@pickle1I am fundamentally opposed to anything block-chain related because of the vast amount of resource that is being used to support it, with the supposed millions of processors running just to validate it.
We have seen how China has acted - how long before other nations do the same and the whole thing collapses like ponzi schemes, etc.
These certainly are valid concerns. Here's my response: the biggest blockchain players are actively working to reduce significantly the environmental impact. It is a result of the "proof-of-work" method used by many crypto currencies to validate transactions, which cause many nodes on the network to compete against each other for the privilege of verifying a block and the accompanying reward of receiving a coin.
But it doesn't have to be done that way; many mainnets are moving to a "proof-of-stake" model, while the NFT marketplace Veve uses a "proof-of-reputation" model. I won't get into the weeds of how they work, but they don't depend on banks of GPUs running at 100% capacity 24/7 to process transactions. Veve has just migrated to "Immutable X," which sincerely claims to have a net zero carbon footprint. I'll admit to being skeptical of that claim, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to justify my skepticism. It may be true.
As for counties banning crypto, well, China gonna China. I seriously doubt many, if any, Western countries will follow suit, for two reasons: first, you can't put the technology genie back in the bottle. For example, governments have been trying to ***** consumer cryptography for decades. At "best", they will only succeed in ***** major tech companies to water down their encryption schemes to give governments access to the files and devices under those companies' control. There will always be cryptographic algorithms available on the Internet that will be found and used by those who really want to maintain their privacy.
Second, and much more importantly, the global cryptocurrency market is 2.6 trillion dollars. Most of that does not come from people like I, who have a few thousand parked in Bitcoin. Most of it comes from the very people who control the governments in question and who wish to continue making buckets of money on crypto the market. I don't believe they will ***** their golden goose. When a company like Disney enters the space, I take that as an indication that the ground is fairly solid.
