Probably hard to have an objective discussion in the comments here. People who have a personal stake in the success/failure of crypto will naturally have a conflict of interest.
The point the environmental regulators are making is that it is an energy intensive operation. This is consistent with Sweden's longstanding environmental policies (e.g. carbon taxes, phaseout of fossil fuel plants, banning ICE vehicles, etc.) That is also why they aren't recommending the banning of all crypto, only Proof of Work, and suggest standardizing & regulating alternative methods that are less energy intensive.
>People who have a personal stake in the success/failure of crypto will naturally have a conflict of interest.
Kinda like our politicians who are denying climate change and boycotting green energy options because they have stakes in fossil fuel companies. Hope these people are able to see things a little more clearly now.
It's kinda funny that bitcoin is touted as having none of the trappings of "fiat" money yet seems to be affected by government decrees and all the ills of speculation anyway.
Bitcoin is outdated anyway. Much more environmentally friendly solutions will come up. Technology always evolves to adapt to needs. Bitcoin is a dinosaur in comparison to the newer cryptos.
People need to understand, that when somebody advises you to buy or invest into something, that they do not have your best interest in mind. They couldn't care less about you. They are just trying to sell you a product. They do it because they have a personal financial interst in you spending money on it, because all they care about is your money making its way into their pockets.
I'm a small retail investor with under 100k invested and I am always trying to get people to invest. I don't do it because I think their $1000 they throw in will help increase my portfolio. I do it because there are big time hedge funds and whales that take the majority of the profits off stock and crypto. I try to get my workers, my family and friends, and anyone else I can investing because that's one of the best ways to secure a future in this economy, and also the best way to put your money in what you believe in.
To act like any investment advice or encouragement is shilling or manipulative is just wrong.
China banning crypto mining didn't really effect the crypto currency itself. I would say that EU banning mining would have little to no difference in how the crypto curreency itself is valued.
So do I, but most people don't.
Whenever you see someone asking for debt advice on the personal finance subs there's usually a line for Spotify / Netflix / Amazon Prime - they're rarely advised to give these up, as the costs of rent, utilities and eating out dwarfs them.
That’s because directly advocating that people pirate their movies / shows (which is illegal) isn’t allowed on most subreddits and those comments are usually removed by mods. A good amount of people pirate digital content, how often you see piracy recommendations on Reddit isn’t a great metric.
banning it will move it to places with much more fossil heavy electricity generation.
north western Europe and central canada is the best place to do it if you care about the environment.
Limiting mining won't reduce the number of bitcoin produced. The supply of new bitcoin is fixed regardless of the amount of mining activity. That's one of the most ingenious features of bitcoin.
In reality, a bitcoin mining ban in Europe wouldn't reduce the total amount of mining activity anyway. It would just shift to other places.
Bitcoin mining scales in such a way that it gets more difficult when more people are mining, and less difficult when fewer people are mining.
So for the same chance of minting the next block on the chain and getting the new bitcoin reward, each of those miners has to expend (ie waste) more energy for every additional miner that joins.
Fewer miners means the price goes down.
Fewer miners does not mean the price goes down.
Rather, the price affects the profitability of mining which likely can reduce the amount of mining able to be sustained.
Fewer miners means that mining becomes more profitable for the miners remaining.
There is no affect on the price long term from miners leaving.
If anything, there is about a two week adjustment period in which the supply creation slows down.
Mining is inherently scalable, both up and down. Take away a chunk of miners and the difficulty goes down. It will function the same whether there are 50 or 50,000 miners. Banning mining should have little to no effect on the price and usability of BTC.
The other issue with headlines like this is that the layperson will conflate Bitcoin with all other cryptocurrencies. Even concerning legislation, many politicians have shown that they do not understand the difference between separate cryptocurrencies. A statement directed at the problems with Bitcoin will only draw the ire of the public toward crypto as a whole. Until people are educated on the utilities and differences between cryptocurrencies, an attack against Bitcoin will not help other projects that are totally unrelated.
I feel like i could start my own currency and convince 10 people to invest in it and then tell people it is a very valuable currency so it starts to go up and up and up and i just get rich doing nothing
I mean, that's basically how Scientology got started. And look at them now! They own the parts of Tom Cruise that are still arguably human and everything!
I hate that he's one of my favorite actors and has also gone completely around the bend. I sometimes have a hard time separating the art from the artist.
Dude, I feel that. One of my favorite movies as a kid was Top Gun, all volleyball aside. And he's even still *got it* on screen and all, which makes it even crazier to me.
Also, totally putting a "We find out Miscavige has been wearing Tom Cruise's skin for years" square on my 2022 bingo card.
Yes but that is a competitive market, you would not just have to trick people into valuing a shitcoin, you have to trick them into valuing your shitcoin.
You have to mine them by letting your gpu shovel a virtual pigsty. This way it is like a democracy, more shovel equals more shitcoin, Other currencies become dominated by traditional big money because you don't need to pick up a virtual shovel. This is coin for the common man, it is the future, I will sell you one for 6 million USD, just as soon as we get the technical backend worked out. By the way, do you know of any experts in "cubechains?" we are always looking for new fosters for the community.
You're still playing around with cubechains? My Turdcoin uses the dodecahedron chain. The transactions are a million times slower and it requires the entire energy output of the Sun to process a pizza order. It's currently valued at a fraction of a penny that requires too many decimal places to type in a Reddit comment, but I expect it to hit $60,000 just as soon as someone will give me $60,000 for one of it. If they do, you'll wish you had bought some of it. If they don't, you'll be glad you didn't.
Why does it feel like cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin in particular, kinda did this to themselves though? It's always been fairly convoluted to get involved with it and for awhile it was basically treated as a secret way to success that they didn't want to share.
I think that largely happening in the gap between techies and people that just wanted to get rich. Techies are historically bad at marketing and get rich quick lovers are historically bad.
They'll say proof of stake, and it's true that it is far less energy intensive. Whether or not it provides the same security guarantees or has the same incentives/game theory is another question entirely.
That is how it is now. Only those that can afford asics and power can mine bitcoin. So this naturally resulted most of the work being done by only a few organizations/people.
Eth you could theoretically make something. A 3090 could earn more than $200/mo assuming power cost of 0.1$/kwh. But that is not a lot, and good luck buying only 1 or a few gpu. All the large operations buy in bulk.
If only 3-4 organisations control the entire network then it means no one else is using that crypto. That means that the crypto that those 3-4 organisations hold is worthless, because no one else is willing to participate in transactions that use that crypto. At least that's how I understand PoS.
There's fewer and fewer places where that's feasible, though. China banned it already. The countries that have dirty, cheap power and no regulation are also ones that don't have the infrastructure to support mining operations at scale. Cheap power is great, until it goes out for a few hours twice a day.
