Is Bitcoin Good for Society? [It’s Impact in Society]

Is bitcoin good or bad for society

See, whether bitcoin is good for society is a relative question. It serves millions of users and the market worth has grown exponentially in the last decade. Moreover, it entertains a variety of use cases. But, some people still think it casts a negative impact.

In this article, we will explore an array of aspects related to its usage. By the end of the article, you will be able to build a clear perception.

ProsCons
Financial feasibilityMining is expensive
Saves timeMining causes environmental problems
No inflationCriminals cannot be traced
Highly secureGovernments cannot control the accounts
Creates jobsNo proper method for taxation
AccountabilityHighly volatile

Financial Feasibility for Everyone

Image result for bitcoin good for society
Is Bitcoin Good for Society? Let’s see…

Before Bitcoin, a major proportion of our population was unbanked. Either the required facilities were not available in their part of the World or they could not afford it. However, Bitcoin has solved this problem pretty decently. 

Firstly, it is worth noticing that Bitcoin is free from geographical boundaries. It implies that whether you are living in the US, Africa, the US, China, India or anywhere else, you all can enjoy the same features. This is because unlike fiat, Bitcoin does not fall under any jurisdiction and is not regulated by any central authority. Therefore, its usability is around the Globe, without depriving any individual.

The best part is that you can store the coins in an online wallet and most of them are available without any restrictions. Once you have the coins, you can shop online without any limitations as plenty of retailers have started accepting Bitcoins in their stores.

Therefore, it is not only a currency. In fact, it is playing a vital role to connect even the remotest individuals with the mainstream internet.

Saves Plenty of Time

In this era, time is money and if we do not implement blockchain-based use cases (e.g. Bitcoin), we are wasting a lot of it.

Conventionally, if you transfer money to another account (especially International transaction), there is a chain of intermediaries involved. They do not only consume plenty of time while taking the money from one phase to another, but the transaction cost also goes up.

However, with the help of Bitcoin, the role of intermediaries and physical agreements is overtaken by smart contracts, which are self-executing digital agreements and do not require any 3rd party approvals. Whether you want an instant payment or you plan to schedule a transfer, everything can be handled in a couple of clicks.

For instance, if you want to buy a smartphone for $2000, you either need the balance in your credit card or you must withdraw the amount from your bank. These are the cases where Bitcoin offers very decent functionality. If the shop owner accepts BTC, you can simply transfer him $2000 from your mobile wallet while standing in his shop. The entire process would take less than a minute and the funds will be transferred from one account to another, regardless of the fact whether you both have accounts on the same exchanges or not.

No Chance of Inflation

Before exploring it, we need to understand the concept behind inflation. Basically, it occurs when governments dish out more currency into the market than their capacity. As a result, the buying power of people is diminished.

However, Bitcoin offers an opposite (yet better) solution, mainly because of a decentralized structure. At the time of creation, the total supply of BTCs was fixed at 21 million and it cannot be changed by anyone in the World. Hence, there cannot be any inflation.

Highly Secure

Bitcoin transactions need digital signatures and private keys before they are signed off and registered on the public blockchain. Therefore, it is nearly impossible to hack or cause any kind of discrepancy in the records, whatsoever.

What’s best about this method is that your private details are never exposed, even if you are sending the amount to a trusted wallet.

Is Bitcoin Good for Society? – Job Creation

See, Bitcoin itself is decentralized – it is not a company and does not fall under any authority. Therefore, if someone says he is an employee at ‘Bitcoin’, it’s a blunt lie!

However, its creation has stirred the market in many ways. To start with, Bitcoin is the pioneering cryptocurrency and its creation lead to the boom in the blockchain market. There have been a variety of ventures, such as ICOs, exchanges, healthcare use cases and whatnot. All of them required developers and even after the systems entered their respective production phase, teams were hired to keep them going, hence creating a wealth of jobs.

Accountability

Everything that happens on the Bitcoin network leaves a trail of events and each one of them is recorded on the public blockchain, where everyone can check the initiator and receiver behind a given transaction.

For instance, if an NGO makes its BTC wallet address public for accepting donations, the auditors do not have to trust anyone or go through a pile of records. They just have to enter the wallet address in the explorer and all transaction records against the wallet address will be fetched in less than a second. So when it comes to this aspect of Bitcoin, it is very good for society.

Here is a list of non-profits accepting BTC for donations.

A Few Potential Cons

Since we are dishing out an honest review, it is important to weigh in some legitimate concerns as well. 

Firstly, you must be aware that Bitcoin mining is quite a popular process and people use it across the World to earn passive income. However, it comes at a significant cost and consumes an enormous amount of energy. Therefore, environmentalists are quite concerned about the negative effect these farms cast on the ecosystem. Just to clue you in, as of 2019, BTC mining (across the Globe) consumes more energy than a few countries.

Secondly, even though decentralization and anonymity have their perks, they can be used for illicit motives as well. If a criminal does something terrible (e.g. buys ammunition), there is no way a government can trace back the identity. It poses a significant threat to the overall law and order. In some cases, governments might have a legal duty to freeze the account of an individual carrying out unethical activities. However, in the case of Bitcoin, it is not possible.

Moreover, we cannot ignore that due to decentralization, Bitcoin does not fall under any jurisdiction and therefore, governments do not have a concrete procedure to determine the wealth an individual owns and then tax him accordingly.

Conclusion

Following the recession of 2008, tech geeks and other financial bodies understood the need for having an effective financial solution. The very next year, in 2009, we had Bitcoin rolling over the internet and now several years down the road, its ‘mere possession’ has become a status symbol on its own, let alone the number of millionaires it has produced over the years.

So, after analyzing an array of aspects mentioned in this article, it becomes pretty evident that whether bitcoin is good for society or not is a relative question and it rather depends on how the end-users are taking advantage of it.

If people use it for efficiency, security and scalability purposes, there is no harm in it. However, if the trend goes sideways and masses start using its decentralization and anonymity for supporting their illicit gains, then, of course, it is not going to be beneficial in the long run.

P.S. If you want to know more about Bitcoin, these forums may help you.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *