Bitcoin is Stupid and Does Not Deserve an Emoji (blog post)

I don't mind there being an emoji for cryptocurrency. It's a relevant thing in modern society whether we like it or not, so there's no reason it should be excluded. But just not Bitcoin, specifically. Even though Bitcoin is the one that kicked off crypto, it's still a brand name, which would result in auto-rejection according to the Unicode Consortium's guidelines.
If there was a more general-purpose icon/symbol that could represent cryptocurrency in general, that'd be more appropriate. But it can't be Bitcoin.
- They already have that, 💩
  
  💩🪙
- an emoji for cryptocurrency
  💩🪙
  
  I mean it has its issues but a non regulated currency not controlled by a government is cool imo
- I wouldn't think Bitcoin has, or can, be trademarked or copyrighted, as it is an open-source protocol/technology where even the creator is unknown?
  Either way there isn't a generic symbol for cryptocurrency. This emoji will go the way of the save icon, where in a couple generations most people will have no idea what it relates to, but know that it's a symbol for cryptos.
  
  I wouldn't think Bitcoin has, or can, be trademarked or copyrighted, as it is an open-source protocol/technology where even the creator is unknown?
  It's still the name of a specific product/service. The issue is partly trademark/copyright, but also partly a matter of neutrality. The Unicode Consortium want to ensure that they're not directly or indirectly endorsing any specific products. If they added a Bitcoin logo, then you'd see every other crypto lining up to get their logos permanently installed on every person's devices, too. Free advertising for life on 99.99% of phones would be hard to pass up.
  
  The creator of bitcoin is as unknown as batman's identity. The folks at the center of the main blockchain companies and stuff like that all know pretty well who created it, they just play along with the story.
  
  Satoshi Nakamoto.
  https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- The problem with having cryptocurrency as emoji is agreeing on the specification how it should be drawn, and also make it different enough from already existing emojis such as coin 🪙. It is not exactly a tangible thing.
  
  Just make it the B symbol they use in the coin? None of the others would exist in their current fashion, without Bitcoin anyway.
- I don't think it should have an emoji either, but how does this rule apply to real currencies being emojis? I mean there is dollar banknote 💵 and yen banknote 💴 and euro banknote 💶 as separate emojis, not just a general money one. And honestly, even most of the emojis referencing anything that has to do with money uses dollar signs, i.e. $. Were these rules made after these emojis were already added?
  
  It probably falls under faulty comparison:
  https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Faulty_Comparison
  Their guidelines change, and it’s possible these emoji were added with old guidelines. They can’t remove old emoji, which means specific buildings like Tokyo Tower🗼is an emoji, even if they prohibit the addition of specific buildings nowadays.
  
  I saw this get brought up a lot. I think the difference is that currency symbols generally don't refer to a specific currency. USD and AUS both use the $ symbol, for example. "Dollar" and "American Dollar" aren't the same thing since other types of dollars exist, and the symbols are still technically multi-purpose, whereas the ₿ symbol technically refers only to Bitcoin.
  That's my theory on the reasoning, at least.
- Why in the world would you have "emojis" as part of Unicode anyway?
  We already have a way to have endless "emojis" without administrative stupidity, it's called JPEG.
  If you need to show text as that, we've had smileys since 90s.
  
  Would you rather send an entire JPEG over text message for an emoji? Or just 4 bytes of unicode right inline where you want it? Unicode having a standard set of emoji is actually incredibly useful and reduces complexity. I guess it would disincentivize 👏 emoji 👏 spam 👏 to use JPEGs tho.
  
  Hmm, why do we need a corporation to be arbitter of the written language anyway ? If they want to use it, they should just use it.If they can't because of some central authority then Unicode is is to be abolished and replace with a system where you can usev wherever squiggle that you want and nobody gets a second opinion. You just do it.
- It makes a lot more sense to implement this the way country flags are implemented in Unicode.

We also need a McDonald’s emoji, Pepsi emoji, Windows emoji and Mastercard emoji. These are also brands that are heavily ingrained in our culture. Probably even more so than Bitcoin.
Or we accept that brands like Bitcoin shouldn’t use emoji as a marketing tool.
- Probably even more so
  probably? shitcoin isn't even in the same ~~ballpark~~ universe as something like McDonald's or Pepsi.
  
