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I Don't Think I Could Invent Something Worse Than Bitcoin

TL;DR If you don't know what "mining the nonce" means, you shouldn't talk about cryptocurrency.

I don't think I could invent something worse than Bitcoin, even if I spent a long time thinking about it.

I could invent a currency where the value you owned is based on the number of forests you burnt down, or the number of children you blackmailed. But no one would use it.

Toilet Waste

Cryptocurrency "mining" is literally computers guessing at random numbers until they find the right random number. It looks something like:

And let's be clear, guessing at random numbers takes a lot of electricity. Like, a lot.

Some investors, who don't know what the nonce is, refer to cryptocurrency mining as "solving an interesting puzzle," "solving a math problem." They should stop talking about cryptocurrency.

OK, so kill me and eat my face. We now have a protcol where the only way to make a transaction with fake money is to waste thousands of CPU hours. I think this is already terrible, but we're just getting started.

Scaling Waste: Death Toilet

Some people talk about scaling Bitcoin or how to scale blockchain systems in general. Those people are toilet.

Maybe you learn about at mining the nonce and say "that's bad, but at least the more computers mining, more transactions can happen." Go to hell.

The Bitcoin protcol is literally designed to slow down the the network gets used. When there are more blocks mined in a given time period, the number of zeroes in the nonce you need to guess at goes up. This makes it harder to mine when more machines are mining.

This system is designed to increase waste the more it's used. Slam my genitals in a cabinet door.

I also didn't mention: The shitty text file of transactions has a limited size. Blocks can only be so big. This also artificially limits the throughput of transactions. There is a different protocol designed to help with scaling, called "Bitcoin Cash".

This is dumb and bad. We're just getting started though!

Security By Making Everything You Do Public

We've built a system of pure waste. To send someone a few units of fake money, you need to use giggawatts of energy. At least it's a secure system that the government can't interfere with.

Every transaction you make is recorded on the permanent* record of the blockchain. This makes it extremely easy for anyone, especially the government, to track everything you do. Any time you transfer cryptocurrency to an entity, it adds risk that you can be linked to that entity.

* Only if people keep mining, and only if there is not an attack large enough to corrupt the blockchain. There is no gaurantee the blockhain will always exist, which itself is pretty funny.

People pay for things on the dark with cryptocurrency, and commit financial crimes with cryptocurrency, and are caught all the time. Actually, I should stop talking about this, because this part of cryptocurrency is hilarious and awesome. I would be honored to invent something with this factor of stupidity baked into it.

Security By Locking Yourself Out

Cryptocurrency is way more convenient to use than a bank. It's more secure: A bank can't access your assets, your assets can't be frozen, you can't get locked out. You have full control!

So when you lose your password, which happens all the time, you permanently lose access to all of your fake money. Because cyrptocurrency is a decentralized platform (that's why you're using it, right?) there is no "forgot password" link, no help center to call, you're just screwed.

You Don't Even Get The JPEG

If you thought this was a bad design, wait until you hear about NFTs.

"Blocks" on the blockchain are just shitty text files. Blocks don't store much information. Blocks can't contain files like JPEGs.

That's why pyramid schemers use the blockhain to sell files like JPEGs. When you purchase an NFT of, let's say a JPEG, you don't get the JPEG, you don't get any file at all. There is no permanent source of that file.

Instead, all you get is a shitty text file on the blockchain that claims you purchased something from someone. And you don't even own that, it exists on the blockchain. All you really get is the bragging rights that you entered into a pyramid scheme - assuming you want to expose who you are publicly on the blockchian. Or you can re-sell it. Given that 95% of NFTs are now worthless, you could also spend that time equally well by trying to freeze your genitals and shatter them with a hammer.

Lose All Your Money With Mathematical Certainty

From the creators of "buying a text file" comes "NO REALLY WE GOT THE BUGS OUT OF THE SMART CONTRACT THIS TIME WE THINK."

Given a system this stupid and wasteful, imagine building a programming language on top of it won't pay you money until some logical condition is met. Imagine that this program is permanent - if it has a flaw, you can't change it. If the program pays the wrong person, or never pays anyone, or gets exploited due to a bug, there is no way to recover that fake money. You can't call your bank to reverse the transfer, because it's decentralized! Then imagine calling this bucket of shit "smart".

That's exactly what a "smart contract" is. It's a program designed to gate cryptocurrency transaction. If you've ever written code, you know all code is shit, and all code has bugs. So why not trust your life savings to a program that probably works, and is irreversible if it breaks?

The funniest smart contract disaster was the DAO Hack, where USD $150 million was lost when someone exploited an Etherium "smart" contract designed for crowdfunding. It was such a disaster that Etherium "hard forked", inventing an entirely new blockchain to globally undo transaction history.

That's right, a community that rallied around the inbred joys of an immutable, permament blockchain, mutated their entire blockchain.

That's It!

I don't think I could invent something worse than this. Oh yeah, and 90% of this waste is wash trading.