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You can't really shut down bitcoin. Whack a mole laws like this are too hard to enforce. The only bad thing about bitcoin is its electricity consumption. The ea

You can't really shut down bitcoin. Whack a mole laws like this are too hard to enforce. The only bad thing about bitcoin is its electricity consumption. The easiest way to solve this is to add a carbon tax. That way you don't have to shut down bitcoin. Bitcoin either has to move entirely to renewables or they will have to lower their electricity usage or they will shut down themselves with raised costs.

echelon 6y ago
Point the NSA and all of the minds in quantum computing at it. It will fall.
mavhc 6y ago
Just tax pollution the amount it costs to clean up pollution, and then use that money to clean up pollution. Problem solved.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Who exactly are you going to tax? The Chinese mining cartels in the PRC bribing officials to look the other way as they steal power? That's a bold proposal.
  - corty 6y ago
    Easy, as with any other thing that is imported: import duties collected by the banks and exchanges. And if you convert it into currency or goods overseas, there is also going to be a duty on that (if there isn't already).
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Where would you say a DEX is located - and to whom do they report?
      - mavhc 6y ago
        Wait, when you said Chinese mining cartel, did you mean bitcoin mining? Not actual mining? Bitcoin mining doesn't cause pollution, running a power plant does. If the power plant isn't publishing reasonable records as to pollution caused and tax recovered then you add it to the estimated total for the country and tax imports, that way the country fixes itself because they don't want to lose trade.
- munk-a 6y ago
  This will hit normie folks if it's done fairly, but that's not unjust - we are all contributing to pollution and it's inaccurate to say "Those miners cause all the pollution" - it is, however, appropriate to describe their activities as generating significantly more pollution.
  - SilverRed 6y ago
    >This will hit normie folks if it's done fairly In the short period Australia had a carbon tax, the profits were used to reduce the cost of other taxes so the average person came out even but you would be incentivized to constantly beat the rest by reducing your emissions so if you cause less damage than the average person, you pay less.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Canada does the same thing. The carbon tax is revenue neutral.
- nanis 6y ago
  > Just tax pollution the amount it costs to clean up pollution Even if Pigovian taxes were implementable[1], that's how they work. Since there is an optimal amount of pollution, the taxes are supposed to be set where the marginal cost to society of an additional unit of pollution is equal to the marginal benefit to society of that extra unit of pollution. Note the hand-wavy terms "benefit", "cost", and "unit". The devil is in how those are measured. Since central planning authorities are horrible at figuring stuff like this out, one generally ends up in a situation worse than the one which one would like to fix. As for the "clean up" aspect, I heartily recommend that one read and understand Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen[2]. Here is an excerpt[3]. Specifically, "clean up" is not free. [1]: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/230475696.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/230475696.pdf [2]: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674281653 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674281653 [3]: http://webpage.pace.edu/dnabirahni/rahnidocs/law802/The%20Entropy%20Law%20and%20the%20Economic%20Problem.pdf http://webpage.pace.edu/dnabirahni/rahnidocs/law802/The%20En...
colinmhayes 6y ago
There's no way to get every country to agree to a carbon tax. You'll always have a country that decides it's worth whatever sanctions in order to create a completive advantage for their industries. North Korea or Iran would end up controlling all the mining which I doubt is what anyone wants.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  So then you tax the imports of countries that have high emissions to level it out.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    Iran and North Korea are already fully sanctioned, there's nothing more we can do to them short of invading.
- triceratops 6y ago
  Tariffs. Sanctions. Embargoes.
jimbob45 6y ago
> The easiest way to solve this is to add a carbon tax The easiest way to solve this is to ban PoW coins in favor of PoS coins. There is nothing inherently valuable about BTC that wouldn’t be just as valuable in an equivalent PoS token.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  How do you ban PoW mining? Raiding every property with high electricity usage? This just becomes another war on drugs. Simply price the power higher and use those new profits to build renewable power sources.
  - MereInterest 6y ago
    The problem is that some uses of electricity are beneficial to society (e.g. keeping refrigerators running to prevent food spoilage). Others are detrimental to society (e.g. bitcoin's existence, allowing for the rise of ransomware). Raising the price uniformly across all uses does disincentivize the use of electricity, but some of that may be by not being able to have beneficial uses of electricity. I agree that raiding individual mining locations is counterproductive. Instead, go after the exchanges, where bitcoin is exchanged for real money. Without an economic incentive to mine bitcoin, the mining would slow down and stop.
  - jimbob45 6y ago
    I just figured you could ban trading of it. What good is a token you can’t trade anywhere? And it’s not like BTC has any intrinsic value. The black market doesn’t care if it’s dealing in ETH or Dogecoin.
MereInterest 6y ago
> The only bad thing about bitcoin is its electricity consumption. The lack of reversible transactions is a bad thing. Without reversibility, there is no recourse against fraudulent transactions. Reversing a transaction requires the active participation of the fraudulent actor. This is why ransomware really started taking off once bitcoin and friends picked up. Before that, there was no economic incentive to hold computers for ransom, because any payment made could be reversed after the hard drive is decrypted.
- mopsi 6y ago
  This is not as much of a problem as it is made out to be. The whole Europe runs on SEPA system of non-reversible direct debit transactions. Even if formally exist ways to reverse transactions, I have never heard of anyone having used them. All transactions are considered final just like cryptos, and if you make a mistake (eg enter wrong account number) in a transaction, you need the receiving party to voluntarily send it back. There's no way to force the transaction. Fraud is kept under control by other means.
skybrian 6y ago
The total cost of electricity used is limited by revenue from the block reward, 6.25 Bitcoins every ten minutes. (And transaction fees.) So a government wouldn’t need to shut it down, just make the market crash. And that might be possible by getting people and businesses that don’t cheat on their taxes to sell any holdings with something like a wealth tax.
joe_the_user 6y ago
If buying, selling or owning bitcoins were illegal in the US and for US companies, I guarantee trade in bitcoin would plummet and mining would wind-up using a small fraction of the energy it uses today. The only bad thing about bitcoin is its electricity consumption. There's also the way it allows those with access to energy they don't own to launder that access into money. Plus facilitating all manner of illegal activities (and I'm favor of making some things, like drugs, legal. Tax evasion or murder-for-hire, not so much).

echelon 6y ago

Point the NSA and all of the minds in quantum computing at it. It will fall.

mavhc 6y ago

Just tax pollution the amount it costs to clean up pollution, and then use that money to clean up pollution. Problem solved.

arcticbull 6y ago
Who exactly are you going to tax? The Chinese mining cartels in the PRC bribing officials to look the other way as they steal power? That's a bold proposal.
- corty 6y ago
  Easy, as with any other thing that is imported: import duties collected by the banks and exchanges. And if you convert it into currency or goods overseas, there is also going to be a duty on that (if there isn't already).
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Where would you say a DEX is located - and to whom do they report?
    - mavhc 6y ago
      Wait, when you said Chinese mining cartel, did you mean bitcoin mining? Not actual mining? Bitcoin mining doesn't cause pollution, running a power plant does. If the power plant isn't publishing reasonable records as to pollution caused and tax recovered then you add it to the estimated total for the country and tax imports, that way the country fixes itself because they don't want to lose trade.
munk-a 6y ago
This will hit normie folks if it's done fairly, but that's not unjust - we are all contributing to pollution and it's inaccurate to say "Those miners cause all the pollution" - it is, however, appropriate to describe their activities as generating significantly more pollution.
- SilverRed 6y ago
  >This will hit normie folks if it's done fairly In the short period Australia had a carbon tax, the profits were used to reduce the cost of other taxes so the average person came out even but you would be incentivized to constantly beat the rest by reducing your emissions so if you cause less damage than the average person, you pay less.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Canada does the same thing. The carbon tax is revenue neutral.
nanis 6y ago
> Just tax pollution the amount it costs to clean up pollution Even if Pigovian taxes were implementable[1], that's how they work. Since there is an optimal amount of pollution, the taxes are supposed to be set where the marginal cost to society of an additional unit of pollution is equal to the marginal benefit to society of that extra unit of pollution. Note the hand-wavy terms "benefit", "cost", and "unit". The devil is in how those are measured. Since central planning authorities are horrible at figuring stuff like this out, one generally ends up in a situation worse than the one which one would like to fix. As for the "clean up" aspect, I heartily recommend that one read and understand Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen[2]. Here is an excerpt[3]. Specifically, "clean up" is not free. [1]: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/230475696.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/230475696.pdf [2]: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674281653 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674281653 [3]: http://webpage.pace.edu/dnabirahni/rahnidocs/law802/The%20Entropy%20Law%20and%20the%20Economic%20Problem.pdf http://webpage.pace.edu/dnabirahni/rahnidocs/law802/The%20En...

