I Stopped Investing In Cryptocurrency Entirely
And I may be the only weirdo of my generation to do this.
This might be the most controversial thing I did as a gen z. Everyone I know, especially people my age, is on board with this crypto trend and it’d be strange if no one did. Because everyone wants money!!! Who wouldn’t want to earn those simply?
However, about a month ago, I stopped cryptocurrency entirely when the electricity usages were high and I pulled all my money out of the application I used to invest in cryptocurrency.
Note: this isn’t a political article or trying to convince you that climate change is real. This is only a conclusion I drew from the news that made me do what I did.
Why did I stop investing in cryptocurrency?
Don’t get me wrong, I invested in bitcoin like the rest of us. I made quite an amount of profit too and was obsessively joining the trend. Especially, when Elon Musk kept tweeting and the prices keep skyrocketing. I loved it so much and I wanted my investment to keep going up!
Additionally, when the Evergrande happened in China, where it’s basically The Big Short sequel, it convinced me to trust more on crypto than banks.
I’ve heard that cryptocurrency required a lot of electricity, but I didn’t really pay much attention since we still have them around.
But boy was I wrong.
Around October, my mind changed when certain countries declared that they were in an energy crisis.
I stumbled across a piece of news from the South China Morning Post, where they said that the country was struggling with producing electricity. The citizens there had to live with no powers and had to cope with total darkness at night.
At first, I thought that it’ll only last for about a week so I didn’t really pay attention. And it only happened in one country, so what’s the harm?
But then a week goes by, it’s not improving. Businesses there had to reduce work hours in order to save costs as electricity is slowly becoming scarce. Plus, they had to save up when winter comes. It actually looked like a scary period, to live with no powers.
Then at that time, India was also having the same problem. They too were having an energy crisis and citizens were having problems with having powers.
And then countries of Europe slowly followed, along with the US (though they are recovering), Japan, and Korea. All were struggling to conserve power to prepare for the cold season and for the future.
At that point, I was already nervous and anxious about whether it’ll affect Indonesia as well. This was starting to be a global crisis, and I was afraid that we may be lacking it.
And finally, this was where I was more afraid.
Singapore, my country’s neighbor, is also experiencing a power crisis. The citizens there were pressured with a new higher cost to deal with and big groups who used to invest in those pulled out. Just look at the spike in the electricity cost.
Since the pandemic, electricity usage rose a lot as people were forced to stay at home and businesses had to switch to digital to make money. And as the bitcoin trends increased, there has been a lot of people entering the crypto-mania.
“From our continuous global search of low-cost and sustainable electricity, we found that there is an extreme lack of available rack space to cater to all the displaced miners.”
—Azam Roslan, senior sales associate at New York-based miner hosting services provider Wattum., 2021.
If there is no electricity, how can you get your money back? And if Singapore isn’t a country that is preparing for winter, how can they be struggling?
Apparently, Indonesia is one of their source of power. We are not preparing for winter, but it is said that our supplies weren’t as much as before since demands for electricity increased as well. Perhaps our supply didn’t drop a lot since we didn’t have a huge crisis as the other countries and electricity, at the moment as I’m writing this, is still running well.
But one can’t be so sure. We didn’t expect other countries are having energy crises, and I think other countries like Singapore would be asking for our resources. If everyone is asking for resources from us, will we have any left for ourselves?
Additionally, Mr. Jokowi, my country’s president, also asked for help from developed countries to help reduce to carbon emissions of Indonesia. He hopes to restore the forests to their green states after the long-sufferings of forest fires and deforestation and reduce global warming.
And so, that’s when I finally reached a decision.
The Buck Stops Here.
Around mid-October, after seeing all the news about the global energy crisis, I pulled all my money out of my crypto application and stopped following the bitcoin trend.
I made less money than before, and I was always tempted to come back to bitcoin. Because let’s be honest….no one wants to feel poor. Everybody wants to be rich, that’s why fake gurus have been on the rise and there are cases people were falling for it right?
But this energy crisis seems to be happening everywhere, and electricity prices are rising.
In Indonesia, the pandemic increased poverty and many small businesses are struggling or shutting down. I still work in the cinema industries and my own company is struggling though we still managed to survive.
If my own company is struggling, imagine the smaller businesses trying to survive too. Not only are they trying to save budget, but their costs are increasing.
Also, we used to blame older people for destroying the planet, but we ourselves are also responsible.
I know you might think that I’m paranoid, but recently, Bill Maher made a valid point about bitcoin in one of his videos, “Okay, Zoomers.”
He mentioned how young people are concerned about the environment, yet their words contradict their actions. Even myself.
“Kids, you’re going to have to make a choice here.
Do you want to be progressive or excessive? Team drastic or team plastic? When Kylie’s lifestyle becomes uncool and unpopular, and you stop loving bitcoin, I’ll take you seriously.
Until then, shut the f*ck up about how older generations ruined the planet.” — Bill Maher, 2021.
It doesn’t matter if you are a climate change believer or not, but I think we can all agree that mining bitcoins is using a lot of power, and it’s probably why your electricity bills are also rising.
With that said, I’m not here to persuade you to stop investing in crypto or that I hate it, but I’m laying the facts that you may want to consider when you invest in those.
Perhaps WFH is partly to blame, but with covid restrictions slowly opening, it may contribute a little to electricity. But mining bitcoins take up a lot more energy.
If one day, there is another source of mining bitcoin, where it won’t eat up a lot of my electricity bills, I’d go back to crypto. But with the world still trying to recover from covid and the global energy crisis is still happening, I don’t think I’ll invest in those any time yet.
