> If that's the case, who's the arbiter of what's "too much" power for a use case? I see a lot of people replying with a slippery slope argument of this nature

> If that's the case, who's the arbiter of what's "too much" power for a use case? I see a lot of people replying with a slippery slope argument of this nature, which makes me think I should explain my argument better. I'm not arguing that burning electricity alone is the problem. I'm arguing that burning electricity for the direct purpose of making a financial product is a problem for society, when 1) the financial product explicitly incentivizes burning up as much as you can to make more money and/or 2) burning up that energy can be alleviated by other technical solutions. I'm not arguing that mining should be illegal. I'm saying the 'sale' of the results of that mining should be illegal. Using or making incandescent lightbulbs is not illegal, but the sale of them is banned or restricted in large portions of the world [1]. Less harmful alternatives exist, so sale is disincentivized, the world moves on. This is not the government deciding how you spend energy resources. You can continue to mine all you want. But you shouldn't be rewarded for that. One thing I should point out is that I recognize that an alternative solution for these incentives is to make electricity always so expensive that it costs more money in electricity spend to mine crypto than you can make money of it. Make electricity price depend on crypto price. Needless to say I don't see that working out :) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_light_bulbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_ligh...