Bitcoin is the worst waste of resources and energy in human history. It is solely used for financial speculation, with no genuine utility.
This is a call to ethical hackers: through targeted and repeated computer attacks, we could undermine the confidence of speculators and burst this irrational and destructive financial bubble.
Sure, cryptocurrency has a lot of problems and is a big energy sink, but:
Without providing insight into the other energy wasters of humanity, the article did not provide supporting evidence. It’s flashy to throw up big numbers like “oh look Bitcoin uses more energy than some countries”, but what about things like meat consumption, gas powered cars, aircraft, and heating/cooling of overly big mansions? Or that insane thing that western businesses do where they leave the lights on in their buildings when closing for the night (I think it’s for theft insurance or something). Coca cola, which mainly sells junk food and therefore completely unnecessary products, probably pollutes more in a year than all of cryptocurrency’s history. Don’t get me started about oil companies. I’m almost certain any of those account for more CO2 emissions than cryptocurrency. Sure, they’re not useless in all instances, but cutting down on those to necessity rather than luxury will most likely do much more than stopping cryptocurrency. There are only so many hours in a day, pick your priorities.
Cryptocurrency helps countries like Cuba, Iran, the DPRK and even China work around sanctions imposed by imperialist countries like the US (think of those countries how you want, but don’t you claim that the US sanctions them to make the world a better place). In short, it has anti-world-domination uses. If most of the money was controlled by western institutions, it would not bode well for the world at large.
For example, China just implemented a government controlled, IIRC non-minable blockchain-based currency specifically to help loosen the grip of the US dollar on the world. Good thing too, considering global reliance on the US dollar both gives them a massively unfair political advantage and has made them think they can just do whatever the fuck they want with their economy, which resulted in multiple global recessions all stemming from US greed.
FYI that’s not ethical hacking. Targeting someone else’s computer without permission is illegal. If caught, you WILL go to prison.
Also, to anyone who wants a career in tech (and therefore might have the ability to pull off something like this), a cyber crime conviction on your criminal record will most likely utterly destroy your future in the technology field (and most other jobs). Why would any tech employer hire someone with a history of misusing computers? How do they know you won’t do the same to them? The stories of big hackers that got high up tech jobs after their convictions are the exceptions and not the rule, and number in the low tens out of tens of thousands of cybercrime convictions, and you’re almost certainly nowhere near as good as they were that companies can overlook their history, and even then the companies need to be convinced that they won’t do it again.
Edit: Finally, keep in mind that unless you take down all cryptocurrency, speculation using them will continue (yes, even the non-minable ones, people spend tons of energy trading actual countries’ currencies too, and blockchain is inherently much more energy intensive than regular electronic currency). Just taking down bitcoin solves nothing, will land plenty of people in prison, and just further vilify technology activists in the eyes of society.
Whataboutism. Why does it matter what other bad things we do? We shouldn’t do any of them.
Sure. Most of the examples you cite you as an individual can do nothing about. Others are simply avoiding the consumption of specific goods. Not all that time-consuming.
Sure, cryptocurrencies has it’s uses. And fortunately Bitcoin isn’t the only cryptocurrency. So let’s use the less wasteful ones.
I think you’re confusing ethical and illegal. Most of the suggestions aren’t illegal either though.
Yes, but at least it should be less wasteful.
Telling other people to do it. Campaigning for regulations, organizing like minded individuals. Research and development. Literally walk or bike instead of driving, takes longer, emits less pollution.
Let’s see:
“The destruction of Bitcoin can (and must) also be accelerated by large-scale computer attacks, which would permanently undermine the confidence of speculators,” illegal.
“However, it is possible to attack its centralized, vulnerable interfaces,” illegal.
“or to saturate the network (DDOS) with streams of fake transactions,” illegal in two ways: compromizing other people’s systems to create a DDOS capable botnet, and performing the DDOS itself. When combined with the statement immediately above, it is also very explicitly not ethical, since you have to compromise innocent bystanders’ systems to get enough bandwidth to attack any of the major cryptocurrency exchanges.
“If a group of hackers (real or fake) announced an impending attack, the price of Bitcoin would likely collapse,” threats of this nature are illegal depending on jurisdiction, not as bad as the other ones though.
“simply share this article as widely as you can,” counts as aiding and abetting criminal activity, illegal.
What happens when a similar network pops back up? The code is open source, anyone can use it to make a cryptocurrency just like Bitcoin. Do you plan on perpetually playing whack-a-mole while more and more people on your side are arrested?
Plus, as said before, cryptocurrencies inherently require a lot of computation, even non-minable ones. All you’ll do is create a reduction in emissions that probably won’t matter when where greater climate is concerned.
Good suggestions! I do all of those, and yet I still have time left over!
