Why I Dont Support Crypto

I'm convinced that at best crypto is not worth your time, energy and money. This view has come from a lot of personal research. I've specifically developed most of my opinions from the writings of Stephen Diehl and from this movie of a youtube video by Folding Ideas. Heres a summary of how I see things, but I also highly suggest following these links for more details.

1. Youre not investing in anything

there's no "income generating asset" (what I called "value" earlier) behind a crypto currency. This is why I disagree with the comparison to gold.Gold is a physical element that has a veriety of uses that can generate income (Computers, jewelry, dentistry, Aerospace). With crypto there is only speculative trading on the prospect of it going up in price later. See the article I posted a while ago above for reasons why crypto fails at all of its "value generation". At its best thats gambling, at its worst its a "greater fool scheme".

2. Its high cost by design

the power/environmental cost of crypto is incredibly high BY DESIGN. Specifically in "proof of work", but "proof of consensus" also has its own set of similar problems. Visa, and other financial institutes handle MORE transactions at a fraction of the cost of crypto. Plus, also by design, the cost (both in terms of money and energy) of transaction and mining will only continue to rise as it gains popularity and becomes older.

3. Everything on the chain is a dystopian future

The Philosophy of crypto is a world where everything is "on the chain", which I don't want to live in. You mentioned Ethereum earlier: their creatures would want your identity, loans, medical records, all of it on the chain (I have sources somewhere for this...). Counter to their claims, this is a disaster for privacy since the "chain" is PUBLIC (its trivial to match wallets to people already right now). Plus instead of being decentralized, this would mean a consolidation of power to one point of failure (the chain).

4. Its a breeding ground for more scams and hacks

This is less a critique of crypto philosophy, and more a critique of the current state of things. Even if you dont agree that crypto in and of itself is a "greater fool scam", the community is rife more traditional scams. Here's just 2 examples - Rug Pulls (or Pump and Dump) are where a crypto coin or nft will be heavily hyped up, then simply abandoned. Often founders will initiate the rug pull by selling all their stake, making a heafty profit of others who "invested". - Billions of dollars have been taken using exploits or hacks within blockchain technologies. The specifics vary but as a programmer, take my word that _bugs are unavoidable and are to be expected_. No developer can write code without bugs, and anybody telling you different is mistaken or lying (side note, this is one reason why any credible bank is FDIC-insured, People will find a way to "hack the system"). Plus ALL blockchains are vulnerable to 51% attacks.

I genuinely would love to hear counters to any of these points! If you have any thoughts please feel free to send me an email.