Kurt Wuckert Jr tackles ‘fake news’ Elon Musk, Dogecoin and Bitcoin energy Digital Cash Rundown

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CoinGeek’s resident Bitcoin historian Kurt Wuckert Jr. appeared on Digital Cash Rundown with Joel Valenzuela, returning to discuss Bitcoin, manipulation and the antics of Elon Musk in the crypto space. Thoughtful as ever, the discussion with Kurt turns to energy efficiency and proof-of-work mining, compared to the pros and cons of proof-of-stake. There’s also talk on Dogecoin, and whether there will ever be any significant development work with the novelty digital currency.

On Dogecoin, Wuckert said he is surprised to see the meme cryptocurrency rallying and finding new support. For all intents and purposes, Doge is a dead project, and has been for years. Wuckert notes that there are gaping security holes in Doge that have been there for at least five years, with some holes that have been patched remaining untouched all these years later.

He even suggested he and his friends had joked about taking over Dogecoin and implementing the superior technologies of BSV, simply by exploiting the loopholes in Doge Core. With a typical fee to send a Dogecoin of more than one Dogecoin, he said it is simply unworkable for any kind of utility—yet with influencers like Elon Musk throwing their weight around in the market, Doge is still able to appreciate in value.

On Musk specifically and his role in the digital currency sector, Wuckert says he believes Elon to be a ‘fake news’ kind of guy, describing him and his antics as the perfect fit for people who don’t want to work or don’t understand value. Wuckert pointed to Musk’s reputation for manipulating the value of his stocks, behavior which has continued into his opinions on Bitcoin and Dogecoin since. Musk even has the audacity to complain about the energy usage impact of Bitcoin mining—staggering hypocrisy, when considered in light of his work with SpaceX and his industrial lithium mines.

The conversation turned to the issue of energy efficiency, and whether cryptocurrency mining was putting undue strain on the environment. Wuckert described BTC as the most inefficient use of electricity he can think of. BTC doesn’t do anything, but takes a lot of energy to do it. With BSV, it is a fantastic utilization of the same electricity – for 1% of the same hashrate, you’re able to do tens of thousands of functions or more. He says Elon Musk is wrong about Bitcoin as a technology, but he’s right about the problems with BTC. For Wuckert, proof-of-work is the most important aspect of the future of money, something that simply cannot be ignored.

Wuckert said that part of the problem is that BTC needs hashpower and prices to continuously rise to be sustainable. Right now, the BTC mining difficulty is so high that if it fell suddenly, you wouldn’t be able to find another block—the network would literally grind to a halt, and no one would be able to send or receive BTC. There is a problem with hashpower in BTC, fueled by the arbitrary 1MB block limit, which makes the whole network insecure.

Kurt said it would be useful for BTC to be knocked down a slot or two, to feel the pressure from any other coin. As a developer community, they have a lot to learn, but all of their bad ideas continue to be rewarded by the marketplace, which is distorting the project and its aims for the worse. With BTC having moved so far away from the original vision for Bitcoin, Wuckert believes an adjustment would be to the benefit of the whole digital currency community.