  Yeah McDonalds is based on torturing and murdering animals while destroying the planet.... While bitcoin is only destroying the planet like the rest of capitalism.
- We also need a McDonald’s emoji, Pepsi emoji, Windows emoji and Mastercard emoji
  bitcoin is not a company.
  
  Also not a brand, in the trademark sense
- Mastercard emoji
  💳
- 🍟 <<< Only one brand sells French fries / Chips in this format. And it's the super-size format.
  
  Unicode Consortium decide which emoji should be included. It’s up to each vendor themselves to come up with how they should look like. I don’t think Unicode Consortium explicitly state it must look like McDonald’s fries.
- hail emoji?
- Since when is Bitcoin a brand lmao? I'm really struggling to see how it is comparable to McDonald's or Windows. Having a logo does not make you a corporation
  
  The Bitcoin logo is the brand. Corporations like exchanges use this brand to market their services.
- Bitcoin is digital money. A better analogy would be to campaign for a USD, Yen, euro or British pound emoji.
  Oh wait, they already exist.
  
  https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Faulty_Comparison
  The existence of other emoji can’t justify the inclusion of a new emoji. Those emojis are old, and it’s unlikely they would’ve been approved under Unicode’s current guidelines.
  
  Except those are real currencies the world recognizes.
  Most businesses will tell you to fuck off if you try to pay them in bitcoin.
- Bitcoin is a network protocol. not a brand.
  
  The logo and name is the brand. How do you visually represent a specific payment protocol without using its logo? There’s no emoji for HTTP or TCP either.
  
  Nobody is saying Bitcoin to refer to that, ever. Come on.
- These are not public infrastructure
  
  Neither is Bitcoin.

It already has a codepoint. ₿

You don't get a new Emoji by creating a change .org petition lol
You need to write a proper proposal and send it to the Unicode consortium: https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html. If it gets rejected, it's four years until you can reapply for the same Emoji.
- A Bitcoin emoji was rejected in 2020 i doubt it will be any different this time.
  
  Yeah I doubt it'd be approved... I was just saying that there's an actual process that has to be followed. The Unicode consortium aren't going to care about a Change .org partition that gets maybe 20k signatures at most given billions of people use Unicode and they've got proper processes to go through.
- Overnight a terrible proposal on the first day, get it rejected for everyone for four years
  (I know they’d look at others)

Short reminder that Bitcoin was created as a reaction on the world finance crisis and to allow people like Assange to receive donations, because PayPal and similar just blocked them...
That does not mean that Botcoin is perfect, but: If the alternative system was perfect, there was not bitcoin.
Now, do we need an emoji? I don't care TBH..
- I don't mind a system like bitcoin existing but bitcoin itself has way too many problems to be useful and actually is detrimental to the environment. It takes way too long to process a transaction, it is massively energy intensive for what it is, and it's been hyped up like the Californian gold Rush.
  Sure it was created to solve a problem but it doesn't actually solve that problem very effectively. It also introduces an infinite number of new problems that no other currency system has ever experienced.
  
  It also introduces an infinite number of new problems that no other currency system has ever experienced.
  Infinite problems, eh? Can you name like 10?
- Bitcoin is terrible for that though. High transaction fees, slow transaction speeds, everyone can see your balances and transactions (and with KYC requirements it's very easy to link a wallet and a coin to a person).
  Monero is the only digital currency worth having.
  
  Monero is great. Except for the fact that when the dev team dislikes what miners are doing, they introduce a new arbitrary rule, and everyone just goes with it. Having a process to introduce such changes unilaterally is a bug that needs to be fixed first.
  Also, there's a lightning network which allows you to transact bitcoin fast and cheap. Although the privacy aspect is still not solved there.
- No! Bitcoin is a scam created by scammers! Don't look at state currencies!!!! \s
- This is like saying "laws aren't always enforced equally, so we should have no laws whatsoever". Bitcoin is not a helpful response.
  
