Topic: biggest criticism of Bitcoin - page 2. (Read 366 times)

I will not go far but I guess Bitcoin will always be criticized as a get rich quick scheme because the government always supported that accusation. Now asking how to defend that, I would not actually go in details but always tell the people to do their own research. I think that's the best favor I can do for bitcoin, not easily believing on lies but learn to verify those criticisms through in-depth research first.

Is this based on personal opinion or opinions that are often circulated?
Hmmm, the problem is that many people believe in some negative things about Bitcoin which always become ongoing criticism. No matter how well we explain it, it will become another criticism at some future opportunity.

Hmmm, actually what hasn't been achieved is related to the original purpose of Bitcoin being created. Yes, indeed in some areas or occasions, it has been quite successful. But unfortunately, it is really limited to several parties and countries because it collides with regulations. Even though Bitcoin was created to decentralize things and to avoid various controls such as fiat and banks, in reality, it does not run smoothly because the country will always intervene in various things to still be able to limit Bitcoin and its use.

And as for other criticisms, perhaps some of them are related:
- Volatility (although on the other hand, this is something that is very useful and beneficial for several parties to gain profits)
- Mining Bitcoin (often linked to the issue of global warming)
- high fees (the more crowded, the higher the fees and this is often complained about.

However, even though there are many criticisms, why do we still believe in Bitcoin?
The answer is yes because, it's Bitcoin. We fall in love in Bitcoin. And Bitcoin actually has answers to these criticisms, and that also depends on how we respond to them. Because of some of these criticisms, we can actually get all the benefits.

A point which has not been mentioned still (I think) is the relation between volatility, static supply and value proposition.

Bitcoin's value proposition is heavly tied to be a decentralized currency and store of value. If we continue to see so heavy price swings like in Bitcoin's history, then it's difficult for Bitcoin to become a currency which can be used as an "unit of account". The (a little bit less ambitious) "store of value" concept works currently in the long term but not in the short/middle term. You can still not be safe to not lose 10 or more % in a single week.

Static supply (21 million coins cap) on a first glance is the underlying reason: if supply is static (or grows slowly) then the price depends largely on demand swings.

I don't consider this problem unsolvable though, even without protocol changes. Because the "technical" Bitcoin supply (all Bitcoins in circulation) is not all available "on the markets" and thus probably doesn't necessarily drive the price down. So it's a challenge where solutions should be found by creative businesses, service providers and programmers.

One possible version of the challenge is: how can you convince people that in times with lower demand for BTC it's better to reduce the available supply at markets? For example you could imagine models where you "park" your coins somewhere, for example locking them and getting interest like in the "staking" concept but only in bear markets. Now imagine that in a non-custodial way. As for example options can be designed with atomic swap technology, perhaps more complex models can be designed with Bitcoin Script too.

The other possible way is simply using it more as a currency to boost liquidity and make it less vulnerable to price swings, but that depends on scalability and on L2 development.

I'm still waiting for a coherent response on what I wrote in the thread about Ordinals. In general I think your view of the mining industry is too static, there's a lot going on which will counter the problems you enumerate, from miner diversification to surplus energy mining. If there was a good moment to attack Bitcoin it was the 2021 Chinese exodus.

@DrHodler59: It would be cool if you'd participate in the threads you create :p

before I know what is Bitcoin I have experienced many castigation people condemn Bitcoin how do they say to my hearing that the objective of Bitcoin is for scam and since bitcoin is into existence I have not seen anyone who has been defrauded with Bitcoin and what people are saying concerning bitcoin is that it is used for money laundering and I think that should be one of the reasons why government is against the existence of Bitcoin today so if you base on the condemnation or criticism of people concerning Bitcoin I don't think that you  will have the mindset to invest in Bitcoin

Nothing is perfect. Despite some weaknesses, bitcoin still provides many financial opportunities.

I would criticize bitcoin for being unfriendly to newcomers and the majority of the population. For such a financial product to be truly widespread and global, bitcoin had to be easier to use (without losing benefits) by all members of society, and not just tech geeks (I would like to watch you teach your grandma to use bitcoin ).