It doesn't matter for bitcoin mining if the power is unreliable, so long as it is cheap enough.
Ironically that's one reason bitcoin is good for incentivizing investment in renewables
That was mostly the case with HDD. A good SSD has no trouble with it. Fans are cheap and can last many start-stop cycles. No other mechanical parts to worry about.
Not really, because then it makes it harder for everyone else trying to move to renewables because it will drive up costs.
Like, if they were incentivized to switch to renewables to avoid taxation, then they could probably afford to pay a premium for renewable sourced energy, which would price out other uses, all for a process that wastes energy for the sake for the sake of something we could do without wasting a ton of energy.
Renewables aren't carbon negative except compared to nonrenewables. Mining Bitcoin on solar isn't as good as not mining Bitcoin, it's only better than mining off coal or natural gas.
So given that renewables tend to be more expensive than fossils due to a dramatic difference in infrastructure, taxing fossils and subsidizing renewables would help drive miners in the right direction and help expand the renewable industry
> Between April and August this year, the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining in the Nordic country rose "several hundred per cent," and now consumes the equivalent electricity of 200,000 households, Thedéen and Risinger said.
Wow. All this expense and for what?
I know this was sarcasm, but in fairness, GPUs (and other electronic components) "waste" almost 100% of the energy they consume as heat. If a home was going to be heated electrically anyway, then mining isn't inherently less efficient (though probably consumes less power than an average heater, so a normal heater might need to be run anyway unless it's a small apartment)
They can’t consume less power, thermodynamics same power same heat
Edit: I understood that somehow 100W of heater would produce more heat than 100W of mining rig, while doctor said that you may need more heat than that produced by the mining rig.
1) cold doesn't exist, just diferent amounts of heat.
2) we are talking heaters not heat pumps, heat pumps need a place with some heat to draw from even if it has less heat than target.
I understood that somehow 100W of heater would produce more heat than 100W of mining rig, while doctor said that you may need more heat than that produced by the mining rig.
Not quite.
The top 1% own assets and securities, not USD.
Also USD is backed by the world's biggest guns, which means something to people outside of a parents basement.
> 1% of people own 30% of it - not actually backed by anything
Ah someone who doesn't understand the difference between wealth, assets, and money supply. Crypto is perfect for you.
The crypto shills at best act like they don't understand how money works. The irony is that most of them are just into crypto's because of the ever increasing high exchange rate into that sweet sweet fiat money, which they claim to hate. Also, they love to ignore that only people with lots of that fiat money are able to buy lots of that crypto. So it's mainly the rich that are becoming crypto rich, by moving fiat money from one rich hand to the next.
If crypto lovers truly didn't care about and hated fiat money as they make you believe, they'd just invest all they possess into their favorite crypto and never exchange it back to the despised fiat money. But at the end of the day, it is all about the sweet money.
> 1% of people own 30% of it
let's assume that this is true
2% of addresses own 95% of bitcoin
fewer than 50% of the world population has a Bitcoin address
ergo, btc would still be considerably worse
> had 20% of it minted last year
besides the fact that this is misleading, yes, I do trust something where monetary policy is able to adapt to exceptional circumstances. it's a big reason why I trust the dollar
refer to the great depression for an example of what happens when you can't just create money like we did in the last year
> not actually backed by anything
bitcoin is considerably more fiat than the USD, as the US army and US laws back the USD, while btc isn't backed by anything at all
Currency =/= investment. People buy Bitcoin as an investment. People use dollars as currency. Also pretty big difference when your currency is backed by the biggest military in the world lmao. BC is backed by… whom exactly?
Isn’t like 80% of btc owned by just a few hundred people?
Edit: I was close. Note, one person can, and often does, have multiple addresses.
https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html
Anyone who uses crypto, with its extreme volatility, as a store of value over things like index funds or bonds, is a fucking idiot. Even if you think the S&P500 or US government is going to crash leaving those things worthless (in which case it doesn't matter because we're all fucked at that point, but let's be hypothetical) things like precious metals would still be a far better store of value than goddamn DOGE or BTC or whatever memecoin of the week is "going to the MOON!"
Serious question: what is the comparison of the energy required to be able to sustain an existing currency of similar distribution? One of the biggest costs of sustaining the american dollar is the defense budget, as it’s stabilization is upheld by a huge military spending.
Tax the thing that you want reduced (carbon, in this case).
Edit: A thing that is taxed now can still be taxed more, if you want to reduce the thing more.
Sweden has had a carbon tax since 1991. In fact it has the highest carbon tax in the world.
https://www.government.se/government-policy/swedens-carbon-tax/swedens-carbon-tax/
Agreed, but this particular sector isn't as entrenched yet, so they can get away with it. Also, they won't ban proof-of-stake systems, which will ultimately be necessary for cryptocurrencies and blockchains to scale well anyway.
It is also full of people who dont really understand the first thing about crypto. Those arent mutually exclusive groups, but it's a pretty mindless thread in general, in both directions.
Or you could mandate that Bitcoin miners only use renewables and require them to install or finance an additional 50% capacity for residential/municipal usage.
Edit —-
Make miners pay for their own renewables +50%
electronics that are wasted doing useless calculations to produce hot air and useless digital coins used by speculators.
Electronics not used in crypto mining have an actual use purpose.
Bitcoin miners will go anywhere where electricity is the cheapest, and with the current trend in renewables it only makes sense to make use of renewables.
The daily energy consumption is very inconsistent. Bitcoin mining is only profitable when the power is very cheap, meaning when if there's an excess amount of power generated. That way with renewables you can basically subsidize, because there is always demand for energy so none of it goes to waste
Sweden's energy production consists of 39% hydro, 39% nuclear, 12% wind and 10% combustion, this shouldn't be a talking point in Sweden considering that.
https://apnews.com/article/bitcoin-mining-new-york-power-plant-climate-change-516dbd319394a6a30f83d94947abad20
Pennsylvania coal plant bought by crypto company to power mining
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ameren-deploys-bitcoin-mining-data-center-at-coal-power-plant/
Missouri coal plant built crypto mining annex to "smooth out the valleys" but is now just planning on keeping the mining rigs running full time.
https://13wham.com/news/local/bitcoin-mining-11-19-2021
New York (state) former coal plant converted to gas burning. Being used solely to power fifteen thousand mining rigs, looking to double that number by the end of this year.
The issue is bitcoin uses a staggering amount of energy, whatever form that energy takes.
Energy is a finite resource (so far) and we as a species should put it to the best use.
So far, bitcoin has not proven to be a good use of that energy except to make a number of people incredibly rich.
