Appeal to emotion or argumentum ad passiones is a logical fallacy characterized by the manipulation of the recipient's emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence.
And bitcoin also pays for murders, launders money, etc. I feel, just as cash, it is quite ethics agnostic. Not knocking cryptocoin, just don't pretend it is a singular force for good. It is representation of capitol, albeit in a unique way.
I highly doubt Bitcoin is much used for laundering money, transactions are all happening in clear and if you try to hide traces by creating multiple addresses you are going destroy your capital in transfer fees (which are very high right now). It's clearly not the best currency to hide untraceable money.
I'd argue it's easier to use BTC securely when you're already laundering money than when you want to use it legitimately. Just use throwaway wallets to receive BTC, pay for goods that can be converted to physical cash and proceed laundering that cash as usual.
It's no surprise all the cryptolocker viruses asked for bitcoin payments or cash equivalent cards.
Wouldn't it be possible to temporarily switch to an intermediary altcoin (eg. ethereum, btc) ? I'm not invested nor an expert in any crytocurrency, so please correct me if I'm wrong.
...which could have been used to replace productive fossil fuel expenditures. It doesn't matter how you fuel egregious waste; its still a pointless thing to do?
I'd love for that to happen! But as it stands, when you use electricity, you're using whatever the grid supplies. And for Bitcoin miners especially, this power largely comes from burning coal.
if Gold can be irrational for 2k years, I don't see why not bitcoin can't, the only think gold has going for "longer history", yet HN folk love to say "past performance are not an...bla bla", yes it also has the 5% - 10% industrial use, but bitcoin has that too by being able to transfer it without third party, so will also not go to zero because will be useful as transfer of value.
Jewelry and "store of value" are not mutually exclusive uses. Lots of people would buy "store of value" gold in the form of a nice necklace rather than a lump of metal.
Given how hard it is for the community to do something as simple as increase the block size a tiny bit, I'm not confident that a fork could fix such a problem.
As I said in a comment above polygamy seems to be a symptom of extremes in poverty and/or religious beliefs, both of which are direct causes of conflict/war.
If you look longer term the 1999 is just a small blip, so what if bitcoin crashes, bitcoin will replace banks, which are crocked and make money out of nothing.
Except the industrial value of gold which is around 10% of its use and not the quality/pure one, how is gold better than bitcoin? The favorite argument and the only argument is its history, yet when someone tries to use the same historical argument of bitcoin going up and up for 7 years, the elitist, NY folk will quickly follow with "Past performance is not an indicator of future outcomes".
I think people here are just salty because they think they are smart yet didn't saw the value in the crypto/blockchain, especially that is up their geeky alley.
if you keep a ton of gold in your house, good luck.. keeping it safe, there are safe ways to keep bitcoin, cold storage, etc. is not like is impossible.
yes, this is what hold bitcoin back but is getting better, the amazon device can be software signed, also you could encrypt your keys and upload to all cloud hosts.
Your examples comes down to centralized decision & regulation, isn't money printing also "regulation" that's how they call it, wile bitcoin is the most decentralized currency, no Emperor can replace it, no changes can be done without widespread conses.
The incredible energy for digging out gold just to keep it in locked boxes, same for all precious metals, diamonds.
Gold has real life use even in electrical circuits, besides being pretty. Diamond is used in the industry as well, not just engagement rings. They are also all physical objects.
> no Emperor can replace it, no changes can be done without widespread conses.
When was the last time humans were capable of agreeing and working together for long term? The blockchain thinks it's got rid of the mad emperor problem, where in reality the BTC/BTH, ETC/ETH hard forking an existing blockchain is very similar, and introduced a whole new spectrum of problems humanity tried for centuries to solve, without success: reaching consensus.
Gold real life use is a myth, around 10% of the demand, copper is much more valuable from this perspective.
When the US constitution was born, I don't know, democracy? BTC/BTH, ETC/ETH, crypto is even more democratic as the other side can go on their separate ways, as oposite to countries.
> hacks happen less then let's say you're mugged on the street or your bank account is emptied by carders/hackers.
Pretty disingenuous argument.
In absolute numbers, sure. But that is only because everybody walks down the street. Relatively few people use bitcoin so yes, in absolute numbers, perhaps it is true that more people get mugged on the street / bank accounts hacked. If Bitcoin somehow magically became the world's currency du joir, I promise you the number of stolen bitcoin wallets would far exceed the number of emptied bank accounts & muggers.
Oh, and if my bank account is emptied, I call my bank and say "hey bank, some fuckwit hacked my account" and if they are any good, I'll be back in business. No such luck with bitcoin. If my wallet gets emptied, I'm toast.