  I think, whether it's helpful is an individual decision. E.g. for people in Turkey, it's a lot more stable than their own currency. Same logic for probably dozens of other countries...
  Maybe, it's not useful for you, but that's OK. No one is trying to replace your currency with it and force you to use it.

If boobs don't have their emoji, bitcoin doesn't deserve it either!
- We have an established tradition to represent sexual characteristics with fruit. 🍆, 🍑, 🍈 🍈.
  To be fair, I whenever I go to market and see the eggplants, I feel inadequate. Also in the last decade many of the more classical substitutes have emerged in the emoji library. 🌶️, 🥒, 🥚🥚, 🌮, 🍪, 🎂, 🎃🎃
  
  what's the cookie supposed to mean?

Emoji? Why not unicode character like $ or €?
Edit: Dear OP, please stop popularizing these ₿rat's marketing ideas
- This is how you end up with weird Unicode characters like 𖡄.
  
  Your comment lead me to this overview:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Unicode_chart_Bamum_Supplement
  Here you'll find all the evergreens such as these, among many others:
  𖠈 𖡠 𖢍 𖢯 𖣞 𖣐 𖤗 𖥓 𖤫 𖧌 𖨰
- ₿ like this?
- That actually makes sense, that's why
  
  Like this? ₿

This will likely be rejected for one the same reasons that they decided they would not add any new flag emojis. Flags come and go. Bitcoin hasn't even been around for 20 years yet, and its future is highly uncertain.
Also, considered as a currency, it would be better as a regular text character, not an emoji. Like $, €, ¥, £, etc.
- I actually don't mind it being added as a text character because then I can actually use it. Using it as an emoji is useless to everyone other than the crypto bros that want to spam it on Twitter.
  
  It already exists: ₿
  
  Where are you unable to use emojis?
- Technically, emoji doesn't even have specific flags, they just have country codes, conforming to the ISO list - actually choosing which flags will be included is up to the individual implemeters. Regional flags got a little bit complicated because they need to establish the conventions first.

Cryptocurrency is speedrunning ruining everything. We might as well have a laugh at the cryptobros' expense in the meantime.
- I loved the concept at first, the idea of a decentralized currency all handled by encryption, and transactions permamently stored in a public ledger for all to see.
  Then the cryptobros and the scammers caught wind of it and it's all downhill from there.
  
  If you want the name of a payment techology that isn't snake oil, isn't blockchain-based, isn't a cult, doesn't claim to be a currency, doesn't work on proof-of-work or proof-of-stake, but actually does provide certain privacy guarantees for your basic purchasing needs, is cryptographically secure, and can be used with only FOSS, I recommend looking into GNU Taler.
  The only downside is that it's not really supported anywhere at all yet. But I do hope it becomes a real thing some day.
  
  Scammers use the technology because it actually works and does what it says it does. And criminals and scammers and such are generally the first ones to adopt a new technology. Such as bank robbers adopting the automobile in order to get away faster.
  
  I liked the idea for awhile as well. But for me, learning about the "proof of work" underpinning is what changed my mind. That - and the fact that cryptocurrency does not actually have any of the strengths that it claims to have. It's definitely and interesting idea... but in practice it's all just scams and incentivised waste.
  
  Did they or did a bunch of media get pushed that told us all what these crypto bros were doing like shitting on beaches and taking our jobs.
  Seriously though I'm picking up on a trend that a lot media has a greater influence on opinion then I've ever seen before
- Bitcoin is over 15 years old now, that's not a particularly fast speedrun.
- I would rather point my finger at wall street or financial institutions not at the tools that offers a viable option to avoid these

Suggestion: We do with the Bitcoin emoji what people did with the eggplant emoji. The B stands for butthole. So now we can do [eggplant emoji] [bitcoin emoji].
I'm sure the TOTALLY NOT HOMOPHOBIC tech bros will love it.
- Have you checked your =B=?
- We must do this if it happens.

fighting for bitcoin to get an emoji is stupid, but fighting against it might be even stupider. surely there are more important things to spend your time and energy on. it's a fucking emoji. who cares?
- normalizing scams, by laundering their image via standards organizations, pollutes our communications environment. Both an emoji and a petition are symbolic - and our symbols are in fact important.
  