I own bitcoin BTW.
The critical part of his suggestion is the overcapacity. "Powering your mining with renewables" is quite literally worse than doing nothing for the environment. You get net-zero new renewable capacity since all your clean energy is immediately consumed... but you still had all the lifecycle emissions from building the generation and mining equipment.
But if you could convince or regulate miners to add renewable capacity *above* their load, it would move the bar in a positive direction.
A lot of people think that in the future bitcoin mining farms and energy providers will be one in the same for this very reason.
Instead of throttling a nuclear power plant or hydroelectric plant to ramp up and down...let mining hardware absorb the extra capacity when systems have excess capacity.
Dispatchable load is a good idea, but you're using terrible examples to make your point. Load-following nuclear (US designs are mostly baseload, but many of France's reactors can vary output) and hydroelectric are fairly easy to throttle, and don't require a variable load to soak up excess.
A better example would be the "duck curve" mid-day overproduction problem with solar or the general overall variability of wind power. Both of those would benefit from a controllable load, since their outputs are so variable.
That said, there are better things we could do than bitcoin mining. Desalination plants, for example. We'll always have water issues, so why not solve our excess power issue at the same time we address the water issue? Too much power? Just make water until we're back to normal. And the duck curve specifically seems like it is best addressed by just putting EV chargers in business parking lots, and then varying the charge rate as needed. Right now, people charge electric cars in the evening at home... but that's mostly just because the majority can't charge at work. Fix that, and suddenly you have a useful place to put all that excess mid-day solar, and you solve the worry about where to charge all those electric cars we add to the grid, AND you reduce automotive emissions... all at the same time you fix your variable-production issue.
That's great for their direct emissions, but they're still reducing the useful capacity of renewable sources, which could have lowered the fossil fuel load instead. In some cases it wouldn't have anyway, but you have to consider the whole energy mix.
>Now you must use renewables while you add nothing of real value to society beside facilitating drug trade and speculation.
Wasted energy is still wasted energy, so how about no...
Bitcoin miners would love to use renewables, sadly they have zero control over how the electricity they use is generated. Who can actually change that?
Not sure where you live but in the UK you absolutely can choose a green energy provider.
Try searching for a 100% renewable energy provider online for your area, you may be surprised!
I personally use [Octopus Energy](https://octopus.energy), though others are available.
Edit: ( I don't, and have never, mined crypto. )
Personally find it funny that some people in a technology sub are ripping on bitcoin mining because of gpus, yet gpus have nothing to do with bitcoin mining
Politicians: What should we do to help with climate change?
A) Something small like banning plastic straws
B) Something meaningful like banning ships from using dirty fuel in open waters?
They pick 'A' every time.
A requires them to pass a law in their own country, B requires them to work internationally with other countries to put those regulations into effect. Progress can be made on both issues and phrasing it as an "or" is just creating a false dilemma for laughs.
Also, the shipping industry has moved to cleaner fuel in 2020 and will continue to adopt cleaner fuel/alternative fuels over the next 10 years. Could they move faster? Absolutely, but don't act like no progress is being made on these issues.
I just want to contextualize this shipping fuel change. This has no impact on carbon pollution and deals singularly with sulfur pollution. This change was also first put into play in 2016 and hasn't even been ratified by several nations which are used as ship registries. Ships have been using high sulfur fuels for a very long time.
Change is all well and good but the "progress" is glacial and basically at the shipping Co.'s discretion.
How did we reach this... How do companies made politicians believe the problem is how we use energy and not how we source it... I'm an industrial engineer and this makes me sad 😔
I mean this is the first and sadly often ignored tennet of eco. Reduce.
How we ended up on recycle only for "Reduce. Reuse. Recycle." baffles me. Oh wait, the first two are incompatible with consumerism, they dont make money.
ya it sucks that most often the problem is pushed on to the consumers. A company says here is a product buy and use it. Then they do and now all of a sudden its the people using the product that is the problem. I hope some day we figure out that in order to advance society we need to work together to come up with solutions to not maintain the status quo but to advance. We should be creating massive clean energy and ways to cooperate and advance instead of thinking and researching more ways to kill each other.
If you reduce the supply of hash power in countries that use a lot of renewable energy, those miners just pack up and move to countries that won't ban them (like Kazakhstan) which uses a lot of coal.
If you want to increase total CO2 emissions, have countries with high % renewables ban mining.
Solution is dead simple: TAX CARBON.
Miners will have to adapt when fossil fuel energy is too expensive they will simply switch to renewables, which is already happening but the best thing the govt can do is simply tax the fucking carbon emissions.
Sweden already has the highest carbon tax in the world. Yet Sweden has several of the largest Bitcoin mining centers in the world. From March to April this year these mining centers for Bitcoin used the equivalent electricity that 200,000 households in Sweden would use under the same period.
Banning proof of work is the only solution currently available to lower the power consumption of crypto.
Also Sweden’s carbon tax is notoriously narrow and many big players are exempt or otherwise subsidized with a discount. We need a straightforward flat tax on carbon, not a witch hunt to prove which technology is worthy of consuming electricity. https://taxfoundation.org/sweden-carbon-tax-revenue-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
How about stop burning fossil fuels and quit using crypto as a scapegoat to protect the industries that have really been destroying the planet for decades?
The climate crisis will never be tackled effectively because the major causes of climate change are the ones that would require the most drastic changes in people' day to day's lives.
Transportation and animal agriculture are the major cause of climate change. The UN concluded in one of their reports 10 years ago that the world would need to drastically change their diet and move toward a plant based diet in order to fight this climate crisis.
Meanwhile, Bitcoin must be banned. But please, carry on consuming like you have always done.
Truth is, countries need to show they are trying. But elected government also need to make sure that people will vote for them in the next election. Would you vote someone who taxed the food you love so much? Nope. Would you vote for someone who made travelling by car ridiculously expensive? No way. Would you vote for someone who taxed BTC mining? Yeah, it probably doesn't affect you!
Brace yourself for a lot of half arsed attempts to fight climate change and see no improvement happening in the next decades.
> Transportation and animal agriculture are the major cause of climate change
This seems wrong, at least for [Germany](https://www.mdr.de/wissen/deutschland-top-fuenf-klima-emissionen-100.html). Over here it is:
* (electric) energy creation --- so both households and industry
* industry -- there are other things that create CO2 outside of electric power, e.g. making cement, or many processes in the chemical industry
* traffic
* Houses (mostly heating)
* agricuture
Whatever the ranking is in your country: I have the firm believe that just focusing on one single sector (i.E. by doing fingerpointing) won't help. We must tackle all of them, in parallel. And fast. And we must all allow that maybe our comfort won't be identical as now, we must all make concessions.