colinmhayes 6y ago

There's no way to get every country to agree to a carbon tax. You'll always have a country that decides it's worth whatever sanctions in order to create a completive advantage for their industries. North Korea or Iran would end up controlling all the mining which I doubt is what anyone wants.

SilverRed 6y ago
So then you tax the imports of countries that have high emissions to level it out.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  Iran and North Korea are already fully sanctioned, there's nothing more we can do to them short of invading.
triceratops 6y ago
Tariffs. Sanctions. Embargoes.

jimbob45 6y ago

> The easiest way to solve this is to add a carbon tax The easiest way to solve this is to ban PoW coins in favor of PoS coins. There is nothing inherently valuable about BTC that wouldn’t be just as valuable in an equivalent PoS token.

SilverRed 6y ago
How do you ban PoW mining? Raiding every property with high electricity usage? This just becomes another war on drugs. Simply price the power higher and use those new profits to build renewable power sources.
- MereInterest 6y ago
  The problem is that some uses of electricity are beneficial to society (e.g. keeping refrigerators running to prevent food spoilage). Others are detrimental to society (e.g. bitcoin's existence, allowing for the rise of ransomware). Raising the price uniformly across all uses does disincentivize the use of electricity, but some of that may be by not being able to have beneficial uses of electricity. I agree that raiding individual mining locations is counterproductive. Instead, go after the exchanges, where bitcoin is exchanged for real money. Without an economic incentive to mine bitcoin, the mining would slow down and stop.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  I just figured you could ban trading of it. What good is a token you can’t trade anywhere? And it’s not like BTC has any intrinsic value. The black market doesn’t care if it’s dealing in ETH or Dogecoin.

MereInterest 6y ago

> The only bad thing about bitcoin is its electricity consumption. The lack of reversible transactions is a bad thing. Without reversibility, there is no recourse against fraudulent transactions. Reversing a transaction requires the active participation of the fraudulent actor. This is why ransomware really started taking off once bitcoin and friends picked up. Before that, there was no economic incentive to hold computers for ransom, because any payment made could be reversed after the hard drive is decrypted.

mopsi 6y ago
This is not as much of a problem as it is made out to be. The whole Europe runs on SEPA system of non-reversible direct debit transactions. Even if formally exist ways to reverse transactions, I have never heard of anyone having used them. All transactions are considered final just like cryptos, and if you make a mistake (eg enter wrong account number) in a transaction, you need the receiving party to voluntarily send it back. There's no way to force the transaction. Fraud is kept under control by other means.

skybrian 6y ago

The total cost of electricity used is limited by revenue from the block reward, 6.25 Bitcoins every ten minutes. (And transaction fees.) So a government wouldn’t need to shut it down, just make the market crash. And that might be possible by getting people and businesses that don’t cheat on their taxes to sell any holdings with something like a wealth tax.

joe_the_user 6y ago

If buying, selling or owning bitcoins were illegal in the US and for US companies, I guarantee trade in bitcoin would plummet and mining would wind-up using a small fraction of the energy it uses today. The only bad thing about bitcoin is its electricity consumption. There's also the way it allows those with access to energy they don't own to launder that access into money. Plus facilitating all manner of illegal activities (and I'm favor of making some things, like drugs, legal. Tax evasion or murder-for-hire, not so much).