The Everything Bearish Thread

[ahpku]

^^Please take your embarrassing self back to your self-moderated sandbox of shame.
Don't understand why you haven't been banned yet (but thanks for the cleanup, mods).

Does Bitcoin Have an Energy Problem?
Asks energy blogger Joe Carter, going on to conclude that hell yeah, it sure does!

If we assume that all Bitcoins were mined as cheaply as $150 a coin, then it cost $3.1 billion to pay the electricity costs to put all those coins in circulation. It would also have created 31.5 million tons of CO2.
You don’t have to be a hysteric about climate change to find those figures troubling. That’s a lot of wasted energy for a “make-work” project.

Just in case you're still unsure, Joe, there's also this:

Bitcoin Strikes Back
From the dusty "How is this still news?" files:
Bitcoin, backed by shamelessly wasted energy, helps fight creeping environmentalism.

"Vast amounts of electricity go into feeding the Bitcoin delusion. Fortunately, it's unlikely that the digital currency will survive long enough to generate the environmental disaster that would arise if it became a major part of the financial system," writes John Quiggin, going on to explain that "The same design feature that requires the use of so much electricity is the fatal flaw in Bitcoin as a currency."

Fist bump? Fist bump!

How much CO2 do all the banks produce? Hundreds of times over!!!

Possibly.
Caveat: Banks facilitate world's commerce and are used by roughly 7 Billion people,* bitcoin enthusiasts among them.**  That's a lot of people, financial visionary and disruptive technologist RKing, a whole bunch of transacting!
To put things in perspective, Bitcoin Wiki tells us that VISA alone handles "on average around 2,000 transactions per second (tps)," with max. capacity of  56,000tps.

Bitcoin? Well, currently under 2tps, i.e. to match Bitcoin, VISA would have to consume not just 'Hundreds of times over!!!' but 'Thousands of times over!!!,!!!'
And VISA is but a single payment processor
*This number includes the ~2 billion 'unbanked,' who still rely on money.
**See here how the so-called 'bitcoin businesses' cry like little girls when real banks don't want to play with them.

[1714478144]

1714478144

[1714478144]

1714478144

[1714478144]

1714478144

[ahpku]

From our bullish sister thread, where the news just keeps getting better:

BITMIN Quarter of Way through Crowdfund Campaign, New Cloud Mining Company!
BITMIN is a company that offers investors a platform with a lower entry barrier to mining, which is becoming more important due to the fact that the competition in Bitcoin mining has increased, and will continue to do so. The idea was conceived by Sathes Kumar, a person that wanted to give people a real chance at earning profit from Bitcoin mining after seeing the extremely high costs of competitive Bitcoin mining.
BITMIN is... allowing investors to buy “shares” from their IndieGoGo Campaign page for $5, which is equivalent to 18 GH/s of SHA256 mining.

Sweet! Another cloud mining company, and already a quarter of the way through its Crowdfund Campaign!
Just how much has this particular titan of cloudmining industry manage to raise?
Well...

Not bad, Sathes Kumar, not bad!
*Math tip for our esteemed colleagues @bitcoinist.net: 20 is 1/2, not 1/4 of 40.

[ahpku]

Bitcoin Node Numbers Fall After Spam Transaction 'Attack'

"The number of reachable nodes has declined further following an "attack" that overloaded the bitcoin network.
Last week, an unknown actor [Alister Maclin --ed.] sent a deluge of spam that left bitcoin's nodes – the clients that store and relay transactions – with upwards of 88,000, or 1GB worth, waiting in their collective memory pool. ... the total number of reachable nodes – 5,030 – remains 16% lower than before the 'attack'."

Antifragile!

[Enjorlas]

Keep on truckin' ahpku. Don't let the tards get to you.

[ahpku]

Banks <3 Blockchain; Kick Bitcoin To The Curb
As brokenhearted Bitcoiners desperately try to attract Big Money & Government Regulators, no one's buying.

'Banks are embracing the blockchain while bitcoin is slumping. A lot. Of course, we already knew these facts, but what the State of Bitcoin report shows is just how much the support for bitcoin is dwindling.
(We’re surprised it’s taken this long, to be frank.)
So perhaps, for now, it’s best to call things what they are: Call bitcoin, bitcoin, and blockchain, blockchain.'

@Chef: <3

[Chef Ramsay]

Well, you finally have an ongoing thread that you can call your own. You've gone from creep status to burnout of the year, well done!

[Ninjahitoko]

Bitcoin is honestly starting to piss me off now 

[Dilla]

Bitcoin is honestly starting to piss me off now 

Why?

[ssmc2]

Bitcoin is honestly starting to piss me off now 

Why?

He bought high and sold low.

[Omikifuse]

Bitcoin is honestly starting to piss me off now 

Why?

Probably the trolls promised him sub 200 coins soon, but prices are increasing every day and he feels like he is losing money and is too scared to buy

[ahpku]

@ssmc2; Omikifuse: Unlike most threads in this section, this one contains no financial advice. If you enjoy invesdting in bitcoin & are above the age of consent, you go right ahead, I don't judge.

[RKing]

Bitcoin is honestly starting to piss me off now  

Why?

He did not buy when the price was low. He regrets now. He wants the price to go lower so that he can buy some.

[ahpku]

Yes, We Have No Bananas!
From our No News Is Good News department:
In yet another probing piece of investigative reportage pilfered from Bitcoinist.net, Bitcoin fandom publication Inside Bitcoin informs us that Ugandan Government Allegedly Uses FinFisher Spyware. Imagine?(!)
If  -- even after Googling up that Uganda is an impoverished landlocked African country where 37.8 percent of the population live on less than $1.25 a day -- the relevance of Ugandan FinFisher use to Bitcoin continues to elude you, fear not: there's none.