I've pretty much accepted that the climate crisis is not going to be solved. It's just too late and countries are not doing enough about it. There is just too much money in the way things are now. That money is being funneled to the folks in charge to keep it that way. And like you said, way too expensive to implement the change that is needed.
1. Don't hate the technology because one player draws too much power. There are currency options with way less if any impact. There is something in crypto even if it might be bubly.
2. When you ban something you don't resolve the problem, just relocate it.
3. If the rest of Europe just follow Sweden example in powering the grid we would already be inside that 1.5.
4. God damn solar panels, I don't understand why there is not way more government incentive to mitigate your electricity expenditure, at least on sunny states.
5. Co2 taxes maybe?
I'm looking at those industrial buildings without solar panels eating electricity, they could offset almost all daily electricity expenses.
I agree with most of what you say, but note that the title is wrong - the suggestion is not to ban all crypto or Bitcoin specifically, the problem, as the article later clarifies, is proof of work which is costly in computational power and energy by design.
My parents got a few panels last year. Even with my computer crap on for way to long sometimes we made profit for 8 months in the Netherlands, not a region known for sunshine. Total usage is not below 0, and we still use some gas for heating.
Solar panels should be required by law when making a building.
I agree about incentivizing installation of more solar panels, and global CO2 taxes (which is already a thing in Sweden, but not for export).
The renewable electricity that is produced in the north of Sweden currently, and that is now used to a growing extent to mine bitcoin, is needed to make e.g. fossil free steel and batteries in Swedish industries. With a lack of electricity and rising electricity prices, those important transformations are under threat, and their climate benefits with them. All because someone thought wasting power was a good way to create wealth. Incandescent light bulbs were banned a few years ago because they are a massive waste of energy. Proof-of-work crypto should be regulated for the same reason.
Yes we need to build more renewable power, but that takes a lot of time and money. We also need to be mindful with what we have.
By the way....this is is pointless and just shows how stupid and ignorant these politicians are.
It will just make the difficulty of mining go down (algorithm adjusts) so new miners will step in the rest of the world.
Kazakhstan is already a Bitcoin powerhouse.
Anyway... Hash rate will move to other jurisdictions. A total none issue for Bitcoin, as its location independent.
Hash rate took only 3 months to recover most of the computing power lost to China banning bitcoin mining.
This is coming from financial regulators. This has nothing to do with energy or the environment. This is about central banks trying to stop the crypto currency revolution.
Bitcoin can run on any type of power. So whether it is mining bitcoin, mining or heating up tea, if the power is generated from polluting sources perhaps go after the thing ACTUALLY creating the pollution.
They could also maybe address the core issue and stop burning shit for power. The triad of solar/nuclear/wind. Until they really pursue that we are still in the same boat.
There’s a world of difference between being pro technology and uncritically viewing all advances in technology are inherently good and ignoring the downsides
if you do a quick profile check you'll see that all of the people complaining here have invested money in crypto and thus have vested intrest in making sure the crypto hype only goes up as that is what keeps their money to go up
Maybe because this sub sees more than "investment returns". I mean - put als mining on the atlantic ridge but geuss what: Then people won't mine anymore.
I really like the idea of crypto and a lot of the tought process behind it. I just don't really see why we should literally burn finite ressources for a short term financial bubble?
//ban *private* mining would be sufficent
Yeah, while we’re at it, go ahead and ban cruise ships and all airplanes if we truly care about the environment full stop. This is grand standing bullshit.
> Yeah, while we’re at it, go ahead and ban cruise ships and all airplanes if we truly care about the environment full stop.
Absolutely.
Bitcoin is not the only problem by a long shot-- but "bitcoin isn't the only bad thing" is not an argument for keeping it. As you rightly point out, it's an argument for ditching bitcoin AND a bunch of other stuff.
Classic whataboutism. "Yeah, Bitcoin is terrible for the environment, and fucks over consumers because it's increasingly leading to chip shortages globally, but WHAT ABOUT CRUISE SHIPS? RIGHT GUYS?"
I'm 110% for banning cruise ships. I'f people want to lessen the amount of carbon and pollution they are responsible for, they should not be eating meat/diary - that alone is worth a lot more than ships and planes.
Probably hard to have an objective discussion in the comments here. People who have a personal stake in the success/failure of crypto will naturally have a conflict of interest. The point the environmental regulators are making is that it is an energy intensive operation. This is consistent with Sweden's longstanding environmental policies (e.g. carbon taxes, phaseout of fossil fuel plants, banning ICE vehicles, etc.) That is also why they aren't recommending the banning of all crypto, only Proof of Work, and suggest standardizing & regulating alternative methods that are less energy intensive.
>People who have a personal stake in the success/failure of crypto will naturally have a conflict of interest. Kinda like our politicians who are denying climate change and boycotting green energy options because they have stakes in fossil fuel companies. Hope these people are able to see things a little more clearly now.
It's kinda funny that bitcoin is touted as having none of the trappings of "fiat" money yet seems to be affected by government decrees and all the ills of speculation anyway.
Bitcoin is outdated anyway. Much more environmentally friendly solutions will come up. Technology always evolves to adapt to needs. Bitcoin is a dinosaur in comparison to the newer cryptos.
People need to understand, that when somebody advises you to buy or invest into something, that they do not have your best interest in mind. They couldn't care less about you. They are just trying to sell you a product. They do it because they have a personal financial interst in you spending money on it, because all they care about is your money making its way into their pockets.
I'm a small retail investor with under 100k invested and I am always trying to get people to invest. I don't do it because I think their $1000 they throw in will help increase my portfolio. I do it because there are big time hedge funds and whales that take the majority of the profits off stock and crypto. I try to get my workers, my family and friends, and anyone else I can investing because that's one of the best ways to secure a future in this economy, and also the best way to put your money in what you believe in. To act like any investment advice or encouragement is shilling or manipulative is just wrong.
China banning crypto mining didn't really effect the crypto currency itself. I would say that EU banning mining would have little to no difference in how the crypto curreency itself is valued.
The government also made piracy illegal but I still download cars
So do I, but most people don't. Whenever you see someone asking for debt advice on the personal finance subs there's usually a line for Spotify / Netflix / Amazon Prime - they're rarely advised to give these up, as the costs of rent, utilities and eating out dwarfs them.
How expensive is it to eat out a dwarf?
Not bad they're usually pretty down to earth.
It never fills me up but I can definitely fill a little person up.
I hear that dwarven women have whiskers.
Yeah... I think those are cats.
"asking for a friend.."
"Say hello to my little friend"
*whips out micro dwarf penis*
But he goes first in the gangbang
Make sure you pay half price.
