Topic: The ugly side of Bitcoin (Read 13750 times)

As a Bitcoin user with more than two years experience, I don't think that this is an issue which we can ignore. As the mining difficulty increases, it is going to take more and more power. Either we should reduce the electricity requirement for mining, or we should move to a different mining algorithm. This may sound ridiculous, but PoS algorithm suits Bitcoin much more than PoW. 

I wonder what the trend will be after the last bitcoin has been mined, at least all these electricity jargon will no longer be mentioned again, because it seems to me that people are the ones just exaggerating this electricity thing and ever since bitcoin started and being mined on a daily basis, I have never really seen damage it has caused.

People have caused more damage than the really bitcoin mining system has done itself, this is almost 18 million coins that has been mined already and nothing has been destroyed, is it the remaining 3 million left to be mined that will not cause disaster, I think people knees to focus where attention is needed and not in this regards at all, there are other challenges of bitcoin that needs to be mentioned and not this one.

Bitcoin's value is basically supply and demand. Which since there is a limited amount of bitcoin that the blockchain can be mined up too, it inherently becomes more valuable over time as long as it is used. Since bitcoin can be sliced up into any decimal amount of shares, it can represent any amount of currency.

The power of math and the free market, there you go.

Unfortunately we live in the world where almost every human activity is causin polution and endangers our planet. This is the huge problem but compared to other industries and activities I don't think that Bitcoin mining represents big issue in that sense. Of course, implementation of alternative energy sources could be part of solution but at the moment human kind has much bigger problems in area of ecology than Bitcoin.

Global problems include many different points, and among them, bitcoin mining takes the smallest place. I think that first of all, people need to deal with the problem of garbage and plastic and then complain about mining

most bitcoin users are not scammers but i believe that only few are using the name bitcoin to scam others because bitcoin is not too popular and there more scammers that users local fiats  so i think this isnt consider as the ugly side of bitcoin   . pollution on the other hand isnt also caused by bitcoin because those pollution that we saw are already existed just before bitcoin came out and pollution also depend on the handling of the person , we can controll pollution if we want to   .

Most of people agree that mining bitcoin requires or consumes huge ton of energy i.e electricity as main power to run the mining equipment. Some miners of bitcoin find them way to produce electricity from solar power that Environmentally friendly. But one of the problems that is not yet resolved is miners use air conditioner / similar equipment that contain Chlorofluorocarbon (CFC). This material can scrape the layer of Ozon (O₃).

There is always a bad side for everything. We cannot deny that. But it is not enough for anyone to say, let's quit because it has some negative effects. Do we have anything pure in this world? Even helping a poor, homeless, and disabled person has negative side-effects. No wonder why it is banned in some countries. We always measure the cost and benefit of every single thing. Crimes, climate change, and all have been here for so long before Bitcoin even came into the game.

Mining has become obsolete when the price of bitcoin is low. The energy it uses also decreased many times. Now I think the bad side of Bitcoin is that it is suitable for crimes of multinational money laundering, smuggling, tax evasion, terrorism, etc. Because Bitcoin is a currency not managed by any country. Anyway, it seems it can't be controlled

Bitcoins ugly side as mentioned in the Op is the pollution caused out of mining and the same is the major reason for global warming.

• Even before the existence of bitcoin the world is talking about global warming
• Pollution is caused not only by mining, there were more pollutants released to
  atmosphere by other factories
• The pollution caused out of mining and the electricity consumed compared to
  the usage on other things combined is very small
• Environment should be taken care and for the same it is a must to look for
  alternate sources that don't pollute, just indicating bitcoin alone
  the reason for global warming and pollution is unfair

a lot of things pollute the environment. for example, printing presses consume many times more energy than bitcoin, but no one is going to prohibit the production of Fiat many. all the more, that the most big spending humanity spent on financing war.