  Bitcoin isn't a scam. All non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies are scams.
  People often hear about stuff like coins that are pre-mined, or proof-of-stake and the schemes and scans that come out of those, and immediately associate Bitcoin with the same thing.
- millions of people who use emojis would constantly see it. It would slowly start to feel more familiar to them and increase its acceptance. If that works, others would try to do the same and we would have every and any company put their logos in. If it doesnt then it doesnt matter that much, but i dont want to risk yet another avenue for corporations to worm into peoples minds.
  Personally i dont care about emojis at all but i do care about general mentalspace.
- It would create legitimation and that could further increase its popularity

#bitcoinscam #tetherfraud

Can't believe I wasted brainspace reading that garbage

It was a mistake that the Unicode people started to add emoji of their own at all ever in the first place.
My understanding is that emoji were originally added because they existed in other preexisting standards. They should have kept it at that. Now we get public discussions what concepts are important enough to "deserve" emoji, which is a stupid, pointless discussion that could have been avoided if they had not started doing that. We were able to communicate just fine before emoji were a thing.
- I disagree with your opinion.

Lack of emojis and also having an emoji are both good for bitcoin.
Being stupid is good for bitcoin too, probably.

I think I should post a 1000 word essay about why I dislike the merman emoji.

Bitcoin already has a unicode sign, which is plenty. We don't need an emoji, we need better user access to the full unicode set. (To date, on both mobile and desktop, I have to sometimes websearch specific characters and copy-paste, and not all emoji are displayed on my PC Firefox browser, though it's better now than last year). Also curiously, the Lemmy website text editor emoji picker only places an emoji at the end of the text, not where the cursor is (and adds a space I don't want).
The current Emoji library has a frog face, 🐸 not a frog body. That's a higher priority than a bitcoin. I could see some kind of generic crypto coin, maybe. Maybe.
On a parallel subject, I do think the international community would do well to create a decentralized currency, and I do think blockchain may figure into this, but it needs to be secure and allow for anonymous transactions, and not allow for tampering with the ledger. Bitcoin has failed on all three accounts. We need a better, more robust system, but it seems all current cryptocurrencies are practice, and toys for prospectors and gamblers until we make a robust one.
I absolutely do not want to encourage the ransomware industry.
- Absolutely agree. Unfortunately, it would probably be negatively stigmatized for [insert illegal hot-button topic] like encrypted messaging is.
- but it needs to be secure and allow for anonymous transactions, and not allow for tampering with the ledger. Bitcoin has failed on all three accounts.
  Lol what? No legitimate bitcoin critics make these claims against Bitcoin. The ledger is immutable and the transactions are pseudo anonymous. In fact your typical bitcoin critic lists these as downsides ("no way to reverse mistakes" and "cannot prevent money laundering") right after the criticisms about energy consumption.
  You legitimately have no idea what you're talking about.
  
  I'm not a Bitcoin or crypto expert (though I remember news about a decade ago about unrelated data, including pictures, ending up in the ledger. Maybe they fixed it?) Rather I think about what I'd want in a currency that we don't have in state-backed currencies.
  And yes, anonymity of transactions is one of the, money laundering is about justifying gains to a surveillance state on the grounds that only state-approved transactions should be allowed. Like the internet, the economy is and should be bigger than the regional states we have, unless you want Hollywood telling you what content you are allowed to watch and how many times before your license expires.
  One of the problems with state-proprietary banking systems is that they can be manipulated for political purposes. It's nice when this means depriving dicks of their money (say Putin and Russian Oligarchs) but it's not very nice when it's used to silence journalists who embarrass the ownership class (e.g. Wikileaks) or is used by industrialists to block competition (e.g. the MPAA and RIAA arranging for the freezing of Kim Dotcom's assets, and those of Megaupload, which was about to release a new music distribution system).
  The point is to create a currency that states cannot control or regulate.
  Yes, there are matters like the black market. CSAM transactions have become more difficult to trace while cryptocurrencies are stable, but I suspect these can be addressed piecemeal when we actually confront problems like drug abuse and porn production. As it is, the people who do the most damage, cause the most cost and death have enough influence on state regulators of currency so as to not need to launder money. (Though they may fold conflict diamonds into ones mined from legitimate sources.)

