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Ban cryptocurrency exchanges and some of the wafer capacity currently being dedicated to mining will return to regular use (or we can just wait for the ETH2 mer

Ban cryptocurrency exchanges and some of the wafer capacity currently being dedicated to mining will return to regular use (or we can just wait for the ETH2 merge, then ban the purchase of PoW cyrpto). Secondly get workers back to work by ending COVID-era unemployment payments and workplace restrictions.

kova12 5y ago
Also ban activists whos solution to everything is to ban stuff. Like war on drugs didn't teach them anything
- leesalminen 5y ago
  Let’s just ban the banning of things. It’ll work out.
- mort96 5y ago
  That sounds really simplistic? There are some problems for which banning isn't a solution, but there are some problems for which banning is actually a viable solution. Should we "learn" from the war on drugs and reverse the ban on CFCs? Should we avoid banning toxic substances from food? You're gonna need a better argument than "activists who want to ban stuff should have learned from the war on drugs". You're gonna need to argue why banning cryptocurrencies is more like banning weed and not like banning CFCs.
not_really 5y ago
Ban this, ban that. Surrre. No problem.
kristofferR 5y ago
Does Bitcoin ASICs really "steal" wafer capacity from regular GPUs? Pretty different technology, I think?
henvic 5y ago
I hate cryptocurrency, but trying to ban them is just dumb. It's not going to work. Ban where? How? What are the side-effects? What about people's liberty? Cryptocurrency is stupid and depletes natural resources, but trying to use the law to ban it is only going to make it stronger.
- ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  The US Government bans a lot of things which are deleterious to society. Online gambling among them. The purpose is not to eliminate Cryptocurrencies, but to reduce the price of Bitcoin and other PoW coins such that mining (which is a misallocation of our civilization's energy and advanced manufactured goods) becomes significantly less rewarding. Ethereum at least has a Governing body which is moving it to PoS. Bitcoin does not. Government regulation is the only answer.
  - anonyxyz 5y ago
    Maybe if there was a little less regulation in the first place, things like bitcoin wouldn't have as much appeal as they do.
    - speed_spread 5y ago
      This is old rhetoric. Sidestepping the government no longer has anything to do with Bitcoin appeal. At this point, it's purely speculation and money laundering, all subversiveness potential has been evacuated for good.
      - cocoafleck 5y ago
        I realize many people don't care about credit cards spying on them, but I do value cryptocurrencies offering alternatives. From what I understand the Apple Credit Card was somewhat of a similar attempt (Goldman Sachs isn't allowed to sell the information). I'm not saying that the benefits outweigh the costs, but it does seem that they allow for more than money laundering, and speculation.
- 5y ago
ajross 5y ago
My understanding is that most of the "shortage" is in older processes where capacity is shrinking as fabs offline older tooling. Customers with parts that are stored as masks (e.g. engine controllers from the 1990's) or whose design teams have lost the expertise to resynthesize the HDL (again: think auto manufacturers) have very few options when capacity in these older processes starts disappearing. Crypto hardware is generally "just logic" which means that it's (1) fabbed on fairly modern processes and (2) generally quite portable to other processes just by recompiling your Verilog and wiring it to a different manufacturer's PCIe PHY or whatever.
- bshep 5y ago
  I dont know much about this, but curious why you cant re-synthesize the HDL? Should the tools just be able to move it to the new process? ( Again my knowledge in this field is very limited so this may be a dumb question)
neysofu 5y ago
I have a suggestion - how about we stop fucking with each other's civil liberties just because we don't like the current situation, and rather we come up with real solutions?
swiley 5y ago
China banned it and something like 60% of the mining happens there. The whole thing was built to get around bans. Also crypto was thing that just pushed us over the edge, before that Apple was buying out (preventing any chips from being manufactured at) entire node sizes, there were serious issues with semiconductor manufacturing already.
- enkid 5y ago
  Enforcing and banning something is very different, especially in China.

kova12 5y ago

Also ban activists whos solution to everything is to ban stuff. Like war on drugs didn't teach them anything

leesalminen 5y ago
Let’s just ban the banning of things. It’ll work out.
mort96 5y ago
That sounds really simplistic? There are some problems for which banning isn't a solution, but there are some problems for which banning is actually a viable solution. Should we "learn" from the war on drugs and reverse the ban on CFCs? Should we avoid banning toxic substances from food? You're gonna need a better argument than "activists who want to ban stuff should have learned from the war on drugs". You're gonna need to argue why banning cryptocurrencies is more like banning weed and not like banning CFCs.

not_really 5y ago

Ban this, ban that. Surrre. No problem.

kristofferR 5y ago

Does Bitcoin ASICs really "steal" wafer capacity from regular GPUs? Pretty different technology, I think?

henvic 5y ago

I hate cryptocurrency, but trying to ban them is just dumb. It's not going to work. Ban where? How? What are the side-effects? What about people's liberty? Cryptocurrency is stupid and depletes natural resources, but trying to use the law to ban it is only going to make it stronger.

ArkanExplorer 5y ago
The US Government bans a lot of things which are deleterious to society. Online gambling among them. The purpose is not to eliminate Cryptocurrencies, but to reduce the price of Bitcoin and other PoW coins such that mining (which is a misallocation of our civilization's energy and advanced manufactured goods) becomes significantly less rewarding. Ethereum at least has a Governing body which is moving it to PoS. Bitcoin does not. Government regulation is the only answer.
- anonyxyz 5y ago
  Maybe if there was a little less regulation in the first place, things like bitcoin wouldn't have as much appeal as they do.
  - speed_spread 5y ago
    This is old rhetoric. Sidestepping the government no longer has anything to do with Bitcoin appeal. At this point, it's purely speculation and money laundering, all subversiveness potential has been evacuated for good.
    - cocoafleck 5y ago
      I realize many people don't care about credit cards spying on them, but I do value cryptocurrencies offering alternatives. From what I understand the Apple Credit Card was somewhat of a similar attempt (Goldman Sachs isn't allowed to sell the information). I'm not saying that the benefits outweigh the costs, but it does seem that they allow for more than money laundering, and speculation.
5y ago

ajross 5y ago

My understanding is that most of the "shortage" is in older processes where capacity is shrinking as fabs offline older tooling. Customers with parts that are stored as masks (e.g. engine controllers from the 1990's) or whose design teams have lost the expertise to resynthesize the HDL (again: think auto manufacturers) have very few options when capacity in these older processes starts disappearing. Crypto hardware is generally "just logic" which means that it's (1) fabbed on fairly modern processes and (2) generally quite portable to other processes just by recompiling your Verilog and wiring it to a different manufacturer's PCIe PHY or whatever.

bshep 5y ago
I dont know much about this, but curious why you cant re-synthesize the HDL? Should the tools just be able to move it to the new process? ( Again my knowledge in this field is very limited so this may be a dumb question)

neysofu 5y ago

I have a suggestion - how about we stop fucking with each other's civil liberties just because we don't like the current situation, and rather we come up with real solutions?

swiley 5y ago

China banned it and something like 60% of the mining happens there. The whole thing was built to get around bans. Also crypto was thing that just pushed us over the edge, before that Apple was buying out (preventing any chips from being manufactured at) entire node sizes, there were serious issues with semiconductor manufacturing already.

enkid 5y ago
Enforcing and banning something is very different, especially in China.