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Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
- VMG 5y agoLogical next step: mandatory spyware to monitor what kind of software you are running on your devices. We don't want you using your energy for unapproved computations!
- malermeister 5y agoI hope this gets some traction in other places too. I actually have to give China credit for making the right moves there, given our climate disaster, crypto is a doomsday cult as long as proof-of-work is a thing.
- aero-glide2 5y agoDoomsday cult means something else.
- ashtonkem 5y agoCrypto mining, specifically. Title needs to be updated.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Jensson 5y agoYeah, Sweden has an extensive ore mining sector. I expected to learn about the energy efficiency of different mining techniques, would be really interesting.
- capableweb 5y agoExtra specifically: Proof of Work cryptocurrency mining. > Our conclusion is that policy measures are required to address the harms caused by the proof of work mining method. It is important that both Sweden and the EU can use our renewable energy where it provides the greatest benefit for society as a whole.
- Jensson 5y agoEnergy-intensive crypto mining is accurate enough, proof of stake isn't energy intensive.
- capableweb 5y agoJudging by the comments here in this submission and overall on HN, not everyone is aware that different cryptocurrencies have different strategies for consensus. For example, I've seen calls to action from a lot of HNers to ban all cryptocurrencies because they are destroying the environment, missing completely that PoS even exists and has nowhere near the impact on energy usage as PoW.
- boppo1 5y agoIs ETH PoS yet?
- capableweb 5y agoKinda. There are currently two chains that can be called "Ethereum" right now, commonly known as Eth 1 and Eth 2, and funds have started moving to Eth 2 via staking (currently the Eth 2 contract running on Eth 1 is the largest holder of Ethers on the Eth 1 network). You can use Eth 2 already, but can't transfer funds back to Eth 1 yet and the chains haven't been "merged" yet.
- Ekaros 5y agoDidn't even consider it to be crypto, but traditional mining. Where there probably are some inefficient techniques and processes.
- occz 5y agoAnd they are arguably right. Proof-of-work is the technical equivalent of rolling coal, and it's time to cut out the nonsense. We have an ongoing climate disaster to deal with.
- seu 5y ago"If we were to allow extensive mining of crypto-assets in Sweden, there is a risk that the renewable energy available to us will be insufficient to cover the required climate transition that we need to make. This energy is urgently required for the development of fossil-free steel, large-scale battery manufacturing and the electrification of our transport sector. Based on estimates from Cambridge University, it is currently possible to drive a mid-size electric car 1.8 million kilometres using the same energy it takes to mine one single bitcoin. This is the equivalent of forty-four laps around the globe. 900 bitcoins are mined every day. This is not a reasonable use of our renewable energy." Could not be clearer: either you allow Bitcoin, benefitting only a few miners and users, or you let society as a whole transition to a more sustainable future.
- vadfa 5y agoNuclear is clean and sustainable and can allow people to mine bitcoin and even heat their homes, which seems to be a problem currently in some regions of Europe.
- thg 5y agoNuclear is also a dead technology you can't have a rational discussion about, sadly. Much the same as GMOs.
- vadfa 5y agoThe elites are working hard on impoverishing the average citizen as much as possible, and a very reliable way is to increase the price of power and food in the name of "ecology".
- JustinVx 5y agoNuclear doesn’t produce any greenhouse gasses, but with the radioactive waste it generates it of course isn’t really clean. It’s also expensive and takes decades to build.
- DeusExMachina 5y ago
- robbie-c 5y agoGood for them. The situation we’re in at the moment would be rejected as a sci-fi plot. We’re at a critical point in human history that will largely be defined by whether we as a species can save the environment, but a section of society are obsessed with speculating on a digital currency that corresponds to how much carbon you’ve released into the atmosphere for no reason other than to prove you own it.
- rseed42 5y agoIt is funny how survival mode unleashes humanity's ingenuity. In the end the environment problem will be solved, but only after a great deal of suffering (and likely death) caused by the current irrational situation. Natural selection has a way of restoring rational thinking.
