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.
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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