Noob’s point of view on Cryptocurrency
A skeptical beginner’s perspective on cryptocurrency, NFTs, the metaverse, scams, and the wider costs of crypto mining.
I have never been into cryptocurrency because I knew one thing that it increased the prices of GPUs. Also, I don’t like to invest in digital things. So, I got curious about it. I have few words about this whole Cryptocurrency and NFTs’ matter because there are some YouTubers who are promoting it.
Photo by Jievani Weerasinghe on Unsplash
Cryptocurrency Is Decentralized
This is the biggest argument that sells Cryptocurrency, that it is decentralized and the government or big companies don’t have control over it. But as a computer science student, I always had questions like if I write some software, its control will always be in my hands. Cryptocurrency depends on a blockchain network, let’s say ethereum (some software created by someone). Now, do you see contradictions? The creator always has more control. There are many scams that reflect this point like Squid Game Crypto Scam[1].
NFTs: The Future of Art
Buying art with crypto tokens is a new way of promoting Cryptocurrency. These schemes around crypto tokens cannot create or destroy actual dollars, they can only shift them around. If you sell your crypto and make a profit in dollars, it’s only because someone else bought it at a higher price than you did. And then they expect to do the same and so on and so on ad infinitum. Every dollar that comes out of cryptocurrency needs to come from a later investor putting a dollar in. Crypto investments cannot be anything but a zero-sum game and many are actually massively negative sums. In order to presume crypto investment functions as a store of value, we simultaneously need to suppose an infinite chain of greater fools who keep buying these assets at any irrational price into the future forever[2].
F**king Metaverse
Arguments like you will be able to sell NFTs and showcase them in the metaverse are just ridiculous. Dude just play Minecraft and put the damn things in painting in your Minecraft home, it’s your metaverse. As a person who plays games a lot, this metaverse thing is just another game.
Making People’s Lives More Miserable
If you watch TV and YouTube, Cryptocurrency is everywhere and because of that these scams are increasing rapidly. But the biggest problem is It created one of the biggest electronics shortages in the history of humans. The world has limited resources. Because of the Cryptocurrency boom, more people are investing in it and it is creating more demands, in consequence, Cryptocurrency miners get more profits. Let’s say I have a mining rig, I was getting X amount of profit last month and I get Y amount more this month. I will put Y amount buying more mining tech. This includes components like GPUs, Motherboards, CPUs, Power supplies, and electricity. These all things have fundamental parts like capacitors, resistors, inductors, and ICs. So these things have high demands which lead to a shortage of these fundamental parts which leads to the high prices of electronics from mobile to TVs, Cars to Medical instruments.
These are just my few thoughts but it’s more complicated than this. In a few words “Cryptocurrency is just a way to make richer and early adopters richer. For middle-class people, it’s a gamble which sometimes became a scam”
[1] Stokel-Walker,Chris (2021). How a Squid Game Crypto Scam Got Away With Millions.wired.com. https://www.wired.com/story/squid-game-coin-crypto-scam/.
[2] “The Intellectual Incoherence of Cryptoassets.” https://www.stephendiehl.com/blog/crypto-absurd.html