How is it like to have nothing going on in your life so you create a petition about emojis?
- Uh oh guys, we got a salty bag holder 😂
  
  They edited their post about an hour after you replied. Just a heads up.

Don't buy Bitcoin. It's going to crash!

Proprietary money is a scam.
- I agree but I'm not sure BTC fit the definition of proprietary money I'm finding online. How does BTC qualify in your opinion?
  
  Libre

If we're not getting an asshole emoji this will suffice.
- It'll make it easier to filter out spam. If it contains this emoji, delete it.

Should just be a generic crypto currency symbol with a rug being pulled from under it.

Woah way too many emojis already!

😀😃😄😁😆😅🤣😂🙂😉😊😇🥰😍🤩😘😗😚😙😏

There's an emoji for nonbinary zombie🧟
There's an emoji for "I can't get my map to fold back up"🗺️
There's even an emoji for a pregnant super Saiyan I think🫄🏼
But there's no emoji for riding two giraffes at the same time, so hieroglyphics still wins 𓀬
- This message right here ⤴️

This is the same thing as saying "there's too many music!", "there's too many art!"

You can't have enough emojis. Ever.

You can’t have enough emojis. Ever.

Oh it's on!

🍐	🍑	🍒	🍓	🍔	🍕	🍖	🍗	🍘	🍙	🍚
🍠	🍡	🍢	🍣	🍤	🍥	🍦	🍧	🍨	🍩	🍪
🍰	🍱	🍲	🍳	🍴	🍵	🍶	🍷	🍸	🍹	🍺
🎀	🎁	🎂	🎃	🎄	🎅	🎆	🎇	🎈	🎉	🎊
🎐	🎑	🎒	🎓			🎖️	🎗️		🎙️	🎚️
🎠	🎡	🎢	🎣	🎤	🎥	🎦	🎧	🎨	🎩	🎪
🎰	🎱	🎲	🎳	🎴	🎵	🎶	🎷	🎸	🎹	🎺
🏀	🏁	🏂	🏃	🏄	🏅	🏆	🏇	🏈	🏉	🏊
🏐	🏑	🏒	🏓	🏔️	🏕️	🏖️	🏗️	🏘️	🏙️	🏚️
🏠	🏡	🏢	🏣	🏤	🏥	🏦	🏧	🏨	🏩	🏪
🏰			🏳️	🏴	🏵️		🏷️	🏸	🏹	🏺
🐀	🐁	🐂	🐃	🐄	🐅	🐆	🐇	🐈	🐉	🐊
🐐	🐑	🐒	🐓	🐔	🐕	🐖	🐗	🐘	🐙	🐚
🐠	🐡	🐢	🐣	🐤	🐥	🐦	🐧	🐨	🐩	🐪

Stupid indeed.

💩

₿uttcoin (( should have an emoji too then!

Does anyone remember when one of Maine's US Senators lobbied Unicode to create a lobster emoji?
- That's the majestic and ancient lobster, and having an emoji for such a fine creature makes sense.
  This is Bitcoin
  
  Yeah I just think it's funny a Senator took time out of his day to be like "we need a lobster emoji"

https://emojipedia.org/bitcoin-sign

Fuck Emojis

Bitcoin is stupid, but the point of Unicode is that we have a symbol for everything that has a commonly recognized symbol or representative value, or even uncommonly recognized.
If ⅌ gets a character, or all the symbols of the Byzantine musical notation system, I'm not sure why a typically recognized symbol for a cryptocurrency shouldn't.
The weird bit is that they put together a petition. All you really need to do is submit a proposal and show that it's a notable symbol and not owned by anyone in particular or a brand icon.
Here's the proposal to add "goose" to Unicode. They even added a few joke-y bits, but they made a valid argument that "goose" is a symbol that people recognize. And now... 🪿
- I don't disagree with the overall comment, but there's a difference between character and emoji. ⅌ got a character, but so did ₿ already.
  
