When bankers, and those who benefit most from the status quo banking system write an article, you get something like this one. Poorly researched, assumed “facts” the author heard on the internet, and extremely little effort to really understand the groundswell behind crypto currencies. This response rebutts the most important point of the poor horse that defenders of the status quo continue to beat…

While this article is a Gish Gallop, it’s not the worst one I have seen recently, which leads me to believe there is something going on; as in, I think we are entering the “then they fight you” phase. So we can expect to see stronger regulation, and limitations from the governments with the worst bobble heads running them (read: the US government energized by worthless academics doubling down on the status quo) while other countries embrace them, leading to the biggest problem governments face when dealing with the decentralized nature of cryptos: governments, rightly, aren’t all on the same team and the internet connects everyone. So good luck with that.

As for addressing the silly accusations in this article, 5 minutes on the internet should put down every concern the author states. I’ll do a few.

1. Energy consumption. This issue has been rebutted over and over again. The first question to ask is “How much energy does a country’s government use to maintain the value of their currency?” When you have that answer, then we can start to talk about how much energy Bitcoin uses to serve as a currency, not just for one country, but the entire world. To calculate the energy consumption of support a fiat currency, you must calculate the cost of the military, the cost of infrastructure maintenance, the cost of supporting the banking system, and a myriad of other aspects of the cost of running a government that provide faith in the stability and value of the currency. Additionally, and unlike most government based currency around the world, there are options with crypto currencies. For example, while mining bitcoin does have a large energy footprint, the great majority of it is from hydroelectric and other renewable resources (please don’t rebutt this link with an article that references the scammy, biased, and unresearched articles by Devries. Doing so will only indicate that you yourself have spent even less time on this topic than I thought), giving a place for energy producers to put excess energy when loads are lower. This is a great boon for renewable, hydro and thermal generation. Only fiat is supported by fossil fuels. Further, other cryptos are Proof of Stake based, and consume extremely little energy. If you think energy consumption is an issue for a currency, we should ban fiat right now. If you think energy consumption is an issue for Cryptos and not Fiat, you are the worse of hypocrites.
2. Puts global banking at risk. Good. I’m tempted to not write any more about that at all. Global banking is horribly controlled by a few powerful people in a few powerful countries. It leaves countries in horrible dispair and people who just want a safe place to put their earnings bereft of any place at all. Worse, the status quo leaves 30% of the world unbanked, and 25% of Amercian without a bank account or with minimal banking abilities (e.g. they use Venmo and thats it). The banking system, with this bizzarre notion that people in a distant city, often in another country, must look out for you and your personal finances, ends up adding limitations on how you use your own money, how much and how often you can transfer it, people must get approvals by people they do not know to move their own money to themselves. There are fixed fees which affect the poor far more than the rich, charging 10–50 dollars when the account is 1 penny overdrawn with poor timing, and a myriad of limitations that prevent people from wanting to put their money and trust into a system that doesn’t benefit them. Worse, those that enter the banking system risk even more losses. Government can literally steal funds (beyond normal taxation) with levies. They can also sweep people up in bank freezes. Worse still, they (governments and banks) can even make the money you are holding completely valueless. All in the name of nationalism, in the name of greater good, in the name of stopping the bad guys. Fact of the matter is, your money is not yours if someone else is holding it. Crypto fixes all of this.
3. Controlled by a few. Oh stop it. All of Bitcoin isn’t even worth as much as Apple. If you don’t like centralized control over currency, you should ban fiat now, especially the US Dollar.

There are half a dozen more images like those one

4. Used by bad guys. This sort of tripe has been repeated over and over again. If you think that the currency that funds crime should be banned, then let’s ban the US dollar. Just because someone else funded crime with bitcoin, is not an excuse to prevent me from buying coffee with bitcoin. The currency didn’t cause the crime nor did it fund the crime by itself. Once again, if criminal usage is your issue, fiat should be eliminated right now.

5. Hard to use. Well now, finally a legitimate complaint, although certainly not an original one, did you learn about cryptocurrencies yesterday? It’s true! Cryptos are still hard to use. So was the automobile 10 years after its introducts. So was email 10 years after it’s introduction. So was the steam engine 10 years after its introduction. So were desktop computers 10 years after their introduction. What is your point? Are you under the impression that the banking system is easy to use? Have you ever been poor? Have you even been outside your bubble and tried to get banking done in Puerto Rico, Bolivia or Zimbabwe? Consider the myriad of forms, the approval processes, the lines at banks, the limited hours banks are open for and the various other barriers between you and your money. Now consider crypto. You downlaod a wallet, you put funds into it. It is supported by thousands of computers around the world making sure your funds remain your. And now the “hard part” is you have to deal with weird addresses and learn some security hygeine that you should learn anyway in this day and age? If “hard to use” is your issue, we should remove fiat banking system and move to crypto right now.

Finally, there is the fact that cryptocurrencies are a work in progress and we are just at the beginning. There isnt a gamble that this is the way the wind is blowing, it’s inevitable. But there are projects solving ALL of these so called “issues” you have brought up. As it is, for the reasons mentioned Bitcoin is already a superior solution to fiat currency, but it does suffer from scaling issues. So other projects like ADA, DASH and DIVI are addressing them and coming up with even better decentralized versions of bitcoin. Take Divi for example:

1. It’s a proof of stake network, thus it is low energy. You and stake the coin with something as small as a Raspberry Pi. Same is true for ADA and a myriad of other currencies.
2. Bitcoin is more decentralized than the US dollar, and is getting more decentralized. Divi is even more decentralized than Bitcoin as well as most cryptocurrencies, some of which are as bad as fiat in terms of wealth disparity, just on a way smaller scale.

You can’t even make a chart like this with fiat.

ADA has staking and stake pools designed to maximize decentralization amongst the funds. It’s quite literally the opposite of how the current banking system rewards the largest owners through the use of violence, cronyism and lobbying.

3. When it comes to fixing the complexity problem, no one is ahead of Divi. To reduce the barrier between fiat and Cryptocurrencies, they bought a bank. Not “teamed up with a bank”, not “partnered” with a bank. They have controlling interest in a bank to be able to offer real banking services with cryptocurrency standard low barriers. To bring banking to everyone, they are introducing 1-click KYC for those that want it. To drop the cost of sending money around the world, they will use their cryptocurrency to transfer value, and will always be able to undercut Western Union and any bank on remittance fees. To make it easier to know who you are sending funds to, they are creating human readable addresses. To allow anyone to earn money by helping the network in a benevolent, non-violent way, they have already introduced tiered, 1-click masternodes and staking. Their new wallet that has been demonstrated shows the ultimate in user experience and interface. They are just one project, of many, competing to displace, slow, expensive, violence supporting, criminal using, and psychopath controlled fiat money.

Good luck with your future toilet paper.