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Question that came to mind after reading the headline: could this become a future reason for governments to criminalise the trading / use of Bitcoin because of

• Nursie 6y ago
  If governments banned the on/off ramps to normal currency, then yes it would be effectively neutered. There is an audience that wouldn't care, but it's a small audience.
  • jiriknesl 6y ago
    Yes, but the narrative is that Bitcoin is innovation and any government against it is basically against innovation. If I wanted to neutralize it, I would do something like Bait&Switch. Support banks running own cryptos until point where general public will see no difference between BTC and private cryptocurrencies and leave BTC users with their wallets and even when it will remain legal and everything, the "crypto revolution" would be taken by usual suspects (the establishment). However, I wouldn't like to see it. I prefer world currency to be run by nerds over bankers and politicians.
    • tal8d 6y ago
      Canada actually tried that, at least once - maybe twice. When it became clear that the government was talking about a pre-mined, non-transparent, centralized fedcoin - everybody laughed and then ignored it.
    • Nursie 6y ago
      As the other commenter says - nobody would care about those, because the only reason people are interested is the speculation. Stable cryptocurrencies are really only of interest to a small group of decentralisation fetishists, and stable, centralised cryptocurrencies are of interest to basically nobody.
• peteey 6y ago
  Yes. Holding gold in the US was illegal due to executive order 6102. There's no need for mental gymnastics of blaming energy. Just one powerful guy says "no" and poof, its illegal. Now laws or logic required. There was an exception for collector coins and jewelry
  • pradn 6y ago
    It's not mental gymnastics to have a legitimate concern about energy usage.
    • RGamma 6y ago
      Especially when the economic value provided by that consumption is virtually zero (net negative with externalities). I liked the idea of bitcoin when it came out, but as per usual things have just gotten out of hand from there.
    • gruez 6y ago
      Are there similar concerns about the pollution produced by gold mining? eg. "we should ban gold because it's so toxic to mine!"
      • tokai 6y ago
        Yes ofc. Nobody thinks mining is a clean industry.
        • gruez 6y ago
          There might be some concerns (eg. "wow gold mining is dirty, we should do something about it"), but I personally haven't seen anything close to "we should ban gold".
          • FrozenSynapse 6y ago
            because gold is useful, bitcoin only has speculative value
• devoutsalsa 6y ago
  After all the Bitcoin is mined, it will be the greenest crypto currency, yes?. What if we just accelerated the mining, or made them all available at once. Problem solved? Truth be told, I really don't know what I'm talking about. It just sounded good in my head.
  • Kbelicius 6y ago
    Even when all bitcoins are mined mining has to continue.
  • therealEleix 6y ago
    Impossible due to how cryptocurrency works. In any cryptocurrency there is something called an "emissions target" which will only up to X amount of coins to be "released" on the discovery of a new block. This is also compounded by the fact that even if you did try to accelerate the mining by adding more powerful nodes into the network, the network would automatically adjust the difficulty in order to keep blocks spitting out at the predetermined time of 10 minutes per block.
  • MereInterest 6y ago
    Nope. Bitcoin transactions require wasting energy. It is built into the very fabric of bitcoin. Currently, the energy wasters ("miners") are compensated by the minting of new bitcoins, and some transaction fees. As the number of bitcoins asymptomatically approaches it's maximum, the energy wasters are still compensated, but more and more through transaction fees.
  • theblazehen 6y ago
    Better solution would be to choose a proof of stake cryptocurrency instead
  • Twisell 6y ago
    Nice edit : >Truth be told, I really don't know what I'm talking about. It just sounded good in my head. I sincerely wish more people had your ability for introspection!
• high_density 6y ago
  break the hash algo...?
• jiriknesl 6y ago
  Will anyone criminalise the US army because they use lots of energy? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_States_military https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta... The answer: they might try, but good luck with that.
  • pogorniy 6y ago
    Can US live without army? Can it live without bitcoin?
  • jf22 6y ago
    We always have to take into account the usefulness of what we spend energy on. It's not as simple as calling out the top energy users and saying we should start there.
  • itsoktocry 6y ago
    >Will anyone criminalise the US army because they use lots of energy? Ah yes, the old trope that people use the US dollar because they are forced to. Meanwhile, back in reality, people around the world are desperate to get their hands on USD for commerce, because it's easily transacted, accepted and valued anywhere. You know, kinda like Bitcoin purports to be, but way more common.
    • lxgr 6y ago
      Arguably, modern currencies are backed by the ability of nation states to demand tax payments in them, creating a steady and stable (due to being directly proportional to economic activity) demand for them. A currency having value abroad is arguably a side effect, not the main goal.
    • jiriknesl 6y ago
      Of course, it is everyone's taste. One values USD more and other BTC more. Objectively, so far, BTC was a better investment. And given some 80% of BTC was already mined and there will be no more BTC ever while 20% of USD was printed this year (edit: sorry, in 2020), I undestand why some people stash Bitcoin. I have maybe 0.5% of my net worth in it, but I am very happy for those 0.5%.
