How Bitcoin Can Destroy The World. Completely!

Earlier this month we explained why Google banned crypto related ads and Let’s face it, the world as we know it is so fragile that even a Tweet can destroy it, especially if it comes from a certain Mr. Trump. Next thing you know missiles start flying, political leaders become agitated and “Keeping up with the Kardashians” gets canceled (damn is that thing still running???). Considering all this, is it so inconceivable to say and fear that Bitcoin could destroy the world? I would LOL at the concept but let’s still explore it.

The Electricity Crackle And Pop

The only way to produce new Bitcoins is by mining and this consumes massive amounts of electricity, which may lead to the world exploding or even worse, imploding. According to Digiconomist, one Bitcoin transaction could power 31 U.S. households for 1 day. According to the same source, one Bitcoin transaction needs 919 Kilowatt-hour while 100,000 VISA transactions consume 169 Kilowatt-hour. Yes, 100K versus ONE!

So, should we start panicking?

Nah! The main concern of a miner is the energy cost (sure, Bitcoin price and network difficulty are also of importance but not the point here), thus all miners are trying to get cheap electricity. But what do you know: green energy is the cheapest and over the last few years we’ve made huge advances in the field of clean energy. Think about solar panels, wind turbines, hydroelectric power plants and BPV panels. By the way, BPV stands for Biological Photovoltaics and I am not gonna claim to know how they work but according to the almighty Google, it’s “technology that uses a biological photosynthetic material to capture solar energy and directly produce electrical power. BPV systems are sometimes also described as living solar panels.” The future is now!

If we are gonna fear that Bitcoin mining will destroy the world because it uses too much electricity, we might as well fear the Internet itself. I mean who knows how much electricity it consumes. Are you going to stop using it? I am sure you won’t! What about the presses used by Governments to print money? How much power do they suck up?

Rather than dwelling on “OMG, we’re going to run out of electricity because of Bitcoin”, maybe we should focus on other ways that Bitcoin could destroy the world as we know it:

Easy To Hide. No Taxes!

At the time of writing this, governments cannot track your Bitcoin assets. Of course, Big Brother has ways of finding the owner of a certain BTC address but the procedure is thorny and I have to admit I don’t know it. But then again, I am not a government guy. Anyway, a bank account can be easily checked, while Bitcoin holdings are a totally different thing and besides, there are thousands of altcoins, many of them focused on privacy, so if you really want to hide your dosh, you can.

That means people can skip paying their taxes, it means the government will suffer losses, your country’s economy will decline, dragging the neighboring countries down with it… then the whole continent… Of course, I am exaggerating but if more and more people start hiding their money in cryptocurrencies and stop paying taxes, things could get pretty rough. Anyway, the world will surely survive.

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Hello Bitcoin, Bye, Bye Banks? Not Yet!

I don’t like sending my money and then waiting for 3 to 5 business days to get where they’re going! I don’t like paying high fees when using banks either. And I don’t like queues (yea, in my country you still queue in a bank). Bitcoin could kill the banking system or at least take a big chunk of money out of it.

Now the question arises: killing the banking system will destroy the world? Right now the Bitcoin ecosystem cannot sustain such a big influx of transactions as banks can, so if banks would suddenly disappear, Bitcoin alone couldn’t replace them. But we have thousands of other cryptocurrencies, most of them very scalable and capable of sustaining high transaction volumes. To answer the question: if tomorrow we would wake up in a world without banks, all business in the world would come to a temporary stop but it will eventually recover. Anyway, we are discussing now in the fictional plane because if cryptos could replace banks, that would mean that scalability issues are gone and the infrastructure can handle the workload. And that will not happen overnight.

Scams! Now That’s A Problem

People are gullible and that’s a fact! For years they were fooled by Binary Options brokers with promises that sound utterly unrealistic: “We will trade for you and make 100% profit in 10 days” or “Deposit more and we will recover all your losses”. People were throwing money left and right, hoping that at least some of that was true and now the story is repeating because the same scammers have moved to Bitcoin and other cryptos.

According to ThatSucks.com, one of the leading fraud-busting sites, they’ve received a total of 3,000 complaints related to crypto scams in the last 5 months alone. That’s huge! And the number is probably going to rise, considering that the crypto space is mainly unregulated, you cannot do a chargeback like you can with credit cards and, yea, people are gullible. However, scams could destroy Bitcoin and the wallets of many people, but not the world.

The World Is Safe… For Now

“Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System” That’s what Satoshi Nakamoto wanted it to be in the first place. Electronic money! If Bitcoin is money and the world is still safe after thousands of years of using the money, then why should we fear Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies?

If you want to find a culprit for a hypothetical destruction of the world, you should look at overpopulation, overexploitation of our forests, pollution, economic manipulation and plenty others. Bitcoin and cryptos are the next step in the evolution of money, a normal progression towards something better, faster and easier to use. At least that’s my 2 cents… sorry, 2 satoshis!