- jakozaur 5y agoProof of work for mining should pay hefty carbon tax. Various other industry already pay that tax, why not mining crypto? Crypto fans make various claims, so lets check that. E.g. Any new etherum block carbon footprint would be verified through oracle and smart contracts. Based on that it will be subject to tax that will go to carbon-capture companies. With that incentive, crypto could innovate to better methods and be buyer of last resort of clean energy. Crypto can adapt quickly, climate can’t. We can not afford new carbon intensive industries.
- de6u99er 5y agoI totally agree!
- VMG 5y agoThis is nonsensical. If you want to tax carbon, tax it regardless what it is used for. What you are describing penalizes somebody who uses clean energy for mining and ignores somebody who uses coal power for running his bot farm.
- skohan 5y agoUsing clean energy for mining still increases the total demand for electricity which is going to result in more dirty energy production no matter what.
- FDSGSG 5y agoUsing clean energy for anything still increases the total demand for electricity which is going to result in more dirty energy production no matter what.
- skohan 5y agoYeah fine, but then it's still completely consistent that if your goal is to decrease overall energy consumption, you would find ways to curtail energy intensive activities which provide little social value.
- roenxi 5y agoThe basic idea of the economy is people can earn the right to energy, and then direct it to a goal of their choosing. The government making a value judgement about what type of commercial activity is worthwhile is extremely risky. Countries with innovative financial and credit systems have historically steamrolled those that don't have such innovations. We still don't understand the nature of crypto.
- thewakalix 5y agoI think externalities should be priced into the cost of resources (e.g. with a Pigouvian tax), but otherwise I entirely agree. Edit: I suppose, if you want to subsidize all uses of electricity except for cryptocurrency (and a few other areas of your choice), you could simplify this process by only applying the externality tax to miners (etc). But this should be limited to the externality, not arbitrarily high.
- WanderPanda 5y agoBut in this case the negative externalities do not come from the mining but from the energy generation. So that is the level where the externalities should be priced in.
- skohan 5y agoIn the current environment, you can't separate energy usage from energy generation in terms of externalities. Electrical power is something like a fungible asset, so even if you are using 100% green power (which doesn't really exist), you're still increasing demand for electricity overall, which will result in more carbon-intensive power generation in general. In other words, decreasing power consumption is as important if not more important than increasing clean energy as a share of production.
- tshaddox 5y agoElectrical power is only fungible in that sense if significant negative externalities exist which allow units of energy to be priced similarly when their sources vary significantly in total (including societal) costs. If societal costs are internalized (i.e. externalities are eliminated) then fungibility would surely disappear, because a unit of energy produced from coal would surely be more expensive than a unit of energy produced from solar.
- cblconfederate 5y agoThankfully, crypto mining is adversarial so even if it is cornered into remote islands powered by the sun or nuclear powered siberian mines , it will still work. I understand that "Climate crisis" is becoming the new "Children and Terrorists" wrapping for the next decades' wave of state oppression, but overall this ban may not be a bad idea for sweden and most of the developed world. Westerners being monetarily dependent on poor and otherwise forgotten countries will be a breath of fresh air.
- boppo1 5y ago> it will still work. Technically, sure. But without sufficient network capacity, there won't be much demand for it.
- cblconfederate 5y ago> without sufficient network capacity like, today?
- boppo1 5y agoSort of, but exponentially worse.
- zxcb1 5y agoIt may be better to tax activities considered harmful for society, and subsidize those considered beneficial. For example, Microsoft, Facebook and Google data centers are deemed appropriate use of renewable energy in Sweden and are thus subsidized. However, will there be sufficient renewable energy available for Swedish citizens in the long run, with continued data center build outs?
- moogly 5y agoThe bigger "problem" for Sweden's power production is the modernized "fossil-free" steel production which will require (at least) a 50% total capacity increase over the coming decade or so. Data centers are a drop in the ocean in comparison.
