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Kosovo bans cryptocurrency mining to save electricity
- 1cvmask 5y agoChina and Iran did the same. Is there a kist of countries that have done this?
- formerly_proven 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country_or_territory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_bitcoin_by_country...
- capableweb 5y agoWorth mentioning since I misread the actual title of that article: it goes through the legality of Bitcoin itself (not just mining, or other PoW cryptocurrencies). Only a few entries mention PoW mining itself.
- stavros 5y agoSounds like it makes sense in their case, though in the Balkans "banned" means "keep doing it, just don't tell quite as many people".
- vasac 5y agoIt's more like: we want our share of the pie.
- stavros 5y agoAh, maybe, it depends on the country. In Greece you'd get a fine if caught, but that's a huge if. You probably wouldn't be able to bribe your way out of it unless you were a huge company, as corruption is somewhat localized to higher levels.
- dilyevsky 5y agoKazakhstan government is facing incredible amount of protest now due to rising fuel prices. Makes me wonder how much of that is due to their cryptofarms putting upward pressure on energy prices across the board… Some people got the memo it seems
- Victerius 5y agoIran is facing similar power shortages made worse by crypto miners. Proof of work cryptocurrencies have got to be the worst invention in a decade.
- WanderPanda 5y agoThe crypto miners are just a symptom resulting from government in the electricity markets
- zwirbl 5y agoAm I missing the sarcasm here?
- mytailorisrich 5y agoIn Iran, gasoline and electricity are sold for next to nothing (electricity might even be free for businesses, not sure). This sort of market distortion has real effects. Obviously if electricity is very cheap to essentially free it makes crypto-mining very attractive (on top of the attractiveness of a 'currency' outside of the banking system in a country under international sanctions) and shortages worse.
- londons_explore 5y ago> Coin mining has been on the rise in northern Kosovo, mostly populated by Serbs who do not recognise the state of Kosovo and refuse to pay electricity. Think about that for a moment... There are a large number of people who just refuse to pay for electricity, and yet it is still delivered to them... That is the real problem.
- 0x_rs 5y agoYou cannot simply stop providing electricity to people that don't pay the bill. It's a long process that takes time and sometimes providers don't even bother, because of the human rights. That's how it is in my European country and I suppose it is similar there too.
- kolinko 5y agoIn Poland you just get cut off after a few months of nonpayments. I know because I forgot to pay a few times. I think we have social programs for people who can't pay for electricity. Or at least I hope so...
- ptsneves 5y agoThe same in Portugal,a very socialistic country. You will likely get an extra fee for reconnection even. Truth be told neither in Poland nor Portugal have i ever had power going out due to demand and the grid is generally reliable for years.
- yardie 5y agoWhat if you cut it off if they reach a quota? Like my bill is 900kW/mo for a family of 3 with climatisation in the southern US. I think this is a reasonable amount. Then, you can still mine crypto but know you can't go balls to the wall.
- ermir 5y agoThere is a quota in Kosovo, but there’s a ton of small time miners that are distributed all around and none reach the quota individually but overall they affect the electric situation of the whole country.
- nathias 5y agoif they only knew it's really good for heating ...
- thehappypm 5y agoIt’s not though. Per dollar it’s way worse than any modern heat source.
- dabeeeenster 5y agoI am 100% against proof of work, but I don't think your statement is quite true. If you mine Ethereum on a modern Nvidia GPU you can easily offset your electricity costs.
- temptemptemp111 5y ago
- nathias 5y agoHow? If you're mining is profitable you're getting paid to be heated.
- zwirbl 5y agountil at some point it isn't, leaving you with a really expensive resistive heater
- nathias 5y agoand a truck of cash
- shagie 5y agoThere's a company that has that idea - Heatbit. https://heatbit.com https://heatbit.com Feel free to play with the numbers. The numbers that I come up with for 6 months (not going to run the heater in the summer) put an earnings of $285 with a cost of electricity of $850 to do it. And that's before the cost of the device which is a $1000 item (compare with a $60 one that heats more efficiently). That isn't exactly a truck load of cash.
- DarylZero 5y ago
- throwmeaway1112 5y agoAllegedly, there are tons of money from the North Kosovo/South Serbia generated from crypto flowing into the investments in Belgrade. For example, here's the article of the policeman that was acquitted for not responding to the calls in the nights when the government organised tearing down barracks by using the illegal forces. This policeman then had his second appartment building (not House) washed and entered in the system. https://www.krik.rs/n1-policajac-priznao-krivicu-u-slucaju-savamala-legalizovana-mu-zgrada/ https://www.krik.rs/n1-policajac-priznao-krivicu-u-slucaju-s... This is doing a terrible damage to the society. It's tearing it apart to two layers, one extremely rich and openly criminal, and the other poor one. It's like if I'm watching Narcos. Crypto is not an issue, the corrupted government is. It would be the same if they got their money from drugs or weapons.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- savant_penguin 5y agoThey should also audit every datacenter to make sure that only pre approved loads are being run. The only allowed programming languages should be the energy efficient ones A government official shall follow you to the shower to make sure your hot bath is not consuming too much energy for too long Only serious applications are permitted. Websites that mostly involve jokes are a waste of energy. Google searches that are not strictly necessary should be dropped (those Google datacenters consume to much!). Every ounce of energy should be saved I think this is the endgame for the government having the power to decide what should and should not spend energy. (With some stretches for comedic effect)
- zpeti 5y agoIronically if you let the market do it's thing, this is basically the end result too, but it's not some central authority telling you what to do, but you can decide what you want to waste your money on. A hot bath tonight or running that C compiler for an hour?
