Hi I am new to Steemit and I want to start with sharing some of my views on cryptocurrencies with you.
I believe cryptocurrencies will become a game changer for the world of finance. If governments have to pay their wars with hard cryptocurrency instead of using their own currencies (currencies they can print as much as they need) they will not be able to afford those wars.
Cryptocurrency owners currently can be devided into three groups: the idealists, the speculators and the criminals. In the future I expect that there will be a new group that will eventually grow to become the biggest group: the users.
My view is not entirely positive because if I look at the current state of bitcoin I also see some major issues:
- The PoW required for the mining of new blocks is a terrible waste of energy. This is not very sustainable and is also the reason why mining is now concentrating in a few countries where energy is cheap. I think that it is not desirable that a single country almost has a monopoly on mining.
- There are many possible uses for illegal and criminal purposes, like for example tax evasion, ransomware and drugs dealing. The increasing anonymity that is provided by some alternative cryptocurrencies will not be of help there.
- Currently the bitcoin blockchain cannot process the transaction volume. The quarreling about the bitcoin upgrade proposals that try to solve this problem is not very constructive and I notice there is little respect for the people that have a different opinion.
- The blogs are dominated by the speculators. They predict future bitcoin prices and they provide technical analysis of the price development. That is like analyzing the results on a roulette table. Totally not interesting but it is creating consecutive price bubbles and falls resulting in an undesirable price instability.
Looking forward to your reactions.