- BoardsOfCanada 5y agoThe background is this: The Swedish government (of which the green party is part) has closed down several nuclear reactors and there is a ban on building more hydro electric dams. Before Sweden had about 50% hydro + 50% nuclear. Now electricity prices are rising a lot, especially on days when there is little wind (which generally is the case on extremely cold winter days), and emergency power plants using fossil fuels are running a lot more than before. So now they are going to blame something else, just like any other politicians in any other country would.
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago>So now they are going to blame something else, just like any other politicians in any other country would. but somehow they decided to blame crypto-mining instead of excessive house heating and refusal to wear sweaters indoors. funny that.
- CryptoPunk 5y agoPeople in the developed world consume massive amounts of energy on non-essentials. Energy consumptions is not the problem. In fact, it's strongly correlated with quality of life. The problem is polluting sources of energy. Singling out one non-essential for its use of energy and banning it, while leaving all others legal, makes no sense. Doing so is a case of scapegoating one small facet of a larger phenomenon, instead of addressing the root problem.
- amelius 5y agoEither way, crypto currencies become impossible.
- guerrilla 5y agoYour comment on hydro isn't relevant since hydro output hasn't actually changed[1], meanwhile wind production has overall replaced nuclear. Total production has increased slightly while total domestic consumption has decreased slightly. So basically it comes down to increased exports and variability of wind. 1. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/Electricity_production_in_Sweden.svg/1280px-Electricity_production_in_Sweden.svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/El...
- Ekaros 5y agoAs person living in country with ties to Scandinavian grid. I see this as very positive. I could argue that current market price situation could even be worse if crypto miners were allowed to externalize their energy cost to rest of society. That is by applying high demand the hydro would have less stored capacity available. Which kinda is currently part of the price problem. They lower the stored capacity and pay cheap price for that which results later the general population and other industry having to pay much higher cost of electricity, while they probably stop buying it, thus not taking their fair share of costs.
- vadfa 5y agoThey are not externalising their cost to the rest of society. They are paying the exact cost of the energy they spend just like the rest of people.
- gefhfff 5y agoWhich is externalizing the cost to the rest of society as there is either no or a too small carbon tax while the estimated cost on society varies between 700 Euros [0] and 100.000$ [1] [0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/umwelt-wirtschaft/gesellschaftliche-kosten-von-umweltbelastungen#klimakosten-von-treibhausgas-emissionen https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/umwelt-wirtschaft/gesel... [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02785-4 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-020-02785-4
- vadfa 5y agoIf the estimated cost on society "varies between 700 Euros [0] and 100.000$ [1]" then those scientists should be back to the drawing board because those two numbers can't make sense at the same time. Also I don't see why only a small part of society should be paying for that "carbon tax" - all citizens should pay an amount corresponding to their energy spending and then we are back to miners not externalising anything.
- gefhfff 5y ago
- baby 5y agoI predict that there will be a bigger and bigger wave of bad press about proof of work. I also predict that cryptocurrencies as a whole will suffer from that due to the inability of the medias to understand that Bitcoin is not representative of all blockchain technologies. It’s a shame because today most modern cryptocurrencies are not based on proof of work.
- pkz 5y agoThis is an important fact. A lot of people think crypto currency==bitcoin. It would be a lot easier to have meaningful discussions on the impact on society if more effort was spent on helping people understand the different types. Maybe Bitcoin will fade away eventually and some other type of currency will be the monetary lingua franca?
- wruza 5y agoA lot of people think crypto currency==bitcoin Because economically that’s true. There is no crypto (even ETH) which could stay at its price when BTC goes up and down by a magnitude. Of course they are correlated, like INTC may correlate with APPL when markets go crazy, but this link is too rigid for all crypto under bitcoin even when it’s relatively quiet. I don’t understand an exact reason behind this, but I believe it’s related to how crypto exchanges work internally.
- baby 5y agoHave you heard of stablecoins?
- wruza 5y agoYes, but I don’t trust these contracts in a long term. I’d say neither should you, but that is a personal choice. The biggest (afaik) of these ETH contract-based coins, USDT, is owned by a single company, which is partially backing it by their BTC and it maintains a list of blocked tokens, which is by design. Of course small money is relatively safe, but for large capitals it’s just a joke. Any smart contract with a centralized oracle entity has all of the downsides of centralized money. These are much more convenient as a medium to crypto, but that’s it.
