this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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Bitcoin basically any year prior to now. You probably think it's a scam or not useful or whatever, but it's had a continuous average trend of growth for 15 years no matter how you measure it (market cap, number of nodes, transaction volume, etc). So apparently a lot of other people including large investment banks disagree. If you thought it would disappear next year because it's a bubble, you've been wrong 15 years in a row and it's maybe worth reconsidering. Bitcoin's market cap places it in the top 25 countries by GDP, higher than Sweden! If you're curious about pros/cons/FAQ and myth-busting around it check out http://bitcoin.rocks
Pretty much everything negative you've heard about it is wrong, terribly un-nuanced to point of being wrong, or about something that isn't bitcoin. Scam cryptos rugging people? Not Bitcoin. Stupid monkey JPEGs selling for a million dollars? Not Bitcoin. FTX/exchange collapses? Not Bitcoin. Slow transactions and high fees? Not Bitcoin (thanks to Bitcoin lightning), transactions confirm in under a second for pennies in fees. Anybody can print Bitcoin? Nope, the supply is capped at 21 million coins. People with the most coins control the network? Nope, amount of coins is totally unrelated to network consensus and rules. Boiling the oceans? It moves trillions of dollars in value every year using < 1% of energy, mostly from renewables (as they are cheapest) and helps even out demand curves/incentivizes provisioning renewable electricity. Makes electricity cost more? Nope, it makes electricity cost less because miners only buy the cheapest electricity possible (off-peak hours) so they don't compete with regular users. That means you aren't paying for "un-used supply/capacity" with your bill because your grid always has a buyer for any surplus electricity generated.