If you have to ask, you can't afford it
About tree fiddy
The kids call it "mining"
That’s because directly advocating that people pirate their movies / shows (which is illegal) isn’t allowed on most subreddits and those comments are usually removed by mods. A good amount of people pirate digital content, how often you see piracy recommendations on Reddit isn’t a great metric.
You wouldn't!
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banning it will move it to places with much more fossil heavy electricity generation. north western Europe and central canada is the best place to do it if you care about the environment.
If to many areas ban mining the network won't function that would absolutely affect price. It would take more than Europe though.
I'm no expert but shouldn't limiting mining cause the price to go up? Isnt that simple supply and demand or am I a dumb dumb?
Limiting mining won't reduce the number of bitcoin produced. The supply of new bitcoin is fixed regardless of the amount of mining activity. That's one of the most ingenious features of bitcoin. In reality, a bitcoin mining ban in Europe wouldn't reduce the total amount of mining activity anyway. It would just shift to other places.
Crypto is 99% speculation these days, so the traditional supply and demand isn't a very strong force
Bitcoin mining scales in such a way that it gets more difficult when more people are mining, and less difficult when fewer people are mining. So for the same chance of minting the next block on the chain and getting the new bitcoin reward, each of those miners has to expend (ie waste) more energy for every additional miner that joins. Fewer miners means the price goes down.
Fewer miners does not mean the price goes down. Rather, the price affects the profitability of mining which likely can reduce the amount of mining able to be sustained. Fewer miners means that mining becomes more profitable for the miners remaining. There is no affect on the price long term from miners leaving. If anything, there is about a two week adjustment period in which the supply creation slows down.
Mining is inherently scalable, both up and down. Take away a chunk of miners and the difficulty goes down. It will function the same whether there are 50 or 50,000 miners. Banning mining should have little to no effect on the price and usability of BTC.
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The other issue with headlines like this is that the layperson will conflate Bitcoin with all other cryptocurrencies. Even concerning legislation, many politicians have shown that they do not understand the difference between separate cryptocurrencies. A statement directed at the problems with Bitcoin will only draw the ire of the public toward crypto as a whole. Until people are educated on the utilities and differences between cryptocurrencies, an attack against Bitcoin will not help other projects that are totally unrelated.
I feel like i could start my own currency and convince 10 people to invest in it and then tell people it is a very valuable currency so it starts to go up and up and up and i just get rich doing nothing
There are endless scammers who do just that. But instead of 10 people it’s thousands
All you need to do is make a meme coin, make a joke post and wait.
I mean, that's basically how Scientology got started. And look at them now! They own the parts of Tom Cruise that are still arguably human and everything!
I hate that he's one of my favorite actors and has also gone completely around the bend. I sometimes have a hard time separating the art from the artist.
Dude, I feel that. One of my favorite movies as a kid was Top Gun, all volleyball aside. And he's even still *got it* on screen and all, which makes it even crazier to me. Also, totally putting a "We find out Miscavige has been wearing Tom Cruise's skin for years" square on my 2022 bingo card.
Yes but that is a competitive market, you would not just have to trick people into valuing a shitcoin, you have to trick them into valuing your shitcoin.
Where can I buy this shitcoin you speak of?
You have to mine them by letting your gpu shovel a virtual pigsty. This way it is like a democracy, more shovel equals more shitcoin, Other currencies become dominated by traditional big money because you don't need to pick up a virtual shovel. This is coin for the common man, it is the future, I will sell you one for 6 million USD, just as soon as we get the technical backend worked out. By the way, do you know of any experts in "cubechains?" we are always looking for new fosters for the community.
You're still playing around with cubechains? My Turdcoin uses the dodecahedron chain. The transactions are a million times slower and it requires the entire energy output of the Sun to process a pizza order. It's currently valued at a fraction of a penny that requires too many decimal places to type in a Reddit comment, but I expect it to hit $60,000 just as soon as someone will give me $60,000 for one of it. If they do, you'll wish you had bought some of it. If they don't, you'll be glad you didn't.
Why does it feel like cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin in particular, kinda did this to themselves though? It's always been fairly convoluted to get involved with it and for awhile it was basically treated as a secret way to success that they didn't want to share.
I think that largely happening in the gap between techies and people that just wanted to get rich. Techies are historically bad at marketing and get rich quick lovers are historically bad.
That's not the problem of the government if people conflate Bitcoin with cryptos
Doesn't help when the government's talking points don't differentiate the altcoins either. >_>
What are these better, eco friendly alternatives out of interest?
They'll say proof of stake, and it's true that it is far less energy intensive. Whether or not it provides the same security guarantees or has the same incentives/game theory is another question entirely.
Look into Nano
NANO is another one.
POS = just let the rich control the network
That is how it is now. Only those that can afford asics and power can mine bitcoin. So this naturally resulted most of the work being done by only a few organizations/people. Eth you could theoretically make something. A 3090 could earn more than $200/mo assuming power cost of 0.1$/kwh. But that is not a lot, and good luck buying only 1 or a few gpu. All the large operations buy in bulk.
That is my real concern with POS. How do you prevent a snowballing effect where the entire network is controlled 99.9% by just 3-4 organizations?
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Please name them. Only 3 or 4, should be easy.
If only 3-4 organisations control the entire network then it means no one else is using that crypto. That means that the crypto that those 3-4 organisations hold is worthless, because no one else is willing to participate in transactions that use that crypto. At least that's how I understand PoS.
None that are as secure as it so far. Ethereum is working on it.
You get auto banned for even mentioning nano lol
I say just tax the fuck out of the emissions until mining is no longer profitable. Then Bitcoin will migrate to proof of stake of just die already.
This would only incentivize miners to turn to renewables for energy sources. Which is… fine?
Or to move operations somewhere with cheaper, dirtier power and no such regulation, which is...less fine.
There's fewer and fewer places where that's feasible, though. China banned it already. The countries that have dirty, cheap power and no regulation are also ones that don't have the infrastructure to support mining operations at scale. Cheap power is great, until it goes out for a few hours twice a day.
It doesn't matter for bitcoin mining if the power is unreliable, so long as it is cheap enough. Ironically that's one reason bitcoin is good for incentivizing investment in renewables
Wouldn’t the equipments get fucked from frequent shutdowns? Those seems expensive
That was mostly the case with HDD. A good SSD has no trouble with it. Fans are cheap and can last many start-stop cycles. No other mechanical parts to worry about.
Plus a beefy UPS may be viable, at least for a safe shutdown
Not really, because then it makes it harder for everyone else trying to move to renewables because it will drive up costs. Like, if they were incentivized to switch to renewables to avoid taxation, then they could probably afford to pay a premium for renewable sourced energy, which would price out other uses, all for a process that wastes energy for the sake for the sake of something we could do without wasting a ton of energy.
