Technology

Cryptocurrency has properties that are valuable to its users. It can let you pay online anonymously. It's decentralized and doesn't require trusting a bank or some company. I use it for those reasons. So it is useful, but the author of the video doesn't even know that.

They are both often promoted as ‘investments’

But that's not what they are made for. People can use them as investments if they wish and gamble with their money, but that says nothing about this technology, since it's not its purpose. If you want to warn people about the risks of such investment, I approve. But calling cryptocurrency or NFT a scam is wrong and doesn't make any sense.

Your response is exactly the kind of handwaving that commonly pervades tech companies and led to crypto being popularized as a financial product. The reality is a lot more complicated, and for that reason there are a lot of problems that stop them being as useful or valuable as people want them to be.

So what do you want to criticize exactly? The technology? Fine, but then you need to understand how it works and you probably should use it at least once. Or do you want to criticize people gambling with their money? That is also fine, but then it has nothing to do with the technology itself. In that case naming the video "The Problem With NFTs" would be misleading.

If you have specific arguments against the Line Goes Up video I’d be interested to hear them, as I thought it was quite a good take.

I rewatched a few chapters just now, but let's focus on the Bitcoin chapter. The video contains a few valid criticisms, but they are mixed with a lot of incorrect information, invalid comparisons, false statements and author's personal opinions. He omits a lot of facts, which makes it clear he doesn't understand the subjects he is discussing.

Chapter 1 - Bitcoin (07:09)

08:35 He says that talking about cryptocurrencies requires discussing technical details and terminology, which is partially created to be "deliberately obtuse to make them difficult to understand and thus appear more legitimate". The author seems to believe that there is some kind of conspiracy of programmers to often make it difficult to understand technology on purpose, but he fails to provide even one example of this. It's a ridiculous accusation. Modern technology is just complicated and takes time to understand for non-technical people.

10:25 He claims that the only commercial use for Bitcoin is black markets, which is false. There are stores that accept Bitcoin and if they don't, you can use Bitcoin to buy gift cards for any store (there are websites that sell them). People who actually buy illegal things online don't even use Bitcoin, because of its public transaction history. They use Monero. The author is stuck in 2009.

11:08 "Bitcoin was never designed to solve the problems created by the banking industry" - it's a trust-less system, so it has already solved at least one problem - the problem of trust when handling transactions. I can send money to anyone in the world without an intermediary.

11:30 "change of the guard is an illusion" - he is listing some rich people who use cryptocurrency. This it not an argument for anything. It's irrelevant who uses cryptocurrency and what their beliefs are.

12:35 He says that some of the larger institutional holders of cryptocurrency are the same investment banks, which created the market crash. He doesn't explain why this is relevant, but I suspect he means that because of this it's not safe to keep any significant amount of money in crypto. In that case it might be a good point, but having large amounts of money in crypto is not required in order to use it.

15:30 Proof of work algorithm makes it difficult for poor people to mine Bitcoin. That is true, but mining is not the only way to get Bitcoin. Other than buying it with cash, people could also receive crypto as payment for their work.

16:45 He is comparing the energy consumption required for global usage of Bitcoin to local energy usage of a small country. This is not a valid comparison. He should have compared it to other global industries like banking or gaming.

17:10 He says that banking also requires a lot of power, but can handle more transactions. That is true, but Bitcoin is probably the slowest cryptocurrency. The other ones are still slower than VISA, but he should have mentioned that other coins are better in that area, because it's not 2009 anymore and technology keeps progressing. So his argument is correct here, but he forgot to mention other relevant facts.

17:45 He calls cryptocurrency users gambling addicts, which shows his bias. He doesn't understand that this technology can be used for online payments or for sending money to your friends. Bitcoin does use a lot of electricity, but so does gaming and that's just entertainment. That doesn't mean we should get rid of it.

He also completely forgot to mention in both his Bitcoin and Etherum chapters that proof of work is not the only used algorithm. Etherum doesn't use proof of work anymore, so it doesn't use as much power. This shows that the problem of power usage can be solved. Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency and technology keeps improving. But this didn't stop the author from saying that Etherum doesn't solve any problems with Bitcoin at the end of Etherum chapter (24:17). The switch to proof of stake algorithm happened after the video has been released, but he knew it was gonna happen, which he mentioned at the end of chapter 8 (1:31:29). Yet he refused to believe that it would happen, because of his bias. His prediction has failed, since it did eventually happen.

Chapter 8 "There Is No Privacy On The Chain" (1:25:36) is equally ridiculous. The author apparently hasn't heard of Monero. He also doesn't even understand what it means that something is decentralized.