>I'm less happy to pay someone a tax just because they are rich and they did barely anything.
As the operator of a single validator node you can get out of here with that take. I'm using up very significant bandwidth, having to keep a computer running 24/7, updating node and OS software, troubleshoot it after a power or internet outage and at some point I will have to replace the SSD since it is constantly reading and writing and will need replacing after a few years.
Is it a full time job? Absolutely not, but is it free from responsibility? Definitely not. If anything, I could be making more than 3%pa elsewhere if I weren't also in it for ideological reasons.
Almost every single one of those things can be applied to both the internet and the traditional finance system. The biggest money launderers are banks. Bitcoin uses less electricity than the global finance sector (let it be known I do think it is wasteful, Proof of Stake is better). More scams still happen through banking and web 2. Crypto is an extremely small market for money laundering compared to other methods. While not pump and dump scams, the financial gatekeeping done by traditional finance to only give access to high yielding investment opportunities to accredited investors is just another way of keeping the rich rich.
As far as I can tell, crypto is no more cancerous than existing systems. It's just that all you see out of crypto as an outsider is all the bad stuff because anything creating real value is too heads down building to make a fuss or too complex for the average joe to comprehend yet.
If Washington can't resist oil money and gun money why would they resist crypto money?
Besides, tech experts aren't really the ones we should be asking about crypto. The ramifications of the technology blockchain has allowed us to build actually creates new paradigms in finance and human coordination, As a result, economists, sociologists and political scientists who are educated on web 3 technology are probably best placed to evaluate what crypto has to offer society.
This comment section is a classic case of engineers who think they understand crypto because it's digital, not realizing that Crypto is primarily an economic innovation. It's ok to admit you don't fully understand something sometimes.
As the operator of a single validator node you can get out of here with that take. I'm using up very significant bandwidth, having to keep a computer running 24/7, updating node and OS software, troubleshoot it after a power or internet outage and at some point I will have to replace the SSD since it is constantly reading and writing and will need replacing after a few years.
Is it a full time job? Absolutely not, but is it free from responsibility? Definitely not. If anything, I could be making more than 3%pa elsewhere if I weren't also in it for ideological reasons.