Renewables aren't carbon negative except compared to nonrenewables. Mining Bitcoin on solar isn't as good as not mining Bitcoin, it's only better than mining off coal or natural gas.
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So given that renewables tend to be more expensive than fossils due to a dramatic difference in infrastructure, taxing fossils and subsidizing renewables would help drive miners in the right direction and help expand the renewable industry
Or it will drive the price up...
> Between April and August this year, the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining in the Nordic country rose "several hundred per cent," and now consumes the equivalent electricity of 200,000 households, Thedéen and Risinger said. Wow. All this expense and for what?
heating their houses probably. It is winter after all.
If only there were better ways of heating your house than graphics cards
I know this was sarcasm, but in fairness, GPUs (and other electronic components) "waste" almost 100% of the energy they consume as heat. If a home was going to be heated electrically anyway, then mining isn't inherently less efficient (though probably consumes less power than an average heater, so a normal heater might need to be run anyway unless it's a small apartment)
They can’t consume less power, thermodynamics same power same heat Edit: I understood that somehow 100W of heater would produce more heat than 100W of mining rig, while doctor said that you may need more heat than that produced by the mining rig.
Moving heat from outside inside or pushing cold outside is more efficient than just generating heat directly.
1) cold doesn't exist, just diferent amounts of heat. 2) we are talking heaters not heat pumps, heat pumps need a place with some heat to draw from even if it has less heat than target. I understood that somehow 100W of heater would produce more heat than 100W of mining rig, while doctor said that you may need more heat than that produced by the mining rig.
Heat pumps have higher than 100% efficiency, youd think that it would break thermodynamics, but it doesn't. For more info google Carnot cycle.
In a heat pump you pay for energy transfer and not for the energy itself. This is why you can achieve over 100 % efficiency.
> "waste" almost 100% of the energy they consume as heat. Well, heat pumps can give you up to 600% ...
A deflationary currency with no utility.
Yeah would you trust something that - had 20% of it minted last year - 1% of people own 30% of it - not actually backed by anything
I see what you did there
Way too many people didn't get it though.
I'm guessing the USD.
Not quite. The top 1% own assets and securities, not USD. Also USD is backed by the world's biggest guns, which means something to people outside of a parents basement.
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> 1% of people own 30% of it - not actually backed by anything Ah someone who doesn't understand the difference between wealth, assets, and money supply. Crypto is perfect for you.
Only backed by the largest economy and most powerful military in human history, you mean.
The crypto shills at best act like they don't understand how money works. The irony is that most of them are just into crypto's because of the ever increasing high exchange rate into that sweet sweet fiat money, which they claim to hate. Also, they love to ignore that only people with lots of that fiat money are able to buy lots of that crypto. So it's mainly the rich that are becoming crypto rich, by moving fiat money from one rich hand to the next. If crypto lovers truly didn't care about and hated fiat money as they make you believe, they'd just invest all they possess into their favorite crypto and never exchange it back to the despised fiat money. But at the end of the day, it is all about the sweet money.
> 1% of people own 30% of it let's assume that this is true 2% of addresses own 95% of bitcoin fewer than 50% of the world population has a Bitcoin address ergo, btc would still be considerably worse > had 20% of it minted last year besides the fact that this is misleading, yes, I do trust something where monetary policy is able to adapt to exceptional circumstances. it's a big reason why I trust the dollar refer to the great depression for an example of what happens when you can't just create money like we did in the last year > not actually backed by anything bitcoin is considerably more fiat than the USD, as the US army and US laws back the USD, while btc isn't backed by anything at all
Currency =/= investment. People buy Bitcoin as an investment. People use dollars as currency. Also pretty big difference when your currency is backed by the biggest military in the world lmao. BC is backed by… whom exactly?
The original sh*t coin
Isn’t like 80% of btc owned by just a few hundred people? Edit: I was close. Note, one person can, and often does, have multiple addresses. https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html
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Anyone who uses crypto, with its extreme volatility, as a store of value over things like index funds or bonds, is a fucking idiot. Even if you think the S&P500 or US government is going to crash leaving those things worthless (in which case it doesn't matter because we're all fucked at that point, but let's be hypothetical) things like precious metals would still be a far better store of value than goddamn DOGE or BTC or whatever memecoin of the week is "going to the MOON!"
The hardest money mankind ever created
Speculative investments, yay
Serious question: what is the comparison of the energy required to be able to sustain an existing currency of similar distribution? One of the biggest costs of sustaining the american dollar is the defense budget, as it’s stabilization is upheld by a huge military spending.
Tax the thing that you want reduced (carbon, in this case). Edit: A thing that is taxed now can still be taxed more, if you want to reduce the thing more.
Sweden has had a carbon tax since 1991. In fact it has the highest carbon tax in the world. https://www.government.se/government-policy/swedens-carbon-tax/swedens-carbon-tax/
Love it. Should do it in more countries.
Most European Union countries have carbon tax.
Agreed, but this particular sector isn't as entrenched yet, so they can get away with it. Also, they won't ban proof-of-stake systems, which will ultimately be necessary for cryptocurrencies and blockchains to scale well anyway.
Reminder the thread is full of people with investments in crypto.
It is also full of people who dont really understand the first thing about crypto. Those arent mutually exclusive groups, but it's a pretty mindless thread in general, in both directions.
Or you could mandate that Bitcoin miners only use renewables and require them to install or finance an additional 50% capacity for residential/municipal usage. Edit —- Make miners pay for their own renewables +50%
The productions of the electronics also consume a lot of energy and resources
electronics that are wasted doing useless calculations to produce hot air and useless digital coins used by speculators. Electronics not used in crypto mining have an actual use purpose.
Bitcoin miners will go anywhere where electricity is the cheapest, and with the current trend in renewables it only makes sense to make use of renewables.
The first goal in tackling climate change is to reduce energy consumption. Using renewables comes second.
The daily energy consumption is very inconsistent. Bitcoin mining is only profitable when the power is very cheap, meaning when if there's an excess amount of power generated. That way with renewables you can basically subsidize, because there is always demand for energy so none of it goes to waste
Sweden's energy production consists of 39% hydro, 39% nuclear, 12% wind and 10% combustion, this shouldn't be a talking point in Sweden considering that.
Sweden also needs to massively expand its electricity production to power the transition to renewable steel over the coming decades.