  There really isn't a difference between a character and an emoji beyond an emoji being a stylized rendering of a character, or a character whose use is intended as a pictograph.
  https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Introduction
  They're all just Unicode code points, although I suppose there's some distinction between the characters with more context specific meaning or the ones that are more apt to modification a la 🧑‍⚕️👩🏿‍⚕️. But you've also got 💲 and $, where "bold dollar sign" is often represented as green, but "dollar sign" tends to be represented in contextual style. Is ☣ a character or an emoji? What about the thousands of "other symbols" as defined by the Unicode spec which may or may not have special character renderings depending on your platform and font?
  And yeah, I didn't know that character existed, so now it's doubly confusing why anyone is asking for anything. The symbol has meaning, and it's in the big book of meaningful symbols. Not sure what more they want.

- I couldn't disagree more, emojis are amazing. They bring life to conversation, they help convey emotions, and they can be fun !
- Have you ever had an autism evaluation? Emojis are indispensable to convey context and mood to text.
- this dude don't know what 🚶🏠⛈️🚗🚫 means 🤣
- Was someone on your lawn this morning?

Duh, it's stupid. Bitcoin is the snitchcoin. Broadcasts all details of all transactions, everywhere, always, forever.
Monero.
- You have to do some mild gymnastics to buy monero here but yes this is what I use for sensitive transactions too.
  It’s weird because theoretically there is some kind of law that makes it harder to buy it but there are services that let you do it anyway so I am guessing it’s a cat and mouse game.
  Emoji of a currency used for shady shit is the last thing it needs tho lol, it would be kinda like private tracker putting ad on YouTube or smh
  
  Emoji of a currency used for shady shit is the last thing it needs tho lol
  I agree. 💲💸💵💴💶💷💳💰 should all be removed from Unicode as those currencies are used for shady shit. /s
  
  Right now, sure, it's just know the guy for it. Or swap bitcoin for it on bisq.network
  
  Also your business is none of mine. I have no concerns and you haven't of mine, thank you very much.
- Bitcoin Lightning fixes this. Monero built its first layer with this assumption, and now it's impossible to check if there has been an inflation bug like the Value Overflow Incident.
  When (not if) there's an inflation bug, the attacker will be able to sell his free XMR indefinitely.
  
  No. It doesn't change any of that. It's still trackable %100

Maybe we don't need a Bitcoin emoji, but we absolutely need a Doge emoji.
- 🐶 there's already one
- Lol, doge

Bitcoin has the right idea, but did not execute it properly, primarily because it was the first and technology has improved and it has not. Monero is actually doing what bitcoin was meant to do and acting as a transactional currency, medium of exchange, and store of value.
- Look at my totally stable store of currency bro, trust me bro, this is totally useful as a means of exchange and you can trust in its future value bro, just believe me.
  
  Now, overlay that price chart with a transaction count chart averaged out over say 90 days and what you will notice is that big spike up to 400 and above was at basically no transaction volume which makes it seem more like that was hype. Looking at the price chart over shorter timeframes such as a year will show you that the transaction count is actually increasing now and the price is staying quite stable.
- There are people dedicated specifically to Monero scaling and they are a hell of a lot smarter than me and do not see any reason why it cannot be scaled properly. Look at some talks by Articmine
- I've said it before and I'll say it again:
  True bitcoiners 🤝 no-coiners "Bitcoin should be illegal"
  
  This is 100% wrong

Is the government spreading anti-cryptocurrency propaganda or did lemmy got invaded by idiots recently?
- No, people just don't like crypto because it's a huge waste of energy that has no use for the average person at the moment and is only used by rich people to get richer without much regulation. Don't get me wrong, it might definitely be useful when used correctly in the future. Not wasting as much energy by ditching proof of work, becoming actually useful for normal transactions, etc. But right now it's just an overhyped technology for obnoxious cryptobros.
  
  I mean...I'll go one further. I know there have been many historical "aged like milk" quotes, like about how much RAM computers need, but I'm still saying this in confidence: I don't think that cryptocurrency or blockchains will ever have a useful purpose. Their design is built to solve societal problems, but introduces worse problems in implementing them. This goes well beyond just taking too much electricity.
  
  no use for the average person at the moment
  https://www.reuters.com/technology/california-dmv-puts-42-million-car-titles-blockchain-fight-fraud-2024-07-30/
  
  it might definitely be useful when used correctly in the future
  I can almost see the monk smacking an orphan for holding the spoon in the wrong hand :D
  
  Bitcoin ≠ cryptocurrency.
  Ethereum lowered it's power consumption by over 99% after switching to Proof-of-Stake.
  Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and we don't even fucking know who came up with it.
  How about we don't throw away the possibility of 5.1 Surround Sound Blu-Ray Audio, because wax cylinders sound like shit?
  "Computers are cool and all, but they take up entire rooms and only do simple calculations! It's a complete waste of time and money to invest in such a technology!"
  ^That's you
  
  No, people just don’t like crypto because it’s a huge waste of energy that has no use for the average person
  This is actually part of government propaganda to discredit cryptocurrencies.
  Lemmy servers consume energy too and half of the content is memes, i don't see anyone complaining about it.
- Nah, idiots bring shitty crypto propaganda and pretend it isn't just an unregulated security pretending to be an alternative currency (that isn't usable as a currency for regular people) while using more energy than entire nations, all for a giggle with a shit coin.
  
  Are you sure you are not confusing propaganda with ads?
  Cryptocurrencies are quite easy to use, the process to create a cryptocurrency wallet is much easier than the procedure required to create a bank account or a credit card and these days cryptos are widely accepted even as a currency.
- This is what the overwhelming majority of people believe. No offense, but were you spending a lot of time on r/Bitcoin?
  
  The majority of people believes what the government makes them believe, so it make sense.
- Lots of people on the left don't seem to like crypto on a fundamental level. A lot of the time they seem like they have a tenuous grasp on the concept, at best, and are just parroting what they heard someone else say. Most of the time they're projecting their criticisms of Bitcoin onto the entire concept of digital currency.
  I consider myself a progressive, and I got some ETH at a good time a few years ago, but I've been desperate for an exit point in the market for over a year (fomo feels bad man) because the sentiment for crypto among everyone who isn't an an-cap or tech-bro hobbyist has been atrocious for some time now.
  To be clear, I don't really care for Bitcoin. It was first, and I appreciate how clever it was, mathematically and such, when it was anonymously put out there. But other than that it's kind of shit. It's like saying that wax cylinders are better than vinyl records, or even CDs, because they came first.
  I hate that people seem to only have room in their brains for one word for "digital currency," and it happens to be the one with no real useful functionality, while being an absolute disaster for the environment.
  It's not some kind of panacea, but people are writing off (or actively hating on) some very interesting tech. with actual use-cases like Ethereum or Monero (the former of which reduced it's power consumption by over 99% after switching to Proof-of-Stake, and the latter does not use ASIC miners and is significantly less resource intensive than BTC), because they didn't get it perfect on the first try. That said, Monero will never be a good long-term investment because it's too secure and that scares governments. Monero is like what people (at least used to) think Bitcoin is... That is, anonymous, untraceable, etc. No way that succeeds as an investment, and good luck actually using it as a currency with all that volatility.
  I think the concept of a digital currency is here to stay whether people like it or not. I think it makes more sense to push for ones that can potentially solve actual issues and aren't a disaster for the environment, so people don't call them all "Bitcoin," like people do for "Q-Tips". Probably too late.
  If I had to guess, long term, nations will see the writing on the wall and start using their own tailor-made CBDCs (Central-Bank Digital Currency) and it'll probably suck. They will 100% use it for control and oppression. So that's some fun stuff to look forward to.
  
  the former of which reduced it’s power consumption by over 99% after switching to Proof-of-Stake
  This isn't necessarily a good thing, there are many arguments against POS. You shouldn't use non-green energy resources to begin with, if people use these to mine that's not bitcoin fault.