'By the look of things, FinFisher does not seem to be designed to spy on people using Bitcoin in Uganda. With the country under tight governmental control, it wouldn’t seem unlikely that spyware could be used to monitor Bitcoin transactions within the country as well.'

[ahpku]

Yo Dawg, We Heard You Like Ponzi?
MMM Global Republic of Bitcoin added a Ponzi to your Ponzi. So's you can Ponzi while you Ponzi, apperently.

'Those who follow Ponzi schemes will immediately recognize the name MMM. In the 1990s, Russian fraudster Sergey Mavrodi ran one of Russia’s largest Ponzai schemes with the same name. Savvy marketing and promises of 1000%+ returns suckered tens of thousands of people into investing their savings in Mavrodi’s scheme. By 1994, when MMM’s offices were closed due to tax evasion, Mavrodi owed his investors beween 100 billion and 3 trillion rubles (between tens of millions and billions of dollars). Mavrodi spent a few years in jail, but by 2011, he was responsible for at least two other pyramid schemes.

Now Mavrodi is back in business, bigger and badder than ever. This time he is using Bitcoin.'

[RKing]

Yo Dawg, We Heard You Like Ponzi?
MMM Global Republic of Bitcoin added a Ponzi to your Ponzi. So's you can Ponzi while you Ponzi, apperently.

'Those who follow Ponzi schemes will immediately recognize the name MMM. In the 1990s, Russian fraudster Sergey Mavrodi ran one of Russia’s largest Ponzai schemes with the same name. Savvy marketing and promises of 1000%+ returns suckered tens of thousands of people into investing their savings in Mavrodi’s scheme. By 1994, when MMM’s offices were closed due to tax evasion, Mavrodi owed his investors beween 100 billion and 3 trillion rubles (between tens of millions and billions of dollars). Mavrodi spent a few years in jail, but by 2011, he was responsible for at least two other pyramid schemes.

Now Mavrodi is back in business, bigger and badder than ever. This time he is using Bitcoin.'

This Ponzi scheme will cause little damage to bitcoin. It will lead more people to bitcoin. I do not like any kind of Ponzi schemes.

[ahpku]

What 2016 Holds for Bitcoin Businesses
Charlie Woolnough, the co-founder of CoinCorner, explains.

'The hard reality is, there just isn’t currently enough volume to support all the exchanges, payment gateways and wallet providers that have sprung up, let alone the number of secondary service providers, such as bitcoin compliance solutions, that have been created to support the first wave of service providers.'

'Many of these businesses will need to take radical steps to survive the next few years while consumer adoption catches up with service provider expectation. We are already seeing signs of this where those business that haven’t been able to reach critical mass are forced to close, resize, pivot or merge with competitors.'

Who's paying you to spread such bilious FUD, co-founder of CoinCorner and CoinDesk contributor Charlie Woolnough?

[RKing]

What 2016 Holds for Bitcoin Businesses
Charlie Woolnough, the co-founder of CoinCorner, explains.

'The hard reality is, there just isn’t currently enough volume to support all the exchanges, payment gateways and wallet providers that have sprung up, let alone the number of secondary service providers, such as bitcoin compliance solutions, that have been created to support the first wave of service providers.'

'Many of these businesses will need to take radical steps to survive the next few years while consumer adoption catches up with service provider expectation. We are already seeing signs of this where those business that haven’t been able to reach critical mass are forced to close, resize, pivot or merge with competitors.'

Who's paying you to spread such bilious FUD, co-founder of CoinCorner and CoinDesk contributor Charlie Woolnough?

More adoption will solve that problem. The more usage of bitcoin, the higher the value of bitcoin. It can also be used as a value storage.

[ahpku]

...
More adoption will solve that problem.

Sure it will would.

Breaking: BTCC CEO Warns Bitcoiners about MMM Ponzi Scheme ...Stuff

'We've had reports of dubious "investments" involving #bitcoin. These may be ponzi schemes designed to steal your bitcoins.'

In MY Bitcoin?! Well, I'll be... Thanks for the heads-up, Bobby Lee.

[ahpku]

Pt. 2: The Goxxening
'Cryptsy may have gone full Mt Gox,' claims blogger senior writer at SiliconANGLE Duncan Riley.

'Bitcoin and altcoin exchange Cryptsy (Project Investors, Inc.) may be in a serious trouble with one report over the weekend claiming that the exchange is refusing to allow users to cash out.'

These unsubstantiated allegations come as no surprize to Mr. Riley, 'given the company’s previous involvement with some of the worst scammers and criminals to have ever operated in the Bitcoin space.'

[ahpku]

Pimp Your Bitcoin
Cointelegraph's Evander Smart explains how to make friends and build a bitcoin community. One sleazy pitch at a time.

- victim: “Hey, Joseph, how’s it going?” [Saying 'Hello' to a bitcoiner; bleeding profusely in shark-infested waters; slowly limping past a hungry lion while smothering self in bloody steak tartare: WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?! --ed]

- you:     “Oh, things are just great, Derrick. I just invested in some more bitcoin and values are on the rise. Just paid for my coffee with bitcoin.” [At this point, having often fantasized of buying coffee himself, the victim is fully enthralled. Like a hypnotized chicken. --ed]

- victim: “Oh? Yeah, I’ve heard of this bitcoin. What is bitcoin again?"
[Engorge to satiation --ed]