Is Bitcoin Ethical?

by James · October 18, 2022

The question of Bitcoin’s ethics has gained increasing interest with different viewpoints emerging. This article argues that Bitcoin is ethical.

With the growing number of cryptocurrencies, the question of ethics regarding their use continues to gain momentum. Bitcoin, the largest digital currency, has been a significant focus. This article explains why Bitcoin is ethical. Before addressing the ethics of Bitcoin, have you heard of the Quantum AI trading bot? Go to Quantum AI to learn more about it.

Table of Contents

Bitcoin and environmental issues

The world was shocked when the world’s richest man and owner of the Tesla Company announced that his company would not accept Bitcoin as payment. According to the flamboyant billionaire, he realized that Bitcoin consumed significant amounts of fossil energy to produce, which led to environmental concerns.

Bitcoin mining is actually very energy intensive. Miners often have to invest a lot of energy to mine just a single coin. Unfortunately, most of this energy comes from fossil fuel sources. With growing environmental concerns, including global warming and climate change linked to the use of fossil fuels, it is understandable that Musk and others have raised some ethical concerns regarding Bitcoin.

But even if environmental concerns would make Bitcoin unethical in terms of causing harm to the environment, it is important to understand some facts. Bitcoin miners know the environmental problems and are doing a lot to solve them. They invest heavily in renewable energy and locate their operations in suitable areas where the population is low and renewable energy sources are plentiful.

Also, miners have produced over 19,145,187.5 Bitcoins already, leaving only 1,854,812.5 or less than 9% percent. And this means that with the maximum limit of Bitcoin that will ever exist being 21 million, there is only a small amount left. After reaching that limit, no more Bitcoin mining will continue. Therefore, environmental concerns about high energy consumption will be over within a few years.

Bitcoin and Utilitarian Ethics

Ethics is broad and different theories of ethics exist with different points of view. A popular ethical theory is utilitarian ethics. In general, this ethical theory considers the consequences or effects of something to determine whether they are just. Specifically, practical ethics asserts that actions that generate the greatest benefit to the most people are ethical.

Applying utilitarian ethics to Bitcoin’s ethics, the obvious conclusion is that Bitcoin is ethical. People use Bitcoin as a means of payment. Anyone can use Bitcoin this way. The purpose of money is to facilitate transactions and enable people to meet their needs. Bitcoin does this well.

Additionally, Bitcoin is ethical from a practical perspective because it benefits anyone who wants to access financial services. One of the biggest problems with the traditional centralized money system is that it leaves out many people for various reasons, including distance and lack of certain documents. Bitcoin allows anyone to open a Bitcoin wallet, trade, invest, get loans and other financial services.

Bitcoin’s benefits

To determine whether Bitcoin is ethical, we can look at the pros versus the cons. Some disadvantages of Bitcoin include high volatility, unregulated nature and facilitation of criminal activity. Some benefits include increased efficiency in international transactions, increased security and privacy, and the potential to generate high returns.

Without arguing about pros and cons, Satoshi Nakamoto developed Bitcoin as a better replacement for the existing centralized financial system. And this came in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007/2008 which revealed how several giant companies and institutions were able to interfere in and capture the financial sector and the economy. Bitcoin’s decentralized system eliminates this risk for the benefit of the majority.

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Despite some arguments against Bitcoin’s ethics, several reasons show that Bitcoin is ethical. And this is mainly from a practical-ethical perspective.