The dark side of Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency

What is Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency?

“Cryptocurrency is a digital currency that is managed by using one of the most advanced encryption techniques called cryptography to secure its transactions. Bitcoin was the first decentralized cryptocurrency that was created in 2009.”

Bitcoin is crushing the markets with its high evaluations and a lot of interest from general people. It is not the only one, there are now a plethora of cryptocurrencies that people trade in the not so traditional market place. In fact, there are exclusive platforms, especially for trading cryptocurrencies. There is overall a general excitement about the whole cryptocurrency industry if you will categorize it so.

While these are highly secure transactions, there is a darker side to the whole story as well. This is without even looking at the rapid fluctuations in the pricing of bitcoins or how many new forms they are coming in. We are listing some of the forbidden or undiscovered factors that may not be great for the general acceptance of bitcoins/cryptocurrencies.

1. Inefficient for retail

The cryptocurrency transactions rely on blockchain technology which is a mutual agreement-based system. The blockchain technology involves sharing, updating, and validating ledgers (contracts) at multiple places, making the system very slow for retail transactions. In such scenarios, cash and cards are much faster.

[Related – What is blockchain technology?]

2. Lack of market regulations

Currently, there are no legit market regulations for trading cryptocurrencies. Even the governments are skeptical about the viability of bitcoins. Therefore no government-regulated financial institutions support the transaction of cryptocurrencies (e.g. encashing). Moreover, because of a lack of regulations, cryptocurrencies are extremely difficult to track and that’s why people often use it for dark trading. Thus, bitcoins are prone to bring financial chaos if all transactions are beyond the control of regulators.

3. Power inefficiency

Mining cryptocurrency consumes a lot of electricity and it may take nearly 25% of the miner’s revenue. Unless we have renewable sources of energy, it’s really not worth it. For instance, mining bitcoins in India takes almost INR 180000 worth of electricity. So, if the Indian economy were to run completely on bitcoins, all of the world’s electricity will not be sufficient to support the transactions.

4. Parallel Economy

When you can’t track the money, people start leveraging it for illegal transactions. Using it on the Dark Web, Money Laundering, ransom demands are just a few of those use cases.

The fact is — these problems are similar to the ones we have with the cash economy. If the problem remains (or aggravates), then there is no point in opting for digital currency.

Bitcoin/Cryptocurrency: Should you go for it or not?

We’re not the naysayers. Blockchain is a great technology and is indeed useful for financial transactions. However, it does not target day-to-day transactions. There are several higher-level applications of blockchain viz. Insurance, supply-chain, data transfer, etc. for which the technology is proving fruitful.

About the author: Kumar Sambhav is the CTO at Mantra Labs. He is a pro in Business Processes, Requirements Analysis and Agile Methodologies. He always enjoys exploring trending technologies – be it cloud computing, blockchain, artificial intelligence, AR or VR.