Crypto Andys like to extol the supposed virtues of crypto like being extra-governmental, distributed and robust. A lot of gold bugs have jumped on this, often out of some misunderstanding of what central banks do and that "printing money" isn't the evil it's made out to be.
Crypto skeptics (such as myself) point out the flaws in all this. For example:
1. It's not a currency. It's an asset;
2. Reversible transactions for fiat currencies is a feature not a bug;
3. People who can't manage passwords won't be able to manage a wallet so mass appeal is always going to be limited;
4. Crypto has its own vulnerabilities (eg 51% attack);
5. This whole system is hugely energy wasteful; and (here's the big one)
6. Government action could shut down crypto tomorrow so how robust is it really?
(6) seems to be contentious but there's a ton of evidence for this. China banned mining, for example, out of energy concerns so all the crypto miners moved to Kazakhstan, a country that may end up being invaded by Russia. What happens to those crypto farms then? Rising energy costs in the developed world are slowly going to turn the eye on crypto mining. You already see the US government cracking down on crypto anonymity and tax reporting.
All of this is enough for me to wonder if the solution to the Fermi Paradox isn't just that civilizations end up choking on micro-plastics and cooking themselves to death with crypto-mining. But hey for awhile there they created a lot of shareholder value.
Crypto skeptics (such as myself) point out the flaws in all this. For example:
1. It's not a currency. It's an asset;
2. Reversible transactions for fiat currencies is a feature not a bug;
3. People who can't manage passwords won't be able to manage a wallet so mass appeal is always going to be limited;
4. Crypto has its own vulnerabilities (eg 51% attack);
5. This whole system is hugely energy wasteful; and (here's the big one)
6. Government action could shut down crypto tomorrow so how robust is it really?
(6) seems to be contentious but there's a ton of evidence for this. China banned mining, for example, out of energy concerns so all the crypto miners moved to Kazakhstan, a country that may end up being invaded by Russia. What happens to those crypto farms then? Rising energy costs in the developed world are slowly going to turn the eye on crypto mining. You already see the US government cracking down on crypto anonymity and tax reporting.
All of this is enough for me to wonder if the solution to the Fermi Paradox isn't just that civilizations end up choking on micro-plastics and cooking themselves to death with crypto-mining. But hey for awhile there they created a lot of shareholder value.