DDOS is used, perhaps poorly, in reference to generating fake transactions. I doubt that will require any kind of botnet since Bitcoin’s transaction processing speed is extremely slow. Targeting specific computers and acquiring a botnet is indeed illegal, that is correct, but I don’t think either is necessary. I also agree that the latter is unethical, for the record.
That aside, I bet you would have been a lot of fun to have around during the civil rights movement. “No, Rosa Parks, don’t do it! That’s illegal!”.
Why would it? There are better alternatives already in operation. My guess is that Ethereum would take over. The only reason Bitcoin still sustains itself is because it’s a massive speculative bubble. It will inevitably burst, and as with all speculative bubbles, the rich will walk away richer and the poor suckers who bought into it will walk away poorer. It’s in everyone’s interest but the rich that the bubble bursts sooner rather than later.
Also, once the first cryptocurrency bubble pops, a lot of people will realize the huge risk of speculating on the value of thin air and will avoid it or at least be a lot more careful in the future. That means the problem of speculation will be greatly reduced, the value of other cryptocurrencies would become more stable and much less energy would be wasted.
Cybercrime is often based on intent. For example, DOS attacks via exploitation of vulnerabilities and causing a shutdown is still illegal, even though they only require one computer.
I think you underestimate how much effort a major cyber attack takes. All I’m saying is that in terms of CO2 emissions reduced per hour, there are probably better ways of doing it.
There’s actually an Ethereum mining craze going on right now: https://videocardz.com/newz/chinese-gpu-miners-are-now-bulk-buying-geforce-rtx-30-laptops-to-mine-ethereum
I feel like that’s not good for the environment either, especially since GPUs are also crazy inefficient. Non-minable ones like the PRC one is the way to go IMO for legitimate financial transactions, but they’re few and far between, and since they’re harder to profit from, there will continue to be minable ones as long as capitalism is a thing.
You’re way underestimating capitalists. The whole reason new cryptocurrencies are popping up left and right is because the the initial wave of trading is often when most of the money is made, and most of them are never used for actual mainstream transactions because I never see any organization other than cryptocurrency exchanges accepting them (don’t think the capitalists don’t realize this. They do and don’t care). This is the crowd that caused multiple recessions trying the same money making tricks again and again.
I’d also like to repeat what throwaway96581 said because I think this needs to be taken into account:
You might argue that other cryptocurrencies can also do this, but keep in mind that shaking the trust in cryptocurrency in such a big way (knowing there’s a large group actively attacking cryptocurrency) might cause all of them to come crashing down (a historical example is the collapse of the USSR absolutely crippling worker’s rights and general leftist movements worldwide, movements which could have done a lot of good in the world).
Capitalists might return to buying precious metals or property with the money they would have used for cryptocurrency, or investing in companies that pollute more than Bitcoin ever could (remember that electricity generation and electronics is not the biggest environmental destroyer though they are significant: capitalist agriculture, livestock, everyday disposable plastics, and fossil fuel vehicles are), the former two is massively environmentally damaging (I’d wager more than Bitcoin), and all have serious human rights implications (really the only way to get rid of them is to get rid of capitalism itself).
Marginalized countries might also lose a way of circumventing sanctions because a cryptocurrency is pretty useless when no other organizations accept it, which would just be handing political power to the US. We’d be losing the benefits too, just to make the bubble pop a little sooner.
Knowing the current state of surveillance capitalism, countries might even use this to say “hey, see this? encryption doesn’t work! It might even get you hacked!” (yes I know cryptocurrency and end-to-end encryption are different things, but tons of people don’t know that and could well be fooled into supporting cryptography bans, most propaganda is nonsense and they’re still massively effective).
You’re gambling on something that may or may not work (as another commenter pointed out, the Bitcoin network is actively trying to scale) and may or may not cause a lot more unintended consequences.
I think you underestimate the power ordinary people have if they manage to organize.
There’s also the added benefit of giving the middle finger to wealthy speculators, which seems to be in vogue these days.
Ethereum is in the process of transitioning to proof-of-stake, but it’s not there yet. Until then it’s pretty bad too, yes. Proof-of-stake is also highly experimental, and not without other issues, so there’s still a good chance it won’t work out either. But at least there’s a possibility, unlike Bitcoin.
That’s because there’ very little to no inherent value in any cryptocurrency. It’s just pretend-money. An illusion. And the illusion breaks if people stop believing in it. That’s the point! To get anywhere they would then (hopefully) need to demonstrate actual value, not just empty promises.
That’s a whole bunch of what-ifs. And gold and real estate is used as value stores, safe havens, because they’re relatively stable, which in turn is because they’re real assts with real scarcity. Bitcoin is the complete opposite.
I don’t see the problem… They should, at least to the extent that they’re just balloons full of empty promises. Bubbles have never been good for anything other than making rich people richer, and having it burst sooner rather than later will cause less damage. What substance is there will remain, as it did after the dot com bubble, for example.
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