What the hell is the point of Bitcoin?

Charles Hoskinson appeared in a recent interview in which he trashed Bitcoin for its lack of utility and energy use, claiming it has no purpose and has turned into a religion.
He further urged Elon Musk to look into Cardano instead – or other projects like Solana and EOS – if he is serious about being the environmental-friendly billionaire he claims to be.

Charles Hoskinson was never a big fan of Dogecoin and he has criticized Bitcoin as well once or twice in the past. In a recent interview, the Cardano creator went all out in his criticism against the two, trashing Bitcoin for its energy use and lack of programmability and DOGE for simply having no purpose. Hoskinson believes that Elon Musk should look into Cardano if he is serious about his role in combating climate change as the Tesla CEO.

Here we go: https://t.co/gYcKILak2j @lexfridman thanks Lex. It was so much fun

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) June 16, 2021

Hoskinson appeared in the vastly popular Lex Fridman podcast. His appearance came just over a week since Vitalik Buterin, the Ethereum co-founder made a similar appearance. In his interview, Buterin talked about several issues in the crypto industry, taking time to talk about Cardano and saying he views it as a great project.

ALSO READ: Vitalik Buterin counters Elon Musk; reiterates the impossible scalability of DOGE

Hoskinson: What the hell is the point of Bitcoin?

In his interview, Hoskinson addressed a number of issues including DOGE, Elon Musk, Jack Dorsey’s BTC involvement, the failures of Bitcoin, Chainlink and oracle networks and more.

On Tesla’s dalliance with Bitcoin, he stated:

If they truly care about alternative energy and sustainability, carbon reduction and carbon neutrality, you can’t be in a system where there’s no built-in mechanism to constrain energy consumption.

Bitcoin supporters have claimed that there’s a lot of wasted energy on the grid that can be directed towards the crypto.

“Unless they [Tesla] can make the case that somehow the proliferation of Bitcoin is legitimately going to proliferate battery, solar and wind, then it’s probably good for them to just focus on the most energy-efficient cryptocurrency possible,” Hoskinson rebutted.

And it’s not just Bitcoin’s energy use that the former Ethereum co-founder took an issue with. He then went into Bitcoin’s lack of programmability, describing BTC as the least programmable of all cryptocurrencies. If Tesla wants to build on the blockchain, then it would be better suited to exploring other blockchains like Cardano and Ethereum.

Hoskinson tore into Bitcoin throughout his interview, at one point describing it as similar to a “guy who was a football star in high school but is now washed up and with a beer belly.” He believes that Bitcoin has no place in the future of cryptos. The only reason it still exists today is that billions of dollars have been poured into it and people are protecting their investments.

There’s nothing about it that’s particularly desirable… You have to upgrade the damn thing.

Bitcoin is its own worst enemy. “It has the network effect, it has the regulatory approval, it has the brand name,” but its community refuses to evolve and catch up with the other crypto projects, Hoskinson stated. Instead, the community has turned the project into a religion in which they just follow blindly.

He summarized it: