Aptera › Community › Aptera Discussions › Crypto Payments?
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Crypto Payments?
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So we can now invest in Aptera with Crypto currency? Given how green and renewable this company is trying to be, I’m not sure this is a direction we should be willing to take given just how much energy is wasted by mining operations.
Update: We've opened a new fundraising round! We're now accepting Cryptocurrency as a payment method. To learn more about investing in Aptera, head to our dedicated investor website at https://t.co/QPHZqG5zmJ. pic.twitter.com/x0aBaxwD7m
— Aptera Motors (@aptera_motors) August 16, 2021
Update: We've opened a new fundraising round! We're now accepting Cryptocurrency as a payment method. To learn more about investing in Aptera, head to our dedicated investor website at https://t.co/QPHZqG5zmJ. pic.twitter.com/x0aBaxwD7m
— Aptera (@aptera_motors) August 16, 2021
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I believe that Aptera is the right entity to make that call not “We” as the enthusiasts although we are certainly free to offer our opinions.
Here is mine. Having investment open to all channels seems like a good way to optimize investment opportunities for Aptera. Very efficient!
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I don’t think Aptera made this move independent of someone asserting an interest in investing with cryptocurrency. To make it possible for this investor means they could accept crypto from others as well.
I am no fan of crypto and am quite aware of its environmental issues. I also recognize its status as a reservoir of capital that presumably will translate into covering some of the expense of making the Aptera successful.
As far as trying to pain acceptance of bitcoin as inherently anti-environment, did you know that every coal miner in America was paid with U.S. dollars, which are also the major currency oil prices are denominated.
I mean I knew from the time my momma told me not to put money in my mouth because it is dirty … that money is dirty.
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Every product or structure has an environmental cost to its creation and maintenance. This gatekeeping of products like bitcoin because of their environmental impact is ridiculous. Unless it is something like a windmill or solar panel which has the explicit purpose of creating energy, then the energy cost to create that product is secondary to its function. The Aptera car’s first function is to drive you places. We don’t worry about how much energy it takes to create an Aptera because the function of driving needs to be met whether we like it or not.
Also, we don’t know that bitcoin is necessarily using more energy than its traditional counterparts. If we look at bitcoin as functioning as ONLY a bank vault and compare the respective energy costs Bitcoin isn’t a clear loser. Let’s just say a fictional bank owns ONLY solar-powered ATMs.
– It costs energy to produce each of those ATMs
– It costs energy to distribute, install, maintain, and replace those ATMs
– It costs energy to maintain the severe network that tracks the money running through them
– It costs energy to run the heavily armored vehicles needed to transport money between those ATMs and the local vault.
– It costs energy to maintain the business’s regional office and employees.
In contrast
– The only energy cost to run bitcoin is the cost to run its servers and download the app on your phone.
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You seem to be forgetting about the apparently politically incorrect power consumed by crypto miners.
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“energy cost to run bitcoin is the cost to run its servers” – final line of previous post
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If I may, when I began mining in 2014 I used solar for about 80% of my mining. So, I can definitely say that most of my coins are very clean. But that only addresses coins that were mined by way of the Proof of Work (POW) algorithm. Though nowadays there are also so many coins such as XRP, XLM and Algorand that employ Proof of Stake algorithms which hardly consume any resources whatsoever. Why lump all coins together into the same category?
Furthermore, when you see what each mining rig performs in terms of validating transactions and keeping a resilient shared secure ledger of each transaction in a geographically distributed manner and then compare that to what environmentally conditioned Banks do and the jet set executives in their widowed corner offices, all the bank employees which drive to work and burn calories to manage your transactions and the blinded trucks with security guards and the non-secure SWIFT protocol used for wiring money and the fraud and identity theft and the fees and the paper mail statements and the advertisements, and the printing and transport of paper money and the physical coins and the buying off of politicians… on and on and on then one gets to realise how green a computer mining operation, even for the least efficient of cryptocurrencies can actually be.
To put things into the proper perspective, we must look at the whole picture and all factors in the entire monetary enterprise and all of its players and middle-people. The system that cryptocurrencies are supplanting is many times fold more dirty in comparison. Is there room to make it greener, of course. But the fact we are even having this conversation is an awesome thing. I’ve also worked for Wall Street. Not very green. Not green at all. lol
In fact, there’s a possibility that, with the excess power being generated by each Aptera, once that battery is to the desired capacity, why not mine cryptos with that excess capacity and get subsidised for that excess power that way? Otherwise it is being thrown away.
Yes, mining crypto is good for the environment, when you compare it to the filthy system it replaces. Staking crypto is even better for the environment. We all start somewhere and evolve. Crypto & its associated FinTech is the evolution from the traditional banking model. And staking is an evolution from mining. And tomorrow there will be yet more evolution along the way. Hopefully those will also be viewed from an holistic / wholistic standpoint as well.
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Oh, and I forgot to ask: What is the purpose of the Petrodollar and how has it influenced the environment as well as human lives?
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I believe Christian’s arguments are more comprehensive and certainly more accurate than the narrow perspective of “Political correctness of crypto mining” they are definitely more pervasive than the environmental costs of the relatively small incidence of crypto mining
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If you believe Bitcoin mining is wasting energy – you do not understand what Bitcoin is.
Bitcoin is the only money / asset with integrated worldwide payment system. EVERY single fiat currency or assets like stocks, bonds, gold need multiple banks, payment networks, countless data centers, computers, office space … all using energy … to move money / assets.
Every person who has ever worked in crossborder payments, or stocks, bonds settlement understands this.
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I am more concerned of cryptocurrency not having any value other than speculation. It only has value because people believe it does and people keep buying into it, raising its price. When people lose interest, and less people are trading them, the price will drop.
I personal do like having money being centralized and being backed by our government. It adds some sense of ‘accountability.’
I believe the block chain idea is great, but there should be some regulation in place before any businesses begin taking cryptocurrency seriously … especially for a start up company, which is a risk in and of itself.
I do not believe the right question is whether “cryptocurrency as payment is clean for the environment?” I believe the right question is whether “Aptera should put their faith in a versatile and questionable currency as a form of payment during their critical phase of development?”
China have decided to banned cryptocurrency-related transactions due to “concern around national security and safety of people’s assets”
There is an ongoing lawsuit against Tether since they are acting like a bank that resembles a Ponzi scheme.
Of course, I am not part of the board and I do not know the decision making process they went into coming to this result.
I made some investment in Aptera, so I am just sharing my opinion and concerns.
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The environmental impact is terrible and the energy use per transaction dwarfs normal transaction processing by 3-4 orders of magnitude. Etherium 2.0 with all the planned features like sharding has some potential to be a functional currency in 1-2 years but until then all crypto is a speculative way of holding money with a system fundamentally secured by wasted power. If someone makes a more efficient miner they make money and the difficulty just scales to keep the power usage rising.
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