- 999900000999 5y agoWell said. One could also argue for the banning of video games using the same logic. A relaxing drive to the beach, your wasting energy! A better solution would be to tax Crypto earnings at a higher rate, and use the tax revenue to build some green energy. I'd imagine Kosovo could become a low cost tech hub , but if you freak out techy expats with strange laws...
- zwirbl 5y agoIsn't it in the governments interest to have stable and affordable electricity for the population? Comparing crypto mining to useless websites is dishonest at best, it seems intentionally misleading
- melling 5y ago…or we could simply stop burning coal to generate electricity. We are using record amounts globally. Almost 40 years ago Carl Sagan warned us about increasing coal usage by other countries https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI He starts discussing other countries around 14:30 and mentions China using increasing amounts of coal around 15m
- ermir 5y agoJust as an interesting fact, the electricity price is 7 cents per kwh during the day and 3 cents during the night, these prices make GPU mining very profitable. In the North where the govt. is weak the electricity is simply not paid, this has allowed a ton of small and big mining operations to pop up, the big ones are backed by the local gangs.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoEven more reason to crack down hard on crypto miners.
- conanbatt 5y agoYou think mafias and thugs are reasons to crack down on miners?
- toomuchtodo 5y agoI think all of the negative externalities are reason enough to crack down on miners (gangs, mafia, ponzis, environmental concerns to name a few). Pick any one that makes you most comfortable. If you can still “create value” as a miner in a country that welcomes you, more power (hah) to you.
- Scarblac 5y agoGenerally speaking, the miners are the mafias and thugs.
- superkuh 5y ago
- mraudiobook_com 5y ago
- vhgyu75e6u 5y agoSo you are arguing that all the energy we waste to solve sudokus is small compared to the flights that some bankers do and the oil required to move the armored vehicles with money? Really? Cryptobros are delusional.
- verytrivial 5y agoGood.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- temp-dude-87844 5y agoIn parts of the world where the cost of electricity is low but reliable internet connectivity is available, cryptocurrency mining is widespread among those who can procure the hardware. For these operators, it's a low-risk way to generate profit and obtain foreign currency, and typically presents a far better opportunity than most other legal or illegal employment that can be had in the area. This profiteering situation tends to crop up in places where the cost of electricity is "artificially" low, e.g. the government subsidizes it because of national security, humanitarian reasons, or to promote economic development, or places that cannot meaningfully participate in international bulk electricity export (e.g. distance, politics). These places formed functional market islands until recently, so their pricing was not relevant in the global context. With cryptocurrency mining, the miners are engaging in a global arbitrage on energy prices. While the environmental costs are already externalized by the producer of the electricity, the electricity producers made those decisions before they foresaw that individual citizen operators could consume large amounts of electricity, and scale their consumption higher with fewer constraints than industrial consumers can. Solutions are possible, but challenging to implement and enforce. If you switch to progressive pricing, you need better meters, and determined miners will steal or convince people to resell. If you want to regulate mining, you will need enforcement and tackle corruption. If you want to "let the market fix it", poor people won't be able to afford electricity. Within Kosovo, the Serbian community controls the hydroelectric plant, and the Kosovan community controls the two lignite plants. This adds an extra complication for policymakers.
- watt 5y agoThis is all true if the country thinks allowing folks to take advantage of this "arbitrage" would be useful (for some definition of "useful"). And on other hand I can very well see how government(s) can take the other approach and just do some heavy-handed policing.
- pjc50 5y agoIt's basically distributed neoliberalism: you don't have to wait for a United Fruit Company to turn up and wreck your country's economy for profit, anyone can do it now!
- 5y ago
- EGreg 5y agoMy predictions are starting to come true: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26220992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26220992
- HWR_14 5y agoGold has been a store of value for millennia. Tulips were a store of value for just over a decade. What makes you so confident Bitcoin is the new gold and not the new tulips?
- EGreg 5y agoAs long as its price goes up, it will be more and more lucrative to mine (because rewards in Bitcoin terms will be larger).
- HWR_14 5y agoThat's only answering the question of "will it technically implode". It has nothing to do with why you think bitcoin will continue to be a store of value like gold as opposed to suddenly stopping being a store of value like tulips.
- EGreg 5y agoIt is just about the price of bitcoin. Which is affected by several factors including adoption — as a store of value.
- verytrivial 5y agoProof of waste cryto currencies are a malignancy on society. The people involved (even indirectly) are going to find themselves viewed and treated very similarly to other malign forces as time goes on regardless of how justified and practical they think they're being right now. In my mind they're right besides smallpox blanket givers. It's just business!
