so troubling. I don't want to support terrorism, I want the unbanked to have options!
Reading the study, I've now got a better understand of what the statistics mean:
Out of 815 million transactions, they filtered out transaction fees, exchange fees, conversions, messages, tips, etc leaving 302 million transactions. These transactions are pretty much what all the good guys do. I've yet to buy anything with my Bitcoin because there aren't many shops that accept it yet.
They assumed every transaction through a darknet marketplace was illegal and every transaction by an address on a darknet forum was illegal. So if a user made 1000 transactions out of their Bitcoin wallet, if 99 were legit and 1 was illegal, they counted all 1000 as illegal.
Any transaction that looked like the user was trying to be anonymous (wash trading for example) was assumed to be illegal. I personally know people that put a lot of effort into being anonymous because they are consiparcy theorists who distrust financial institutions and governments.
Ponzi schemes and ransomware/malware attackers were a huge number of transactions, and I'd argue that most people involved in a Ponzi scheme weren't really aware of what they were doing.
Reading the study really did settle me down and reassure me that I haven't been making a terrible, terrible mistake by loving Bitcoin. Yes, it's been used a ton for illegal activity, because for years, drug dealers adopted it way more than florists. The unbanked can't quite use Bitcoin yet because they can't yet buy food with it.
The darknet is apparently 90% of the internet. Yes, you can buy drugs and fund terrorism, but you can also buy video games that are banned, (an adult couldn't get Mortal Kombat X in Australia because they didn't have an 18+ rating available for games) buy porn without it appearing on your credit card statements, watch shows that are region-locked and buy Kinder Surprise (Walmart can sell you automatic rifles and crossbows, but they can't sell you Kinder Surprise).
Governments make rules and regulations to suit their friends... not their constituents. I've been on the TV show Australian Ninja Warrior, but I can't watch it in the US for legal reasons.
The illegal activity of Bitcoin has been dramatically decreasing over the last couple of years as mainstream adoption continues... but personally I think the illegal activity will still be high until Bitcoin's price stablizes. Lots of the good guys are buying Bitcoin and keeping it... once the price is stable, then they'll spend it. Once there are cool things to spend it on, and once people start earning in Bitcoin for real, then the illegal activity of Bitcoin will be miniscule.
Ironically, because Bitcoin isn't anonymous and with more and more companies studying the blockchain transactions, more perpreators are being found or monitored. Bitcoin is actually more useful to help fight crime than cash.
Bitcoin isn't evil. Cash isn't evil.
Both are used for illegal things, and just because something is illegal doesn't mean it's evil either (Kinder Surprise are really great).
I don't love that it uses so much electricity, but I do believe both Bitcoin and Canabis laws changing have incentised greater research and development for renewables.
You might not believe me, and that's fine... but I truly think that blockchain and cryptocurrencies are going to save us over the next couple of decades. We've got a huge recession coming, a few countries and currencies are in trouble, and millions of people are going to lose their jobs to automation. Bitcoin is the most decentralised currency at the moment, and I honestly hope it succeeds.
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Illegal activity w/ bitcoin is a false argument, I think.
What DOES bother me about bitcoin, is the ENORMOUS amount of energy is uses, and how grossly inefficiently it uses it. It very much seems like a "first generation" / "proof of concept" application of a decentralized ledger application -- probably because it is..
Every time the price of bitcoin spikes, I'm reminded about how almost completely useless it is, because it takes 2~3 days to validate a transaction at peak times, with large fees.
To that end, I've recently sold all my BTC -- because I think it's slow, kinda useless, outdated tech (only b/c tech moves so fast)... Steem is much, MUCH better in my eyes, and is significantly most extensible in my eyes.
Plus -- it seems like most of the people that are jacked up about Bitcoin are arguing something like:
(not that that sort of thing isn't actively going on here -- but there seems to be a bit less of it... i dunno...)
I completely agree with everything you've written here. I read recently that Bitcoin is using more power than all of Switzerland, which is truly heartbreaking.... especially for something that isn't truly essential (ie, not for food, warmth, etc).
The guy I was arguing with was basically saying that Bitcoin is evil and that the current financial situation is better... ie, better the devil you know... and that's what I was massively countering. He doesn't know that other cryptocurrencies really even exist. I do like how decentralised Bitcoin is, I'm sure it's still the most decentralised currency in the world, but, yes, the power consumption kills me... and I don't like that it's becoming more and more centralised as the difficulty spikes.
I definitely get the feeling that most people arguing for Bitcoin want to be the top of their own evil financial empire, and don't care about all the good it could do. I'll keep my tiny BTC holdings yet, just in case it goes crazy. I felt Steem was similar in the whales and evil empires when I first joined, but I totally think it's calmed down now to a general feeling of build, build, build.
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