Why disapprove of cryptocurrencies?

Why didn’t many users like Citron’s initiative? It turns out that in their eyes, the cryptocurrency market, along with NFT tokens, are still either a “global fraudulent scheme” or a phenomenon that is hugely damaging to the environment. Here, for example, is one of the comments by a user nicknamed Anatheum.

I can’t wait to tell my friends that Discord is promoting pyramid schemes at the cost of protecting the environment, forcing us to cancel Nitro subscriptions on the platform and switch to its competitors. Thanks for the news.

As ridiculous as it sounds, Discord users have actually taken to threatening to cancel their subscriptions on the platform on Twitter. Some of them have done so. And they promised to renew their subscriptions only after the head of Discord officially promised not to mess with digital assets and blockchain.

Discord wallet testing screenshot

A user nicknamed ApplesmackVR shared a screenshot of him cancelling his subscription.

As a reminder, Nitro is a paid feature in Discord that gives you access to unique emoji, tags, animated avatars and other such things for $4.99 per month.

Nitro itself generates a huge chunk of revenue for Discord. According to Decrypt, subscriptions will bring in $130 million to the platform in 2020 and $45 million in 2019. The positive growth trend in the service’s popularity has also consistently attracted new big investors to Discord. The company is now valued at at least $15 billion.

Screenshot of Nitro’s subscription cancellation


The root of the problem of the wave of hatred for the innovation lies in a basic lack of basic knowledge about the crypto market among many Discord users. Firstly, the crypto market is not a pyramid scheme, but has long been recognised by many large organisations as an independent industry with a capitalisation of over $3 trillion. Yes, unfortunately, there are still individual fraudulent projects, but the need and dangers of investing in them depend entirely on the financial literacy of individual investors.

Secondly, the cryptosphere doesn't directly harm the environment. It's all about the high energy consumption of Bitcoin mining, which comes at the expense of environmentally damaging fossil fuel power plants. This is indeed a problem, but it is unlikely that Discord's support for cryptocurrency wallets would have had a major impact on this process. On top of that, miners are gradually switching to energy from renewable sources.


And there are plenty of new cryptocurrencies based on the Proof-of-Stake algorithm, which does not require serious electricity costs. And unique NFT tokens are also based on them. The Solana, Avalanche and Fantom blockchains are particularly popular today – they were a real hit among investors in 2021 and have managed to grow several times over. This is not a matter of speculation, but a real innovation of the technology, which above all allows end-users to make cheap and fast transactions without jeopardising decentralisation.

Hayden Adams, developer of the protocol for the already familiar decentralised exchange Uniswap, has responded to what is happening. Here’s his quote, which he posted on Twitter.

Some of these responses are surreal. They are a great reminder of just how early in development web3 is.

Hayden noted that PoS-based blockchains and Level 2 scalability solutions will address the environmental impact of digital assets. However, “misunderstandings and fears will be relevant for much longer.”

Uniswap decentralised exchange mascot


We think the reaction of Discord's management is understandable, as paid subscriptions provide a significant portion of the platform's revenue. However, the community's reaction seems as strange as possible. Judging by user reports, they do not understand how cryptocurrencies work and the opportunities that digital assets offer. And that really underlines just how young the coin niche is.


So another step towards global adoption of digital assets has been sabotaged this time for very trivial reasons. Hopefully, Discord will revisit the idea in the future. Stay tuned to our millionaires crypto chat to see how the situation develops. There, we’ll talk about other important topics related to the world of blockchain and decentralisation.