- stfp 5y agoThe smallpox blanket givers are maligned now but they and their people (~europeans) did grab and are still holding 97% of the territory they set out to conquer. History is written by the victors, and it's questionable whether this outcome is actually beneficial for mankind / the planet. On the surface it is - look at all the tech! On the other hand the tech actually results in an ever growing rate of destruction (of native nature and culture, aka. whatever was there before), and that trend was visible from day one. In other words, bitcoin & co. aren't the first toxic, destructive get-rich-quick schemes, and we as a society have shown time and again we're unable to really resist most of them.
- obviousreason 5y ago
- JAlexoid 5y agoDo they really know how bad they are? Because this common caricature of "smallpox blanket" is not based in verifiable historical fact. There's no clear evidence that Europeans were literally weaponizing smallpox to wipe out most of native American populations. The understanding of how infection spread happened a good 200 years later, than depopulation.
- jcranmer 5y agoThere is one documented case of someone suggesting distributing smallpox blankets. Exactly one; it's not entirely clear if it was carried out--furthermore, given that there was already a smallpox epidemic going around in the nearby Native American villages at the time, it likely would have done diddly squat. Incidentally, if you want a good example of horrors meted out, try the residential school system, which does seem to be far less well-known among the lay public. Maybe "we're trying to civilize them!" turning out to involve horrific amounts of abuse (and, yes, death) is too much to countenance?
- gabkins 5y agoBut is this the reason why the prices are currently going on a downtrend?
- nashashmi 5y agoOnly a solar powered kind of crypto would promote green energy. But that kind crypto is not technically possible.
- maupin 5y agoThe entire Nano network can run on a single wind turbine. It also has no mining. It uses delegated proof of stake as a consensus method. It's also very fast. It works like people who have never used Bitcoin think Bitcoin works.
- politician 5y agoDPoS fails the $5 wrench test (xkcd 538): a motivated attacker can doxx and take control of the 21-100 witnesses responsible for authenticating transactions, resulting in a compromised network.
- maupin 5y agoSure, but coin holders could just select another delegate. What cryptocurrency wouldn't fail that test? I could buy ~10 wrenches and cripple the Bitcoin network if I take control of the major mining pools.
- politician 5y agoMonero.
- AlexandrB 5y agoBitcoin is like if someone made a real version of "Universal Paperclips"[1]. We now have a segment of the economy optimizing for creating cryptocurrency tokens with little-to-no use value but huge trade value. We already see the impacts on electricity capacity and some luxury goods (video cards). As these operations become more and more sophisticated, it's not inconceivable that they will eventually put price pressure on raw materials as well. Absolutely crazy. [1] https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html
- ithkuil 5y agoMining gold was a similar disaster for the human and environmental cost
- svara 5y agoMaybe so, but at least mining is actually necessary to get gold out of the ground. Whereas running a distributed database and gambling can both be had for much less.
- user-the-name 5y agoAll of bitcoin could be run on a home PC from 2005. It can do about three transactions a second. And it is burning 0.5% of the electricity of the entire planet to do so. This is basically a crime against humanity at this point.
- knowfilter 5y agoBitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency
- DonHopkins 5y agoGenocide is not the only crime against humanity, yet it is still illegal. Go figure.
- im3w1l 5y agoPersonally I think cryptocurrency is being scapegoated a little bit. It is understandable that they are taking action. Mining's electricity consumption is no longer negligible, and the optics of mining during a shortage are of course terrible. But, I don't expect the ban to accomplish much. The causes of the shortage is environmentalists making huge promises about renewables that didn't pan out. "Don't build nuclear, we have windmills!" It didn't work and now we are paying for it. Things will get better in spring, but I shouldn't be surprised if winter shortages become a regularity.
- filed 5y agoWhat will bitcoiners do when the inevitable happens- inflation and green energy polices raise the price of electricity... I guess they can pick up and move somewhere if it gets banned. In the meantime they can partner with green energy, raising electricity prices or cost to mine bitcoin which helps push up the price of bitcoin. All while pretending to be green- encouraging wind expansion and hoping for blackouts which they can also profit from - wild swings in prices makes them also enron energy traders. This will encourage more POW coins... lets launch even more tokens with POW.
- nybble41 5y ago> raising electricity prices or cost to mine bitcoin which helps push up the price of bitcoin The price of bitcoin is not driven by electricity prices, or more generally by the cost of mining. Bitcoin supply works at a fixed rate: one new block of 6.25 BTC is mined (on average) every ten minutes. Every four years the BTC reward per block is cut in half. More mining effort (higher hash rate) just raises the difficulty threshold so that the interval remains 10 minutes per block. Lower mining effort, of course, has the opposite effect. Higher mining costs would drive marginal miners out of business and lower the hash rate but otherwise have no impact on the supply of new bitcoins or the ability to process transactions.
- nikolay 5y agoIt's about time to do this everywhere! In Bulgaria, for example, most of the mining is with stolen electricity! Craptocurrencies are nothing but fuel for crime and scams!