• ForHackernews 6y ago
  We can only hope so. There are new proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies that don't have this massive environmental downside. The only people who should oppose replacing BTC with some other technologically and ecologically superior coin are bitcoin bagholders trying to protect their "investment" in this Ponzi scheme.
• ghego1 6y ago
  I was thinking exactly the same. I would be in favor tbh. If the government is allowed to dictate how my car must be built in order to make it more environmentally friendly, I don't see why it shouldn't be able to dictate how my blockchain must be built in order to make it environmentally sustainable. This wouldn't mean banning blockchain altogether. It would entail banning only those forms of distributed consensus that are not energy efficient. Proof of work (POW) is by definition inefficient from an energy perspective. You have to prove to have spent a lot of resources to be trusted. There's no excuse for this from an environment point of view, even if, admittedly, from a technological perspective is quite a marvel. I wouldn't be surprised to know that those defending bitcoin on this front are biased because they hold some quantity of crypto based on POW.
  • Taek 6y ago
    Government regulation should focus on how electricity is produced, not how electricity is used. If Bitcoin created pollution or dumped toxic chemicals, I would agree with you. But Bitcoin doesn't do either of those things, the power plants do those things. So save your regulations for the power plants and let the market figure out how to spend the electricity. If you wouldn't be in favor of the government regulating how much money can be spent on beef, or how much money can be spent on TVs, you shouldn't be in favor of the government regulating how much can be spent on Bitcoin's electricity bills.
    • ufo 6y ago
      Even renewable energy has externalities. They're not as bad as burning fossil fuels but we still want to avoid wasting energy on inefficient things.
      • lucb1e 6y ago
        Which is fair, but the impact is much less. The bigger issue with GP's comment is that, even if every major country on earth requires PoW systems to use renewable electricity (which won't happen any time soon in the first place) and can't run on the regular mixed grid, then after switching to countries without such laws (until there are none left), the renewable energy will be bought up at the source and the coal and gas plants will continue to supply everyone else. Nothing changes. We need to change everything else to renewable before this starts to be effective. It would make a much bigger impact if some countries, where users want to use cryptocurrency, make it illegal to use proof-of-work-based goods or currencies (whatever it's classified as). Suddenly a coin with PoS or something else becomes much more popular and we might, perhaps, shift over to a digital coin that is not a climate disaster.
• corobo 6y ago
  The Bitcoin guy is going to be the second place after Thomas Midgley Jr [1][2] in terms of most damage done to Earth by an individual I reckon. Is there no way to slim down the resource requirements to cut electrical use? (without breaking everything Bitcoin of course) - [1] He played a major role in developing leaded gasoline (Tetraethyllead) and some of the first chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) [2] Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.#Legacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.#Legacy
  • lucb1e 6y ago
    > Is there no way to slim down the resource requirements to cut electrical use? To put it bluntly (not meant to sound blunt, I just can't think of a better example without reiterating a technical explanation of how bitcoin works), that's like asking if people living in the Sahara can't simply drink less water to solve the unavailability of fresh water. And even that's a bad comparison because the human body actually can actually make due with less water. Perhaps it's like an electric heater (not heat pump, just a plain old heater), if you know how these things work: if you make it use fewer Watts, you get less heat, because there is no "waste heat" because heat is what you want in the first place. So fewer Watts is always less heat no matter how you spin it. Similarly, putting more power into Bitcoin makes you earn more money (as a miner). If we make the hashing algorithm more efficient, then the hash rate will just raise proportionally to meet the new supply (supply being the block reward + transaction fees, both in bitcoin (or whatever proof-of-work currency you're mining) that you receive when finding a block as a miner). No, the alternative is moving away from proof of work. I've been hearing stuff about proof of stake for years now, and afaik there are some currencies already using it. Not sure why Bitcoin doesn't switch to it, I'm not keeping up. Lost interest back when it became clear what a disaster it is and that it won't be able to fulfill its original purpose anyway. I'm very surprised the price is still soaring, shouldn't the best currency win? I guess people just don't give a fuck about their non-direct impact and see it as a way to get rich quick.
    • corobo 6y ago
• snickms 6y ago
  I think both the article and this comment miss the point. If we generated power cleanly in the first place, there would be far less environmental damage everywhere. The fact that Bitcoin now uses half the power of Youtube (from a terribly unreliable estimate) should not be such a distraction from the real problem IMHO. Terribly unreliable estimate: https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+total+power+consumption+of+youtube%3F https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+total+power+cons...
• csomar 6y ago
  > could this become a future reason for governments to criminalise the trading / use of Bitcoin because of negative environmental effects? The whole point of Bitcoin is resistance to adversity. Bitcoin value is directly correlated to its resistance against governments/agencies/bankers/regulation or anything else that wants to shut it down. If you can wrap your head around that, you'll understand why making bitcoin more eco-friendly from a centralized government or organization will suddenly make it less valuable.
• tim333 6y ago
  Maybe tax it in relation to its environmental harm? It would put me off if I had to record them on the tax return.