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01-04-2018, 01:33 AM
Bitcoin was supposed to be the currency of the future, but now I'm here saying that won't happen.
Cryptocurrency is a neat idea, and I would love to see it done right. But Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency done wrong.
The mining process is ridiculous. Just a single Bitcoin transaction uses enough energy to power an entire residential block for 24 hours. Overall, the miners use enough energy to power a city, or more than 159 countries. Interestingly, the same people who are really for Bitcoin, are often for environmental protection laws and such. However, Bitcoin's carbon footprint is 18,113 kt of CO2 per year. As of now, Bitcoin is using about 37 Twh of energy. Guess where most of that energy comes from? The answer isn't 'green', it's fossil fuels. The reason for this is the energy consumed by the repeated hashing in order to brute force the correct nonce.
The next issue is it's volatility, and the way cryptocurrencies are used. Right now, cryptocurrencies are being traded like stocks, and aren't stable enough to be used well as a currency. The price is ridiculous, and it doesn't act like a currency. Steam, the popular gaming platform, used to have Bitcoin as one of the methods of payment; but now, Bitcoin has been removed because of it's volatility and high fees... This brings us to our next issue, fees and transaction time.
You know that there's an issue when it costs more to send money than the amount that you'd want to send. With fees over $20 per transaction, Bitcoin is better used to transfer very large sums of money than for use as a normal currency. Because of the increase in transaction volume, Bitcoin has gotten 'clogged' by all the transactions, causing each transaction to take ridiculous amounts of time. In a currency, transactions should be seen as instant -- in Bitcoin, they're seen as extremely slow. A way to improve this, is to increase the block size; this is what Bitcoin Cash and Segwit2x tried to do.
This is why Bitcoin must be replaced, or all cryptocurrenies will die. A candidate that I like is Monero, but it has some of the same issues. I've thought of solutions, but one that is really hard to fix is the trading. The closest idea that I've had is to adjust the definition of one coin based on the average transaction size. However, this doesn't solve everything, it just helps something else in a weird way.
Sources:
Cryptocurrency is a neat idea, and I would love to see it done right. But Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency done wrong.
The mining process is ridiculous. Just a single Bitcoin transaction uses enough energy to power an entire residential block for 24 hours. Overall, the miners use enough energy to power a city, or more than 159 countries. Interestingly, the same people who are really for Bitcoin, are often for environmental protection laws and such. However, Bitcoin's carbon footprint is 18,113 kt of CO2 per year. As of now, Bitcoin is using about 37 Twh of energy. Guess where most of that energy comes from? The answer isn't 'green', it's fossil fuels. The reason for this is the energy consumed by the repeated hashing in order to brute force the correct nonce.
The next issue is it's volatility, and the way cryptocurrencies are used. Right now, cryptocurrencies are being traded like stocks, and aren't stable enough to be used well as a currency. The price is ridiculous, and it doesn't act like a currency. Steam, the popular gaming platform, used to have Bitcoin as one of the methods of payment; but now, Bitcoin has been removed because of it's volatility and high fees... This brings us to our next issue, fees and transaction time.
You know that there's an issue when it costs more to send money than the amount that you'd want to send. With fees over $20 per transaction, Bitcoin is better used to transfer very large sums of money than for use as a normal currency. Because of the increase in transaction volume, Bitcoin has gotten 'clogged' by all the transactions, causing each transaction to take ridiculous amounts of time. In a currency, transactions should be seen as instant -- in Bitcoin, they're seen as extremely slow. A way to improve this, is to increase the block size; this is what Bitcoin Cash and Segwit2x tried to do.
This is why Bitcoin must be replaced, or all cryptocurrenies will die. A candidate that I like is Monero, but it has some of the same issues. I've thought of solutions, but one that is really hard to fix is the trading. The closest idea that I've had is to adjust the definition of one coin based on the average transaction size. However, this doesn't solve everything, it just helps something else in a weird way.
Sources:
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