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How do you enforce the carbon taxes? If I mine somewhere off the books in a random part of the world, my block is not distinguishable from one that paid a carbo

How do you enforce the carbon taxes? If I mine somewhere off the books in a random part of the world, my block is not distinguishable from one that paid a carbon tax on its emissions.

cwkoss 5y ago
Carbon taxes can very effectively reduce the amount of carbon-emitting energy used by bitcoin in jurisdictions it is enacted. How to coordinate a global carbon tax seems like a much bigger problem than cryptocurrency. At 0.5% of global energy use, even if crypto mining was magically eliminated in an instant, 99.5% of the problem would still remain. Also, feels weird to try to address this problem on the demand side instead of the supply side (which has much more direct influence). Machine Learning training is power intensive and location-insensitive, but it feels odd to worry about 'how to enforce carbon taxes on ML training'. "Which uses of energy are economically profitable" seems tangential to "how much carbon is produced by energy generation".
jkhdigital 5y ago
“Random parts of the world” are not cranking out the electricity required to secure the Bitcoin network. Your hypotheticals need better anchoring in reality.
- mattnewton 5y ago
  I think what happened when china banned Bitcoin is instructive to what would happen if a nation attempted to increase the energy prices for mining in it's borders - much of it moved to the next cheapest option, like coal plants in Mongolia, however being banned in China did decrease the price and use overall. Which is basically my point, you would be playing wack-a-mole with policy across the whole world trying to work on it from the supply side and energy prices, it will just keep moving to the most enviromental-legislation-lagging internet connected place. However, legislating the interfaces between your country and the network do drop the overall use and demand for mining effectively.

How do you enforce the carbon taxes? If I mine somewhere off the books in a random part of the world, my block is not distinguishable from one that paid a carbon tax on its emissions.

cwkoss 5y ago

Carbon taxes can very effectively reduce the amount of carbon-emitting energy used by bitcoin in jurisdictions it is enacted. How to coordinate a global carbon tax seems like a much bigger problem than cryptocurrency. At 0.5% of global energy use, even if crypto mining was magically eliminated in an instant, 99.5% of the problem would still remain. Also, feels weird to try to address this problem on the demand side instead of the supply side (which has much more direct influence). Machine Learning training is power intensive and location-insensitive, but it feels odd to worry about 'how to enforce carbon taxes on ML training'. "Which uses of energy are economically profitable" seems tangential to "how much carbon is produced by energy generation".

jkhdigital 5y ago

“Random parts of the world” are not cranking out the electricity required to secure the Bitcoin network. Your hypotheticals need better anchoring in reality.

mattnewton 5y ago
I think what happened when china banned Bitcoin is instructive to what would happen if a nation attempted to increase the energy prices for mining in it's borders - much of it moved to the next cheapest option, like coal plants in Mongolia, however being banned in China did decrease the price and use overall. Which is basically my point, you would be playing wack-a-mole with policy across the whole world trying to work on it from the supply side and energy prices, it will just keep moving to the most enviromental-legislation-lagging internet connected place. However, legislating the interfaces between your country and the network do drop the overall use and demand for mining effectively.