Money for traffickers, speculation, pollution … Regularly, articles or studies pillory bitcoin. Often due to ignorance of this technology. Demonstration with five received ideas among the most widespread.
1 – Bitcoin pollutes
This idea is based on two main confusions. First, a lot of people confuse blockchain, cryptocurrency, and bitcoin when the concepts are quite different. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that forms a “blockchain”. Cryptocurrency is a digital form of currency and transactions are tracked and archived in an encrypted, public blockchain. And second, too many people confuse consumption with pollution. “We consider that all consumption is synonymous with pollution: it consumes a lot, therefore it pollutes. Many studies do not distinguish between clean, renewable or non-carbon energy. However, 70% of the energy used by blockchains is carbon-free and largely renewable, therefore virtually non-polluting, ”says Renaud Lifchitz, cybersecurity expert at Holiseum and cryptocurrency specialist. In an article he wrote, he also specifies that “most of the electricity production is lost anyway (nearly 70% in the US in 2019), the energy consumption of bitcoin is next to very negligible”.
2 – Bitcoin is useless
The main use is to store value. It’s the same as with gold except it’s dematerialized. The storage and “transport” of bitcoin, on a key, is therefore less expensive and complicated than that of ingots. “Unlike fiat currencies, bitcoin is a deflationary currency because there are a limited number of units (there will be no more than 21 million units of bitcoin); it can only appreciate in the long run. With fiat currencies, the decline in purchasing power has been very high, “says Renaud Lifchitz. In 2020, purchasing power fell by 19% compared to 2009. In the example below (see graph), 100 dollars in 2009 is only worth 84 dollars 11 years later because of inflation. . Cryptocurrencies therefore do not follow the Keynesian logic which prefers that money be spent as quickly as possible, even if it means going into debt in order to consume, rather than saving permanently.
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