Hey everyone, Bit here. As you may know, I have been talking about cryptocurrencies lately, mostly Ethereum. I'm not a "crypto degenerate", but I have been very afraid of speaking about this since it seems to cause many of my followers to cringe. I even got an opinion from one of my Discord server admins, and I want to analyze that opinion here.

Environmental concerns?

Here's the first concern:

nft is just bad and harmful to the environment

There was an event on the Ethereum chain called "The Merge" (learn more on ethereum.org) which switched the chain from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) verification. The PoS method is more efficient than the PoW method, meaning that the Ethereum chain is more efficient than it was before. However, Bitcoin is still a PoW chain and uses about 127 TERAWATT-HOURS of energy each year and 707 KILOWATT-HOURS for EVERY TRANSACTION (see Forbes article, and current data from the University of Cambridge).

The COVID Graphics Card Shortage?

Now the second concern:

while crypto also caused a graphics card shortage and also was bad for environment anyway

This is true. Ethereum mining (when it was a PoW chain) relied on GPUs, therefore partly causing the graphics card shortage during the COVID pandemic. Probably the Ethereum demand alone was not enough to stifle the GPU market, but the COVID pandemic pushed GPU demand even further due to new PCs being built. Now that Ethereum is a PoS chain, GPUs are no longer used on the Ethereum chain. Bitcoin does not use GPUs, instead it is primarily mined with ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) hardware which is custom-built for mining Bitcoin.

Untraceable Money? Fully-Digital Currency?

The last concern I could point out:

and also far too much a push for total digital currency which i am deeply uncomfortable with. if you wanted untraceable money pay in cash

Crypto is not exactly untraceable. Cryptocurrencies are based on something called blockchain (Wikipedia). Blockchain is a system of cataloging transactions in units called blocks. Each block references the block before it through a hash. Each block contains the addresses (like my Ethereum wallet address, 0xc5f3...9de9), of the sender and recipient. It's just that wallet addresses aren't directly linked to any personally identifying information. So cryptocurrency is not totally untraceable, since the blockchain is entirely public, but the addresses don't reference personal information. Also, the thing about fully-digital currency, we already use part-digital currency now thanks to bank accounts with electronic transfers and debit cards.