Why didn't the mafiosi think of this before? Invent an invisible currency which is deflationary so punters see its value going up and want to cash in!

"Hey Mugsy! Dis is better dan de numbers racket!"

Well they've certainly made sure no poor people can mine their own on their laptop. The energy costs alone put it into the realm of the rich - and it's largely financed by the price increase making it worthwhile. Even if a $2,000 coin costs them $1,950 to produce it's now worth burning all that coal. (Does anybody believe they care about renewables?)

The chart looks to me like the market is naturally growing and diversifying from Bitcoin proper. Many of these new currencies will fail and fall away, but a large number will continue to grow because the create true utility through better ways to do things we already do and ways to do new things we could never do before.

Proof of Work cryptos like Bitcoin are very energy and processor intensive, but newer Proof of Stake cryptos don't have that same problem.

Many of the smaller cryptos are still able to be mined or staked to provide income and wealth opportunities to a lot of people at lower ends of the economic scale if they have (or can acquire) the knowledge. Crypto is arguably far more inclusive than the existing economic system in terms of offering opportunities for economic growth.

There are still small cryptos that people could earn an incremental income from just by leaving their computer running the node when not otherwise in use. Even older, out of use computers sitting on a high shelf could be used this way in some smaller currencies. Frankly, it's a great and under-used way that people could be bettering their finances.

But yes, it is wasting a ton of electricity right now. There's no arguing that.

Vitaliy, you are clearly a very smart and technologically savvy person. I hesitate to try to teach you anything about technology. But on this point, if you honestly aren't aware of the very real improvements that crypto allows over current methods, or the new structures that it invents, then I am not the person to explain it to you. I encourage you to turn your very bright mind to looking at it. I think you'll change your opinion.

PoS coins may have some other negatives, but they are certainly more energy efficient and more accessible for participating in through 'staking' than leading PoW currencies are through 'mining'.

Crypto is not a scam. It creates true additional value in the same way that growing potatoes does. You can't eat everything. Certainly, there are many scams and there will also be many well intentioned failures within the crypto community, but as a whole, it is real and beneficial.

A new invention does not need to be perfect in order to be valuable, it just needs to be better than the current solution, and crypto is certainly better than the current fiat currency and banking system in many important ways. On top of that, crypto is evolving very quickly and addressing its issues faster than traditional banking or finance. So there's great reason to hope that it will outgrow some of its current shortcomings.

Vitaliy, you are clearly a very smart and technologically savvy person. I hesitate to try to teach you anything about technology. But on this point, if you honestly aren't aware of the very real improvements that crypto allows over current methods, or the new structures that it invents, then I am not the person to explain it to you. I encourage you to turn your very bright mind to looking at it. I think you'll change your opinion.

I know a lot of thing about crypto scam. How it works, proposed advantages and implementations limits.

In present form it is 100% scam, and much more dangerous than Ponzi scheme scam, as it also waste resources.

Yes, it is very hard to be against crowd and mass media pressure. But you should do it if it is right.

Funny point VK, but I think you're willfully misunderstanding. Why don't we check in on this in 5 years and see how our opinions have evolved on the matter then.

My opinions are most of the time spot on, unfortunately. Because I base them on strong foundation and logic.