This is my rattled off response to a non-Bitcoiner who sent me this article.
Putting it here on sn to have my thoughts honed/challenged:
The article author makes the classic mistake of confusing "crypto" with Bitcoin. Whether it is intentional or not, hard to say, but they must have access to the same information that I do and yet they still get it wrong, so I typically think it is done in bad faith.
Bottom line is that Bitcoin does not need permission from the regulators to exist or be used. As time passes more and more people will realise this.
“This is an industry that has run its course,” he says. “If it all went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t impact a single person on the planet other than the speculator.”
Absolute nonsense. Again, is it bad faith, or is this guy really just clueless, or perhaps does not care about the majority of the world's population. People do not have bank accounts or who live under regimes that have inflated (through unchecked money printing) their savings out of existence before defaulting on their debt. If you were Argentinian, for example, I believe this would have happened to you four times in the last 50 years! Bitcoin is a safe haven where the state is not able to confiscate, overtly or covertly (inflation), peoples' savings. It also provides financial rails where individuals can transfer value around the world at the speed of light, for free, with no broker, middle man, "rent seeker" slowing down the transaction as well as charging fees, for something that, like I said can now be done better and for free.
"cryptocurrencies are used to fund terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons."
"Nuclear weapons"(scary! Aslo, evidence?), that is actually a new one when this kind of line is trotted out. Bear in mind all of these things can be purchased untraceably with cash, so perhaps we outlaw that as well.
"The industry’s carbon footprint is roughly equivalent to a country the size of Ukraine."
Again, bad faith point, there is extensive research that shows that Bitcoin projects enable people to fund more risky renewables projects. If this author wanted to do a fair comparison they might calculate the energy consumption of the fiat monetary system; all those ATM, Banks, journeys taken by those employees to get to work, all those server farms, all of those militaries defending all of those things. Arbitrarily comparing it to the energy use of a country is emotive nonsense. If they really cared they might write a headline about clothes dryers using more energy than the Bitcoin network, and clothes drying machines already have an effective, available-to-all, zero-energy alternative that already exists. In any case who is anyone to decide how somebody else chooses to use their energy (financial or otherwise). Who are they to say what has value and what does not have value?
https://x.com/DSBatten/status/1723841740938109350?s=20 - Links to sources about environmental claims.
"In the wake of the October 7 atrocities, Israeli law enforcement authorities closed more than 100 Binance accounts and identified about 150 crypto donation initiatives affiliated with Hamas"
The original headline that was run about this was that Hamas had been donated hundreds of millions of dollars. Elizabeth Warren, American Congresswoman showcased this headline in front of Congress, even after it was debunked as being erroneous. Bad faith again. Good to see they have not gone for the hundreds of millions figure again, but the article does not say the true figure, which I believe is vanishingly small. Would have to double check that though.
"He has lost money with FTX and Voyager, another crypto firm that collapsed last year. “The experience has made me a lot more conservative,” he adds."
If he just self-custodied his own Bitcoin instead of giving it to "trusted" third parties then none of this would have affected him. At all.
"proof of reserves"
Twitter users calling for FTX to demonstrate this led to the whole fraud unwinding. https://balajis.com/p/crypto-twitter-found-sbfs-fraud
Like I said at the top, Bitcoin doesn't require permission to do anything that it does, but it will keep doing it anyway. It is the first time that an unconfiscatable asset has ever existed and I am sure the powers-that-be are really expending a great deal of energy trying to work out how they can destroy/control it.