Crypto and NFTs are not what users want.

I'll be retracting my financial support of the app (via Nitro subscription) until such time as Discord officially announces a discontinuation of its interest in cryptocurrency, and if cryptocurrency and NFTs are pursued I will seek other platforms for VoIP.

1) Crypto is often absolutely terrible for the environment. While it's true that some currencies are less atrocious, many of the "big" currencies involve complex computation to perpetuate themselves, the computing power required for which is astronomical and which burns out physical PC components relatively quickly, filling landfills with prematurely-spent parts. It also drives up electricity prices for normal people who have nothing to do with bitcoin, in some cases.

According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, bitcoin-mining operations worldwide now use energy at the rate of nearly a hundred and twenty terawatt-hours per year. This is about the annual domestic electricity consumption of the entire nation of Sweden. (source)

2) Crypto is, due to its very nature, a massive lure to money launderers and scammers. Is this the reputation Discord wants?

In 2019, criminals laundered around $2.8 billion in Bitcoin through cryptocurrency exchanges, an increase of around $1.8 billion from 2018. (source)

I'm not even involved with most crypto communities, but I see a new crypto scam popping up every week or so. It sounds good in theory, but in practice it's wildly unethical.

People do not want this.

Nucleoric

November 09, 2021 15:22

Well said. Discord already has a problem with link scammers, let's not attract more of them to the platform while handing them new ways to defraud users.

Alexwolf

July 28, 2022 01:35
Edited

Yeah. This is true information but hacking is not legal except for ethical hacking.

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