It is true that what we are doing is possible affecting the climate and other natural resources. At some point or maybe right now would be the best moment to act on it. We cannot destroy our current technology because it help's us develop our world. We just need to have some limitations on how would things work in a way that it would not hurt nature.

Cryptocurrency was always on the bad side in some stories because they still do not fully understand how it could help us in our everyday lives. We must need to study more and be mindful on how it will affect other situations.

There are a number of threads on this forum which are constructively denying argument of Bitcoins contribution to global warming.
Bitcoin is not a threat to global climate more than any other industry, it is not the ugly side of bitcoin!

Listen, I believe that there are so many factors of global air pollution in the world that, compared to this, bitcoin mining is just a drop in the ocean. Mining Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency has little impact on the environment.

It's still low if you compare it to what Western Union is charging. It's also low compared to what banks are charging for foreign currency transfers and exchange.

Most banks will ask you to pay premium if you want the transaction to be done fast. In my bank that premium is over 2 EUR.

for one person, Bitcoin is a new technology, and although it looks very safe and solid, there are always those who expect failure. That's also the problem. You don't need to put all your eggs in one basket, 'and never buy Bitcoin with all your assets. Bitcoin is more stable, the value of Bitcoin can go up and down in a short time or place) compared to other currencies, and the current value of Bitcoin is more stable, Bitcoin will definitely use more volatile moments in the future.Remember that Bitcoin transactions are similar to cash where transactions cannot be returned - make you send Bitcoin to the wrong person, or your Bitcoin wallet is hacked and someone buys your Bitcoin, it is very difficult and cannot be retrieved. Bitcoin is also not protected by any entity, so if you lose your Bitcoin, the service provider or 'Bitcoin network' cannot compensate you. That's why you have to use trusted products and service providers to help you, just like you manage a bank to secure your money.
Finally, the value of Bitcoin is determined by the number of people or businesses that accept Bitcoin. If Bitcoin develops, this will be very good for Bitcoin, but if fewer people use Bitcoin, then this will have a negative impact on the price and use of Bitcoin itself.

That's bullshit, at most 6% of the transactions were estimated to be kind of related to illegal activities. Any FIAT currency is used for such purpose.

This discussion have been repeating over a long time, on how bitcoin consume energy and carbon, Hence the truth is that bitcoin is a function of mining which required the Energy and Power to proceed the process, more over the Bank used power in times of printing currency. 

For bitcoin itself it still has some negative sides or weaknesses that you mean, in my opinion there are some that I think about this bitcoin weakness, namely:
1. Not yet recognized in all countries, there are even some countries that expressly prohibit bitcoin from circulating in their countries.
2. Security issues, because bitcoin is valuable, security must be tightly guarded. For security now it's good but it does require more knowledge and skills to implement good security, so people who are struggling to follow the mining era or do not want to follow, the bitcoin security is very vulnerable to being stolen by others.
3. The level of tracking of the bitcoin movement is difficult. Until now it is still difficult to track this bitcoin transaction moving to who and from whom because the wallet address is an address created from a random system generated by our wallet keyword phrases. This is actually to improve security, which will make it difficult for someone who intends to hack our account / wallet, but this can be misused because it can be used to facilitate money laundering transactions.
4. Fast price fluctuations and sometimes too high ranges. This makes investors very scared, especially investors who are new and only plan to invest in the short term. Besides making a lot of thoughts, it can also make us lose our initial investment capital.
5. The absence of fixed price transactions makes the transaction fee price very high. But in my opinion this is reasonable because of the increase in prices on Bitcoin itself, so the miners do need extra effort to launch our bitcoin transactions in block transactions, so the fees go up.

Mining affects our zone layer and pollutes the environment. Since bitcoin requires mining does it mean we shouldn't get it processed? That's to say focusing more on it's benefit, it's what we're after than the environmental hazard it cause within the environment is been mined. Bitcoin haven't caused more damage compare to refining of petroleum but still yet it's been process till date due to we all know it's benefit and uniqueness to the whole world