One keeps hearing about some cryptocurrency projects and how people got rich with Bitcoin. But somehow I don’t understand the whole purpose behind it and I’m beginning to suspect that it’s just a pyramid scheme.

Wouldn’t there be much better ways to exchange money anonymously and uncensored? In order to generate any kind of coins, a lot of electricity is used (also from fossil fuels or atomic energy), but until today no project based on cryptocurrencies or the blockchain principle has really caught on. Or am I wrong?

Update in reply to Henrique Dias:

I am aware that “crypto” originally comes from “cryptography” and cryptocurrencies also have to do with cryptography. I was not aware that the Proof of Stake concept existed, but it seems like a good idea to reduce the enormous energy consumption. Thanks for mentioning it!

My frustration is similar, I believe, to that posted in this Reddit comment in 2018. Sure, there are certainly good and useful use cases for decentralized, tamper-proof databases and digital, anonymous, uncensored and privacy-friendly payment methods. But at the moment, it seems to me that cryptocurrency trading is more of a gamble with the goal of getting more and more people to invest their money in it, and others to cash out and get rich.