- louloulou 5y agoAh, the electricity police strike again. You're allowed to use the electricity you paid for for some computations, but not for others. Seems logical and enforceable.
- speedgoose 5y agoWell, yes.
- HamburgerEmoji 5y agoPlease furnish a comprehensive list of your uses of electricity. We'd like to go through it and see which of them are wasteful. We'll let you know which ones you won't be allowed to do anymore.
- speedgoose 5y agoSometimes I pre-heat my electric car before removing the ice on the windshield because I'm a bit lazy and a prefer to wait until the ice has melted. I hope it's fine. Otherwise I don't think I have a very wasteful usage of electricity.
- HamburgerEmoji 5y ago> Otherwise I don't think I have a very wasteful usage of electricity. Well, of course you don't think it's wasteful. But that's irrelevant. We're talking about putting the power to decide what's "wasteful" in somebody else's hands, maybe some appointed judges somewhere in the government. It doesn't seem like you want to put that power in my hands, though. Still waiting for that list. I'm ready to dictate which of your activities are worthy of electricity.
- newaccount74 5y agoSome governments even force you to put insulation on your home or they won't give you a permit to build it! And then they only let you install an energy efficient furnace! And evil EU even forced appliance manufacturers to stop selling inefficient washing machines! The EU has a long history of regulating energy waste, and outlawing crypto is a logical next step.
- kaffeeringe 5y agoDo it!
- ur-whale 5y agoFor a somewhat decent counter-argument to this pov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-7dMVcVWgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-7dMVcVWgc
- readflaggedcomm 5y agoSame argument as against network neutrality. The provenance (or "color") of energy use, the "social benefit" of it, somehow becomes criteria for discrimination of utilities and human rights.
- bigmoneyguy 5y agoThis setup is straight out of manufacturing consent.
- boppo1 5y agoCan you expand on this for me? I'm only loosely familiar.
- ur-whale 5y agoEnergy consumption is not an environmental problem (whatever you use said energy for, be it Bitcoin mining, heating your home or powering your massage chair), and all policies that try to limit energy consumption are basically building on quicksand and doomed to fail: the world has and will continue to consume increasing amounts of energy by capita. And anyone who's being an activist towards reducing energy consumption is completely deluded: energy consumption is strongly correlated with technical progress and civilization progress. Good luck putting an end to that short of reverting to the stone age. Energy production is what needs to be fixed, specifically energy production that results in environmental damage, e.g.fossil fuel. For reference, this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OpM_zKGE4o claims that a million square km of the Sahara desert receives enough energy from the sun to power the entire human civilization needs in 2020. Solve the technical problems associated with solar energy production and you'll solve global warming. Infinite clean solar energy lets you filter CO2 out of the atmosphere back into carbon using technology, something plants have been doing to aeons.
- boppo1 5y agoPerhaps leaders have found the problem of scaling energy production intractable. Perhaps partial stone-age reversion is an acceptable solution. I'm seeing lots and lots of support building for efforts to reduce meat consumption.
- bouncycastle 5y agoCrypto mining through PoW is already on the way out anyway, so no need to ban it. The market will shift to PoS once Bitcoin loses the top spot.
- timwaagh 5y agoAlthough I'm pretty conservative regarding climate change, it's a real problem that needs adressing so the Swedish government has a legitimate reason to intervene. Maybe we can indeed travel more if we ban crypto. But more importantly I think crypto is the most wasteful, pointless and potentially dangerous development that happened this century and I fully appreciate any government wanting to ban it for literally any reason.
- louloulou 5y ago> most wasteful, pointless and potentially dangerous development that happened this century hypersonic nuclear missiles... nah, it's definitely this open source software for timestamping database changes.
- _yo2v 5y agoBallistic missiles are already hypersonic. Nuclear submarines can already fire without exposing themselves. What's the difference?