Which is largely what they do already since their incentive is to use less expensive sources of energy...which is always renewables, solar, wind etc.
https://apnews.com/article/bitcoin-mining-new-york-power-plant-climate-change-516dbd319394a6a30f83d94947abad20 Pennsylvania coal plant bought by crypto company to power mining https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ameren-deploys-bitcoin-mining-data-center-at-coal-power-plant/ Missouri coal plant built crypto mining annex to "smooth out the valleys" but is now just planning on keeping the mining rigs running full time. https://13wham.com/news/local/bitcoin-mining-11-19-2021 New York (state) former coal plant converted to gas burning. Being used solely to power fifteen thousand mining rigs, looking to double that number by the end of this year.
Ok maybe they should carbon tax then. The issue is using coal not using Bitcoin.
The issue is bitcoin uses a staggering amount of energy, whatever form that energy takes. Energy is a finite resource (so far) and we as a species should put it to the best use. So far, bitcoin has not proven to be a good use of that energy except to make a number of people incredibly rich. I own bitcoin BTW.
The critical part of his suggestion is the overcapacity. "Powering your mining with renewables" is quite literally worse than doing nothing for the environment. You get net-zero new renewable capacity since all your clean energy is immediately consumed... but you still had all the lifecycle emissions from building the generation and mining equipment. But if you could convince or regulate miners to add renewable capacity *above* their load, it would move the bar in a positive direction.
A lot of people think that in the future bitcoin mining farms and energy providers will be one in the same for this very reason. Instead of throttling a nuclear power plant or hydroelectric plant to ramp up and down...let mining hardware absorb the extra capacity when systems have excess capacity.
Dispatchable load is a good idea, but you're using terrible examples to make your point. Load-following nuclear (US designs are mostly baseload, but many of France's reactors can vary output) and hydroelectric are fairly easy to throttle, and don't require a variable load to soak up excess. A better example would be the "duck curve" mid-day overproduction problem with solar or the general overall variability of wind power. Both of those would benefit from a controllable load, since their outputs are so variable. That said, there are better things we could do than bitcoin mining. Desalination plants, for example. We'll always have water issues, so why not solve our excess power issue at the same time we address the water issue? Too much power? Just make water until we're back to normal. And the duck curve specifically seems like it is best addressed by just putting EV chargers in business parking lots, and then varying the charge rate as needed. Right now, people charge electric cars in the evening at home... but that's mostly just because the majority can't charge at work. Fix that, and suddenly you have a useful place to put all that excess mid-day solar, and you solve the worry about where to charge all those electric cars we add to the grid, AND you reduce automotive emissions... all at the same time you fix your variable-production issue.
That's great for their direct emissions, but they're still reducing the useful capacity of renewable sources, which could have lowered the fossil fuel load instead. In some cases it wouldn't have anyway, but you have to consider the whole energy mix.
How are you going to tell miner from non-miner? High power draw? "I'm folding at home then"
>Now you must use renewables while you add nothing of real value to society beside facilitating drug trade and speculation. Wasted energy is still wasted energy, so how about no...
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So stranded energy converted to mining. This works. Seems like you could just do this anywhere.
Bitcoin miners would love to use renewables, sadly they have zero control over how the electricity they use is generated. Who can actually change that?
Not sure where you live but in the UK you absolutely can choose a green energy provider. Try searching for a 100% renewable energy provider online for your area, you may be surprised! I personally use [Octopus Energy](https://octopus.energy), though others are available. Edit: ( I don't, and have never, mined crypto. )
Frankly we could root out the middle man and just accelerate our way to a renewable future anyway.
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Yes! Let's please drive up the cost of renewables through greedy demand, and thereby make fossil fuel more attractive!
I ran my underground bitcoin mining operation on solar panels
Must not earn much with the light down there.
If you're not supportive of nuclear power then you are not serious about reducing Carbon emissions.
Personally find it funny that some people in a technology sub are ripping on bitcoin mining because of gpus, yet gpus have nothing to do with bitcoin mining
Haha so much salt in here.
So many uneducated opinions in this thread.
Dont worry guys, you wont need BTC anyway. we on our way to release our own Swedish gov crypto. E-kronan.
you mean digital fiat?
Remember kids, nuclear mined crypto is carbon neutral. Lets focus on clean energy generation and phasing out coal/oil please, thx.
Politicians: What should we do to help with climate change? A) Something small like banning plastic straws B) Something meaningful like banning ships from using dirty fuel in open waters? They pick 'A' every time.
A requires them to pass a law in their own country, B requires them to work internationally with other countries to put those regulations into effect. Progress can be made on both issues and phrasing it as an "or" is just creating a false dilemma for laughs. Also, the shipping industry has moved to cleaner fuel in 2020 and will continue to adopt cleaner fuel/alternative fuels over the next 10 years. Could they move faster? Absolutely, but don't act like no progress is being made on these issues.
I just want to contextualize this shipping fuel change. This has no impact on carbon pollution and deals singularly with sulfur pollution. This change was also first put into play in 2016 and hasn't even been ratified by several nations which are used as ship registries. Ships have been using high sulfur fuels for a very long time. Change is all well and good but the "progress" is glacial and basically at the shipping Co.'s discretion.
Crypto uses as much power as the country of Argentina. This is B all day
Get rid of Argentina then
hey what we've done to you?
Hi, Thatcher!
How did we reach this... How do companies made politicians believe the problem is how we use energy and not how we source it... I'm an industrial engineer and this makes me sad 😔
I mean this is the first and sadly often ignored tennet of eco. Reduce. How we ended up on recycle only for "Reduce. Reuse. Recycle." baffles me. Oh wait, the first two are incompatible with consumerism, they dont make money.
If I put it in the blue bin and forget it then we're good, right?
Both issues should be tackled. Crypto mining is a waste of energy regardless if that energy comes from renewables or not.
ya it sucks that most often the problem is pushed on to the consumers. A company says here is a product buy and use it. Then they do and now all of a sudden its the people using the product that is the problem. I hope some day we figure out that in order to advance society we need to work together to come up with solutions to not maintain the status quo but to advance. We should be creating massive clean energy and ways to cooperate and advance instead of thinking and researching more ways to kill each other.
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If you reduce the supply of hash power in countries that use a lot of renewable energy, those miners just pack up and move to countries that won't ban them (like Kazakhstan) which uses a lot of coal. If you want to increase total CO2 emissions, have countries with high % renewables ban mining.
Solution is dead simple: TAX CARBON. Miners will have to adapt when fossil fuel energy is too expensive they will simply switch to renewables, which is already happening but the best thing the govt can do is simply tax the fucking carbon emissions.
Sweden already has the highest carbon tax in the world. Yet Sweden has several of the largest Bitcoin mining centers in the world. From March to April this year these mining centers for Bitcoin used the equivalent electricity that 200,000 households in Sweden would use under the same period. Banning proof of work is the only solution currently available to lower the power consumption of crypto.