I would answer that if you simplify bitcoin, it will get rid of all the advantages.

The biggest criticism that I have seen growing over the recent years are the concerns over the energy being spent mining bitcoin, however as we know those numbers have been exaggerated just to try to get the young, which are environmental conscious, to not adopt bitcoin, however the biggest weakness for the average user is the confirmation speed and the fees, as even people like us sometimes have problems getting a confirmation when we want to move our coins, and we may have to refrain from sending any transaction at the time as the fees are higher than the amount of bitcoin we want to send.

It's not a myth, I would say that even green energy used on mining is a waste producing a waste because "green energy" is not that green and energy alone could be used for something different.

As for Banking system taking more energy than Bitcoin mining - overall it might be true (still) but the problem with Bitcoin mining is the big centralization of this energy use which makes it very difficult for the surrounding environment as we can see in Texas today.

As for difficulty drop, you know what else will drop ? security of the network and due to the fact Trillion+ dollars are in this project there will be state sponsored adversaries who will be able to attack the network.

Will they actually attack ? we don't know, what we know is that the security will be low.

I don't have more time for discussion so I close this by saying: If nothing changes to the Bitcoin protocol, it will collapse.
It's economically impossible to survive.
Cheers.

This is a myth that has been injected into the crypto community again and again but it's not extremely dangerous to the environment as you exaggerate. Yes, power consumption of mining operations is high but look how much power we use/waste for the banking system to operate and I would say Bitcoin mining operation doesn't even consume 1% for mining compared to the banks so it's not just a complete waste and if miners are not being profitable anymore then there will be adjustment in the difficulty happens after every 2016 blocks mined so lesser the difficulty mean less resources are being consumed.

The situation is really worrying as this mining companies are purely driven by profits and they have professional advisors who can show them they can earn twice as much on different project.
On the scale they operate even couple percents would be worth switching but due to high volatility the profitability of mining must be much greater for them to switch from one project to another and the halvings make this decision much simpler - unless the market cap will be able to multiply in value after each halving in which I don't believe at this trillion+ levels.

As for BlackRock and other sharks, they just want to multiply their FIAT - they don't have any love for cryptocurrencies but will say otherwise to pump the price up.
They will have no second thought to cash it out after getting their target or seeing that there might be some unrecoverable trouble.
Again, they are not HODL'ers, they are not Bitcoin lovers, they are businessman who want to multiply their stack of FIAT and they have a lot of professional advisors. Nothing else.


Ethereum was a big contender but they switched to PoS.
Monero is feared due to their past of changing PoW to fight off ASIC's but maybe they will be interested in CPU mining - who knows.

Edit: it is already happening: https://cryptonews.com/news/bitcoin-miner-profitability-halving.htm

All the other projects are noise but I could be wrong and they can view it differently.

I think one of the biggest criticism of Bitcoin which comes with the very inherent flaw of it. I believe it was never designed in a way to be used by so many people. So the biggest problem it faces is the scalability issues, the moment you see a lot of on chain traffic immediately you will see the fees skyrocketing up, you will see slower transactions. Apart from this obviously the environmental impact of the Pow consensus is also a big criticism which a lot of pro environmentalists pose on bitcoin. So obviously the PoS or the hybrid solutions are becoming much more relevant to the overall situation in cryptos right now. and honestly I don't have any proper answers to the question on the scalability issues.

People who argue these speed of Bitcoin lack understanding of the 3 bodies of a coin such as the decentralization, the security and the speed. If you want to build coin, one must he sacrificed among that 3 and Bitcoin choose to prioritize decentralization and security before the speed. If there is no decentralization, the network will become a failure and if there is no security, nobody will have confidence and say they will buy Bitcoin that is this expensive.


Most altcoins today are prioritize 2 among these 3, mostly they prefer to make people think speed is what they need and they ignore security and decentralization, hence why most of the altcoins aren't that security tight and aren't decentralized, it's either they are hack today or the team just make decisions about the network, this never happen in Bitcoin network because of how decentralized it is for everyone.

