this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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Privacy

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The Bitcoiners were wrong: a blog post about privacy and bitcoin, and how they failed to design a cash alternative (unfathom.ing)
submitted 6 months ago by UnHidden to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I think some of the arguments are quite flawed. Bitcoin itself has most of the properties it is said to have, but it lives in a world that doesn't and so some only really apply if you manage to stay inside the system. Like, your Signal chats are private as long as you don't copy-paste them to Facebook.

Regarding self-custody/decentralization and using custodial services: The problem here is not that those properties don't apply to Bitcoin, but that some people just choose to give away control over their wallets or not use Bitcoin itself for certain transactions. Can't blame that on the currency, unless you think it can't be done any other way.

Regarding privacy: I don't think any serious "Bitcoiner" advertises Bitcoin as private. The message has always been that it's "pseudonymous", that you have to take extra steps in order to make it anonymous, and that it's transparent instead of private by design.

Regarding transparency/inclusion: These paragraphs actually argue about privacy again. One is trying to spin the existing transparency into a negative, which is a valid opinion but not something "Bitcoiners" are wrong about. The other circles back to the idea of staying inside the system. Bitcoin transactions are inclusive, but ofc you can still get into trouble if you have to fear external repercussions and can't stay anonymous.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Thanks for the breakdown. When I read the headline, I guessed at a bunch of what the article said and you confirmed most of it.

[–] UnHidden 0 points 6 months ago

Monero doesn't have most of these problems...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Bitcoin was both a massive failure and success - a failure because it ended up not accomplishing its biggest goal of being a bank killer, but a success because it demonstrated not only the demand but that such a system wasn't a complete moonshot.

/circlejerk

XMR 2 da moon!!!!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Was a fan of Bitcoin, until found out about this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Also the fact Bitcoin is essentially a pyramid scheme. Get more people into it to artificially inflate its value, take the profits, leave everyone else with diminished value, build it up again, get rich, repeat forever.

Crypto should be illegal.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Crypto IS usable as an alternative to regular card payments though. If it gets illegal - what do we have left for online payment? Bank system, which is very hard and illegal to use anonymously, and is subject to sanctions/seizures/whatever. There is cash by mail, which is not always feasible. GNU Taler looks interesting, but seems like it not implemented much yet.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago

Risky link click of the day

[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I always find these breakdowns to be a little bit disingenuous. Like, you could do this same analysis on the whole email system, or on the whole world wide banking system, including ATMs, or on the energy usage of all DNS queries or even on global ActivityPub activity, not to mention shopping on Amazon or browsing Facebook. People DO do these kinds of breakdowns on generative AI, for exactly the same reasons, and reach the same kinds of conclusions.

Having a global computer network is INCREDIBLY energy intensive, with a massive carbon footprint. It's not shocking that a given application of that network is energy intensive, with a massive carbon footprint. These kinds of analysis are put together by people who already don't like cryptocurrencies (for all kinds of reasons both valid and ridiculous) who then go cherry picking MORE reasons not to like them.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 months ago (1 children)

A better comparison would be energy utilized per user, in which case the energy requirements for Bitcoin are miles and miles ahead of what the average person produces using a computer in the same amount of time. Even a gamer, playing 4k 120fps ray traced games 12 hours a day would use a fraction of the energy of someone mining bitcoin.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Exactly, if we do a back of the napkin calculation:

Bitcoin

Users

There are 200 million bitcoin wallets, let’s be generous and say those are all owned by unique individuals.

Total energy consumption

Bitcoin used about 114 TWh in 2021[1]

Bitcoin currently uses about 150 TWh annually

Energy consumption per user

150 TWh / year 
————————— = 0,75 TWh / user / year
200 million users

Banking system

Users

There are over 8 billion people on the planet today, let’s assume 4 billion of them have access to the global banking system.

Total energy consumption

The global banking system used an estimated 264 TWh in 2021[1]

If we assume the same consumption increase rate for banking, that’s about 348 TWh/year currently.

Energy consumption per user

348 TWh / year 
————————— = 0,087 TWh / user / year
4.000 million users

With these numbers, bitcoin uses almost 10x the energy per user annually.

There are of course a myriad of things one can argue over whether it makes a fair comparison, none of which I feel like arguing, since this is just a really simple estimate with a lot of assumptions.

1: I used the numbers in this article uncritically, if you have better numbers you can run your own calculations.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago

XMR exists

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago

Monero ftw

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

but Bitcoin does nothing to prevent custodial exchanges, in the way something like Monero does

In what way does Monero prevent that?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Monero is here and always been. Research, and find you yourself. Monero is what Bitcoin was supposed to be

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

bitcoin was never designed to be private, it was designed to be secure... all transactions are public so it's auditable
but, with a few extra steps you can use it privately

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

imagine if all the huge amount of support and effort that gets put into a nonfungible traceable system (btc) got put into monero. we wouls have such a strong community of cypherpunks

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago

I've been dumping btc for xmr