Are bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies used outside of crime and investment?

[Kilrah]

Huh? $1675.00 per ounce says quite a few people give a shit about it.

This thread just said that bitcoin was a nothingburger even if it was worth $10K not long ago

Sure it's been expensive for centuries so less likely to fall to nothing, but in essence its price is still based on artificial criteria just like bitcoin.
Even its rarity is artificial. It's only rare becasue millions of tons of it are kept in vaults.

[NiHaoMike]

I'm also morally bothered by the vast amounts of energy that are expended "mining" crypto, it all amounts to useless busy work and yet it consumes as much power as is used by some entire countries. I think some day we will look back on that and shake our heads at the vast amounts of fossil fuels burned to produce something that has no tangible existence.

There are some altcoins (e.g. Swagbucks) that use much less energy to mine and some altcoins (Curecoin, Foldingcoin, and Gridcoin) that do useful work such as biological simulations in the mining process. What I would really like to see is an altcoin that is "mined" by setting up decentralized mesh network nodes, to incentivize making a communication network that is robust and decentralized.

[magic]

What do they use in place of those little lead weights used to balance car tires? Ours are still made of lead. As far as I know the little weights used for fishing line are still lead as well though not being an avid fisherman I haven't tried buying those in many years.

I was recently looking to buy some lead and indeed fishing weights are still available, either by exemption (supposedly ammo is exempt too) or because nobody in that industry has learned about the ban yet FWIW, it took many months for electronics stores to learn about it and stop selling the stuff to individuals.

The ban was passed without much fanfare and not because of some pressing need to genuinely prevent anyone from obtaining lead but simply because some idiot politician from Sweden was deeply concerned about the logical inconsistency of the EU having a general policy of banning teratogens AND lead being a teratogen AND oh horror still being available without any control. So the point was raised during some meeting and the committee nodded their heads and was like "yeah, prolly you're right"