I really appreciate that you shared this critical view with us. What you say makes a lot of sense, and linked to the other argument about halvings it's truly worrying. But if there is such a real risk in the mid term (8 years from now) what do you think could be the reason behind BlackRock and other funds are are accumulating so aggressively?

And, on the other hand, what more profitable projects do you think miners would switch to?

Don't forget about layer 4, 5 and 6

What a clusterfuck...

The challenges in LN are unfixable, first you would need to modify Bitcoin protocol which is written in stone.


Have you ever researched what 51% attack and centralization is ?

It's like talking to kids, what a waste of time.

Have you ever researched what the Difficulty Adjustment is?

Bitcoin is criticized either by cunning fraudsters and shitcoiners or by regular nocoiners who still live in the fiat matrix and do not yet understand what Bitcoin is and what money is. You need to understand that Bitcoin is not Visa or Mastercard; Bitcoin is a monetary network and protocol. Bitcoin Layer 1 is something like Fedwire; it is only used for settling high-value transactions. Further building can be done on Layers 2 and 3, etc. The Lightning Network can perform millions of instant transactions per minute, but there are still significant challenges. The problem is that Bitcoin is decentralized; there is no foundation, no one taking care of Bitcoin. This is unlike scam altcoins, which have entire teams of developers and marketing teams, and who have kept a large portion of the supply for themselves before launch, earning huge amounts of money which they invest in marketing and developers.

The energy the mining farms spend for mining Bitcoin was already debunked a long time ago which I think is not anymore going to resurfaces since Blackrock is already in the side of Bitcoin.

There are still people who believe BTC is released by the government though. And it's a big PsyOps, especially the ones who believe more in Gold and Silver.
Matthew Kratter explains it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdauERKEW-Q

There's no necessity to defend bitcoin at where being criticized especially in the public. It's okay to be an anti bitcoiner because it's a digital asset surrounded with other related potential characteristics such as the Altcoins. The federal authorities could also be against it due to its decentralized modelitty.
So, there's no way we can expect everyone to talk good about the bitcoin. Let whoever that want to say anything about bitcoin do and your endivoirs of engaging on arguements with it is like trying to convince them to what they don't believe.
Bitcoin is a real digital currency and criticisms can't make changes over its potentials.

We can't deny that Bitcoin mining has huge environmental impact and already harmed it a lot but it's a fair price to pay IF it works.

Now IF the projects drops dead at some point, then this whole mining will go to waste and Bitcoin will become the biggest waste of resources in the history of mankind. (this needs Clarkson voice-over in your head)


The solutions are already here but they won't implement it because they want to make money on a failure called LN (which would further kill profits on L1 - if it actually worked as promised).

That's the biggest risk around Bitcoin. Once mining companies stop making profits from mining, they will surely switch to a profitable crypto to mine. Because most of the mining companies are businesses. They won't run the machines unless they see a way to make profit out of their mining activities.

Even if they do, they will solely have to depends on the transaction fees which may not be sufficient and as a result bitcoin transactions will become more expensive than the current level.

I am sure the Bitcoin Developers will think of a way out of this.

I feel that the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining is still a criticism that many people often make about Bitcoin, and it bothers me to this day. You see, Bitcoin is mined by many miners and these miners use electrical resources to support their various mining equipment, but the government instead says that this is just a waste of energy and it has an impact on global warming because the electricity used mostly comes from non-renewable energy. Do they only deal with Bitcoin mining? what about factories that use millions of tons of coal? are they not to blame for global warming? and what about energy use in the financial industry? it is much bigger compared to the Bitcoin mining industry. And in fact, the Bitcoin mining industry is much more aware of this problem compared to other industries, and is starting to improve and streamline their mining equipment, carry out mining in cold places, and use some electricity from renewable energy to support their operations. There are many actions being taken by the Bitcoin mining industry to improve itself, and criticism about the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining is becoming increasingly irrelevant today.