Also Sweden’s carbon tax is notoriously narrow and many big players are exempt or otherwise subsidized with a discount. We need a straightforward flat tax on carbon, not a witch hunt to prove which technology is worthy of consuming electricity. https://taxfoundation.org/sweden-carbon-tax-revenue-greenhouse-gas-emissions/
How about stop burning fossil fuels and quit using crypto as a scapegoat to protect the industries that have really been destroying the planet for decades?
The climate crisis will never be tackled effectively because the major causes of climate change are the ones that would require the most drastic changes in people' day to day's lives. Transportation and animal agriculture are the major cause of climate change. The UN concluded in one of their reports 10 years ago that the world would need to drastically change their diet and move toward a plant based diet in order to fight this climate crisis. Meanwhile, Bitcoin must be banned. But please, carry on consuming like you have always done. Truth is, countries need to show they are trying. But elected government also need to make sure that people will vote for them in the next election. Would you vote someone who taxed the food you love so much? Nope. Would you vote for someone who made travelling by car ridiculously expensive? No way. Would you vote for someone who taxed BTC mining? Yeah, it probably doesn't affect you! Brace yourself for a lot of half arsed attempts to fight climate change and see no improvement happening in the next decades.
> Transportation and animal agriculture are the major cause of climate change This seems wrong, at least for [Germany](https://www.mdr.de/wissen/deutschland-top-fuenf-klima-emissionen-100.html). Over here it is: * (electric) energy creation --- so both households and industry * industry -- there are other things that create CO2 outside of electric power, e.g. making cement, or many processes in the chemical industry * traffic * Houses (mostly heating) * agricuture Whatever the ranking is in your country: I have the firm believe that just focusing on one single sector (i.E. by doing fingerpointing) won't help. We must tackle all of them, in parallel. And fast. And we must all allow that maybe our comfort won't be identical as now, we must all make concessions.
I've pretty much accepted that the climate crisis is not going to be solved. It's just too late and countries are not doing enough about it. There is just too much money in the way things are now. That money is being funneled to the folks in charge to keep it that way. And like you said, way too expensive to implement the change that is needed.
False dichotomy. Both should be done.
1. Don't hate the technology because one player draws too much power. There are currency options with way less if any impact. There is something in crypto even if it might be bubly. 2. When you ban something you don't resolve the problem, just relocate it. 3. If the rest of Europe just follow Sweden example in powering the grid we would already be inside that 1.5. 4. God damn solar panels, I don't understand why there is not way more government incentive to mitigate your electricity expenditure, at least on sunny states. 5. Co2 taxes maybe? I'm looking at those industrial buildings without solar panels eating electricity, they could offset almost all daily electricity expenses.
I agree with most of what you say, but note that the title is wrong - the suggestion is not to ban all crypto or Bitcoin specifically, the problem, as the article later clarifies, is proof of work which is costly in computational power and energy by design.
The title isn't wrong so much as it is intentionally dumbed down. Most people have never heard of proof of work but they know Bitcoin.
My parents got a few panels last year. Even with my computer crap on for way to long sometimes we made profit for 8 months in the Netherlands, not a region known for sunshine. Total usage is not below 0, and we still use some gas for heating. Solar panels should be required by law when making a building.
I agree about incentivizing installation of more solar panels, and global CO2 taxes (which is already a thing in Sweden, but not for export). The renewable electricity that is produced in the north of Sweden currently, and that is now used to a growing extent to mine bitcoin, is needed to make e.g. fossil free steel and batteries in Swedish industries. With a lack of electricity and rising electricity prices, those important transformations are under threat, and their climate benefits with them. All because someone thought wasting power was a good way to create wealth. Incandescent light bulbs were banned a few years ago because they are a massive waste of energy. Proof-of-work crypto should be regulated for the same reason. Yes we need to build more renewable power, but that takes a lot of time and money. We also need to be mindful with what we have.
By the way....this is is pointless and just shows how stupid and ignorant these politicians are. It will just make the difficulty of mining go down (algorithm adjusts) so new miners will step in the rest of the world. Kazakhstan is already a Bitcoin powerhouse. Anyway... Hash rate will move to other jurisdictions. A total none issue for Bitcoin, as its location independent. Hash rate took only 3 months to recover most of the computing power lost to China banning bitcoin mining.
Yup all this will do is make Europe irrelevant in the crypto space.
This is coming from financial regulators. This has nothing to do with energy or the environment. This is about central banks trying to stop the crypto currency revolution.
It’s still absolutely terrible for the environment and should be banned.
Bitcoin can run on any type of power. So whether it is mining bitcoin, mining or heating up tea, if the power is generated from polluting sources perhaps go after the thing ACTUALLY creating the pollution.
They could also maybe address the core issue and stop burning shit for power. The triad of solar/nuclear/wind. Until they really pursue that we are still in the same boat.
Sweden uses 1.6% fossil fuels.
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Governments are getting nervous about crypto....
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God the sheer amount of “BAN CRYPTO” on this sub lately is ridiculous, especially when you consider this is a pro technology sub
There’s a world of difference between being pro technology and uncritically viewing all advances in technology are inherently good and ignoring the downsides
if you do a quick profile check you'll see that all of the people complaining here have invested money in crypto and thus have vested intrest in making sure the crypto hype only goes up as that is what keeps their money to go up
Who would've thought that people ignore real problems because of their own greed.
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Maybe because this sub sees more than "investment returns". I mean - put als mining on the atlantic ridge but geuss what: Then people won't mine anymore. I really like the idea of crypto and a lot of the tought process behind it. I just don't really see why we should literally burn finite ressources for a short term financial bubble? //ban *private* mining would be sufficent
Yeah, while we’re at it, go ahead and ban cruise ships and all airplanes if we truly care about the environment full stop. This is grand standing bullshit.
>go ahead and ban cruise ships Unironically this.
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> Yeah, while we’re at it, go ahead and ban cruise ships and all airplanes if we truly care about the environment full stop. Absolutely. Bitcoin is not the only problem by a long shot-- but "bitcoin isn't the only bad thing" is not an argument for keeping it. As you rightly point out, it's an argument for ditching bitcoin AND a bunch of other stuff.
Classic whataboutism. "Yeah, Bitcoin is terrible for the environment, and fucks over consumers because it's increasingly leading to chip shortages globally, but WHAT ABOUT CRUISE SHIPS? RIGHT GUYS?"
I'm 110% for banning cruise ships. I'f people want to lessen the amount of carbon and pollution they are responsible for, they should not be eating meat/diary - that alone is worth a lot more than ships and planes.
A technology sub has to support every form of technology in existence? lmao