- IHLayman 5y agoActually most of them aren’t, but instead they are only supersonic… Making hypersonic missiles (speeds over Mach 5) is a hard problem due to changes in airflow at that speed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_speed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypersonic_speed
- ur-whale 5y ago> But more importantly I think crypto is the most wasteful, pointless and potentially dangerous development that happened this century How did you manage to miss the atomic bomb?
- caskstrength 5y ago> How did you manage to miss the atomic bomb? I'm quite sure atomic bomb and cryptocurrencies were invented in different centuries (assuming original Satoshi's Bitcoin paper as origin of current crypto)
- oytis 5y agoNice, what other software I'm not allowed to run on my machine? Can I play high end games? Make scientific computations? Experiment with machine learning?
- GaylordTuring 5y agoA totally valid point. It seems like the proposed ban is based on the fact that the computations costs a lot of energy, are “wasteful”, and only makes the miner in question happy. I don’t see how this differs from playing high-end computer games. Surely, you could argue that kids in the 70’s, only having access to board games, could get just as much enjoyment out of these as kids today get out of playing CoD, with the added benefit that you have to meet other people in person and that you’re not getting addicted to loot boxes. So, should we follow China in banning computer games?
- junon 5y agoThis is purposefully reductio ad absurdum.
- oytis 5y agoReductio ad absurdum is a perfectly valid rhetorical device, it is even used in mathematical proofs. What I want to say is that regulating what kind of computations I can run on my machine is pretty bad. It would make more sense to regulate maximum power consumption of computers like it is done with lightbulbs
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ur-whale 5y ago> This is purposefully reductio ad absurdum. It's not, he's making a valid point. To put it in a maybe a more arguable way: where do you draw the line at a government deciding what you can and can't run on your computer?
- Jensson 5y ago
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoJust force miners to use byproduct heat for heating. It's pretty cold in winters there.
- tinco 5y agoThe more crypto mining is banned, the better it is for Bitcoin. The more it is banned, less money is spent on mining which means transactions are cheaper and less CO2 is emitted per transaction.
- cynusx 5y agoBetter to just to slap a carbon tax on cryptocurrencies. The incentives are too big for miners but their end-users are just expecting it will go up in value forever.
- casi18 5y agomeanwhile crypto people, in less than a month, have coordinated around klima and bought 10 million tonnes of carbon offsets, about 2.5% of the entire worlds voluntary climate offset supplies. https://twitter.com/Dionysus_Klima https://twitter.com/Dionysus_Klima
- caskstrength 5y agoI think instituting a significant tax and using it to speed up transition to green energy is better approach, but enforcing would be problematic.
- jamesrr39 5y agoHard to disagree, the amount of energy and CO2 emissions are staggering especially considering how little you can actually do with the end product. Their "We therefore call for" section seems reasonable as well. I like that the article is concise, clear, and that the authors understand the difference between proof of work and other mining methods. Interesting that they call it crypto-assets and never refer to it as a crypto-currency (not disagreeing; you can't use it to buy very much in Sweden, just thought it was an interesting observation).
- sktrdie 5y agoDoes anybody have any real scientific insight into the idea that PoW based Cryptocurrencies can harness energy from far away places that is already being wasted? We currently need to send most of traditional energy to our households, cars, manufacturing facilities etc. This cost of transportation to me is the key difference. PoW doesn't need this. Imagine putting some mining rigs in orbit near the sun and harnessing the already abundant solar energy. All you need to send back to earth is a few bytes. I know this is an utopian future but overall the idea of a people's currency is quite important for society, not just for speculation. Most of us I assume are tech people living privileged lives developing software for super rich companies in places with stable currencies and governments. We should realize this is not the case for many people - especially in societies where people cannot trust their countries' government or currency.
- bitcoinmonger2 5y agoGood to see a goverment take a stance against individuals who choose to use the SHA256 algorithm without permission. I hope to see more goverments prevent individuals from performing hash computations on their computers. The hash function is a climate disaster.