Post by redonihunter in USDC stablecoin as an alternative to Visa/Mastercard?

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In everything (even for things unrelated to Bitcoin), the one who pays is the final consumer.

Yes. And that is why bitcoin will crash. It might take a decade or longer. It might be tomorrow.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/881472/worldwide-bitcoin-energy-consumption/

See that graph. See how it skyrockets around 2017, the year Steam discontinued accepting bitcoin. That is no coincidence. That's when bitcoin became unusable for paying things, because the costs per transaction were not justifyable anymore.

The current minimum electricity costs of bitcoin in 2025 is around 120 Terawatthours. That's more than the Netherlands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption

And a single transaction costs around 1000 kWh . https://coinlaw.io/bitcoin-energy-consumption-statistics/

Yes, that is three 0. It is the equivalent of running a 2000 Watt heater for 500 hours.

Who is paying for that 1000 kWh? Where are the costs hidden away? I say they are in the bubble of bitcoin "worth".

And this insanity is true for all coins that would be adopted for widespread use. It is blockchain. The very nature of that thing means, it must be computational costly.

Essentially you are paying with a proof how much energy you wasted. Or rather that someone else wasted and you gave them real money for a certificate that is encrypted in a system, so that it is hard to fake the certificate and hard to transfer it.

Some of your arguments might be lost in translation. English is not my native language either. It is a discussion for someplace else.

Yes, crypto currencies are a bad idea for a lot of reasons yet currently have some benefits in some scenarios. Overall, they are a very bad thing for the environment and especially bitcoin is an insanity to use. You cannot explain away the cost in energy for a transaction ( I was not even talking about the fee in bitcoin inside the system to facilitate the transfer. I just pointed out the energy cost and that those costs must be paid somehwere, somehow).

You cannot justify paying for a 5 $ game on Itch with a system that costs the equivalent of running a heater for 500 hours.

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DREAM_SEARCH_REPEAT83 days ago

'In everything (even for things unrelated to Bitcoin), the one who pays is the final consumer.

Yes. And that's why Bitcoin will crash. It might take a decade or longer. It might be tomorrow.' <- Huh? Sorry, but I didn't understand.

Based on energy. Most of the big fintechs are in countries where energy is abundant and cheap.

'Who is paying for that 1000 kWh? Where are the costs hidden away?' Fintechs, as far as I know, generate enough money to pay for their own energy and operating costs. But I don't have any sources, so I could be wrong.

By the way, what's your problem with Bitcoin?

'English is not my native language either. It is a discussion for somewhere else.' <- Yes, we agree on this one. You and I shouldn't be arguing here.

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redonihunter83 days ago

It's not tax evasion to pay with a payment method that doesn't have taxes applied to it.

There are situations where certain taxations do not apply, but simply paying with crytpo currency does not change a transaction from taxable to be tax free.

By the way, what's your problem with Bitcoin?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-consumption-transactio...

1 bitcoin transaction is roughly 1000000 visa transactions in electricity.

Paying with bitcoin on the chain produces costs equvalent to running an electrical heater for 500 hours. Even if you produce the electricity somewhere, where it is currently "cheap", that is still a huge waste of energy. Huge is too small a word for the comparison. If you compare things that should do the same, there should be percentages, like oh, credit card uses x amount, paypal uses 100% more, so it is environmentally friendlier to not use paypal, but credit card instead. That's a factor of 2. The factor when comparing to bitcoin is 1000000.

That insane imbalance does not even change, if you cut off a zero or two by using more efficient methods.

The costs are hidden away in the stock market price of bitcoin and in the financial losses of people trading bitcoin and losing money. They are also hidden in the cost of "mining" the coins. That's even more electricity waste.

It is not sustainable to hide away the costs (Not sustainable means, that it will crash someday). Someone has to pay for it. And it will be the people that have bitcoins as an investment, when bitcoin falls under the price they paid for it and they suddenly need real money. Oh, and it is the planet, because of all the energy and rescource waste.

So yeah, I kinda have a problem with bitcoin and crypto in general. It is wasteful in an insane way.

The irony is, even if you could overcome the costs somehow (you can't, it's crypto, it needs to be computational hard, else it is not crypto), the currency is not fit to be a currency. Too volatile. So the topic here makes sense, asking for "stable" coins.

But "stable" coins are an illusion. At best it is an escrow with extra steps. You buy "points" with money from an entity and that entity will let you spend those points at a seller's account. And that seller can exchange those points for money again. Obfuscating this with "crypto" is a marketing scam to lure people into believing this is crypto, the crypto they heard in the news about. It's not. You can't mine it - if you could, it is not stable. It is not decentral and independent from companies. So it has even less intrinsic value than crypto. It just has the name coin in it. But in reality it is about the same as if you would load up your paypal account for future payments. So you instead load up your ~~crypto~~ stablecoin wallet.

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DREAM_SEARCH_REPEAT82 days ago

Okay, friend, this is getting out of hand.

I never said Bitcoin was perfect. (Personally, I don't care about other cryptocurrencies.) I don't deny that it's energy-inefficient, volatile, or has a steep learning curve.

I apologize in advance, but I'm going to take the liberty of assuming you're from somewhere in the European Union (since you used data from the Netherlands in one of your arguments). I'm from Latin America. I'm from a country where financial crises, hight inflation (and even hyperinflations) and poor political behavior (corruption, populism, cronyism, etc.) are commonplace.

I come from a poor country. Not on the level of Venezuela, but close.

You and I must come from two very different realities. That's where our entire discussion should come from. Neither of us is right, but neither are we wrong. We are two people biased by the experiences we've had.

You care a lot about the environment, and that's fine, it's something I respect, but in this case I had to choose between two evils. And frankly, I can't afford to be an environmentalist if it means descending into poverty.

Do you understand that I live in a reality where the financial situation is so bad that things like Bitcoin (for some people, of course) are seen as a viable alternative?

What if Bitcoin fails? Well, that's a risk I'm willing to take. But I can't simply resign myself to the situation I'm stuck in. Something I did NOT choose to live.

And if you're wondering, can't you move somewhere else? No. While I'm not poor, I'm not destitute. I lack the resources to move somewhere else and try to start all over again.

I apologize if my tone seems self-centered or arrogant. That's not the intention, nor was it ever.

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Yomuchan82 days ago

Just a few things I noticed about bitcoin: Apparently the huge 'fees' for transactions only apply if you specifically set transaction speeds to the fastest possible. Me, I prefer a slower transaction - maybe 60~120 minutes. At >480 minutes, the fees drop even further. Bitcoin has refined itself in the last 5 years, with new protocols, wallets and technologies emerging to put it squarely in the hands of the people, rather than a specific company.

While it is suitable for some use cases, I admit I won't be using it as a main source of income because anyone can see what I have if I post a bitcoin address here haha.

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