7 ms·

Senate Bill S6486D Establishes a moratorium on cryptocurrency mining

52 points by ianai 4y ago

xiphias2 4y ago
,, Establishes a moratorium on cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions’’ Proof of work is not used for validation of transactions at all. It is used for ordering transactions / solving the double spending problem. The people creating this law clearly don’t understand the problem space and what the algorithm solves.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  You're totally missing the point and pointlessly nit picking at irrelevant technicalities in the language, according to your own biased interpretation. People burning massive amounts coal and gas for fraudulent get-rich-quick pyramid schemes, rug pulls, pump-and-dump schemes, money laundering, fraud, ransomeware, ugly ape jpegs, insider trading, getting around international sanctions in response to unprovoked military attacks and war crimes against humanity, and other criminal enterprises clearly don't understand (or care about) the problem space of climate change, and what lowering carbon emission and regulating crime and fraud solve.
  - carom 4y ago
    Technicalities of the language matter with respect to laws. To the second point, that sounds like a failure of the government to provide clean energy. In Los Angeles, we get 16% of our energy from coal and 28% from natural gas. I do not blame Bitcoin miners for this. It is a failure of the government to meet the energy needs of its people with clean sources. Write legislation that mandates building new nuclear power plants or wind farms off the coast.
    - DonHopkins 4y ago
      Not the subjective definitions and technicalities he's nit-picking about. Words have many different meanings in different contexts, and he's cherry picking one particular interpretation that's completely irrelevant and out of context. And governments can do multiple things at once to solve problems. The fact that they could build more nuclear power plants and wind farms doesn't mean they shouldn't also regulate burning coal to defraud people, commit crimes, and get around banking regulation and international sanctions.
    - spinchange 4y ago
      Government cannot create a bottomless supply of renewable energy by pen stroke. Proof of work mining is taking exponentially more resources out of the universe that anything facilitated by it is giving back to the economy or anything. It's terrible trade-off for humanity. This is precisely what mandates are for to stop harmful action not to wish into existence some magical thinking solution so that people can do bad things with negative consequences forever
    - doctor_eval 4y ago
      That’s crazy. Why should a government spend taxpayer money to build energy supplies to support the “energy needs” of crypto scams? Its a terrible idea, if for no other reason than that a vanishingly small percentage of the population would benefit.
      - saalweachter 4y ago
        This is also one of the ways a government attempts to promote clean energy: by banning, in part or in whole, a source of dirty energy, people can either do without... or switch to a clean-energy source. Instead of electric vehicle tax credits, which cost the government in question an increasing amount of money as more people use them, you could apply a similar force with an ICE tax on purchasing new ICE vehicles, which raises a decreasing amount of revenue as people stop buying ICEs in response.
    - labster 4y ago
      While there is a failure to provide clean energy, increasing demand makes it harder to supply energy to everyone. If the rich keep on pushing demand by using energy on speculative financial products, we can’t make up the supply in time to prevent the worst of climate change. Bitcoin is basically class warfare, except because of climate and air pollution in general, it’s lethal class warfare. I’m not saying to stop all innovation, but crypto is 5+ orders of magnitude more energy inefficient, and it’s killer apps so far have been asset speculation, untaxed remittances, and cyber crime. Governments have no interest in those innovations at all.
  - asah 4y ago
    Hey don, long time! So the thing with crypto: yeah sure there's bad crap on the margins, but the core of crypto is a completely new, faster and more flexible way to handle money, value, ownership and control. I liken it to "programmable money" but even that's too simplistic. With programmable real estate, the line between rental and ownership can blur, softening the risk and lability for owners, and creating more responsibility and upside for renters. A Bored Ape is a club membership and flexible ownership in a rapidly expanding brand that earns licensing fees: the folks at Disney are paying close attention. A $1+mm apartment is worth $1mm because people say it is and because zoning limits supply, not because the sum of the wood and metal adds up to $1mm. Today, we spend enormous time/energy/etc on nonsense that should be one line of code, from incorporating companies to paying taxes. As crypto continues to mature and weave itself into business systems, these processes become lines of code that execute while we conduct business. You spin up a company with complex ownership, conduct the transaction, send money to and from the parties (incl government) and year it all down - in seconds. Today, you need weeks and lawyers, accountants, notaries, etc. It's insane. As for the environment, we can't save our way to success: the solution is either geoengineering or murdering billions (plural) of people and slowing the rest from breeding. I'm hopeful for geoengineering. Anyway, we can raise our fists to the sky, but the next generation is going to demand 24x7x365 business and banking, have taxes woven into transactions, sophisticated fractional ownership, etc.
    - ShamelessC 4y ago
      Just gonna try to scam people out in the open? You sound like you're in a cult.
      - asah 4y ago
        Ad hominem attacks are not welcome on HN, and if lookup my HN profile, I'm about the last person anyone would ascribe as being a cultist. I've seen a lot of unusual tech and trends win when they "shouldn't." I've seen "first they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win" over and over and over. I don't personally care if crypto wins or loses or if today's crypto goes to infinity or zero, and I especially don't care if greedy speculators lose their life savings after everybody told them so. What's interesting to me are novel ways for people to communicate, transact, store and share things.
- ourmandave 4y ago
  What is "proof of work" or "proof of stake"? “Proof of work” and “proof of stake” are the two major consensus mechanisms cryptocurrencies use to verify new transactions, add them to the blockchain, and create new tokens. https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-of-work-or-proof-of-stake https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-o...
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    ,,The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work.'' (From the Bitcoin whitepaper) I would prefer to quote Satoshi Nakamoto or Dr Adam Back on the subject. Brian Armstrong is in the business of selling altcoins, he can sell Bitcoin only once, but new altcoins can be created every day.
    - randomhodler84 4y ago
      I like that message “he can Sell Bitcoin only once”, however, he is selling Bitcoin over and over again, being the most traded asset on the exchange. He might even be able to sell the same sats multiple times too, without having those sats for settlement. Get your coin off the exchange!
mypastself 4y ago
I cannot download the PDF file. What is the reasoning?
- Algent 4y ago
  You can read it on the page using the "view more". Seem to be about asking if it's really ok to waste non renewable energy on this versus facilities that use "cleaner" approach. It also imply crypto mining create value which got me a good laugh.
OskarS 4y ago
Excellent news! The energy consumption required by proof-of-work blockchains is simply unacceptible, and it’s perfectly appropriate to adress it using new laws. Hopefully other states and countries will follow suit.
- troorl 4y ago
  Acceptable to me. Such bills on the other hand seem perfectly inappropriate to me.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    - troorl 4y ago
      Yes, I openly dismiss your petty and uncalled for attacks on me and the PoW blockchains entirely.
      - karamanolev 4y ago
        Petty - I don't think so. They're based on legitimate health and well being concerns. You're free to destroy your health/future, but not mine. Whether they're right or not (and I think they are) is irrelevant. They're not petty. Uncalled for - the context here (the bill) is about banning certain things related to mining on PoW blockchains for environmental reasons. Comments to ban PoW blockchains entirely for the same reasons is called for. Again, this is irrespective of the commenter's correctness.
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > I openly dismiss your petty and uncalled for attacks on me and the PoW blockchains entirely I was involved with this bill. It’s being replicated in a few other state houses. I was on the fence, initially. (I am by default sceptical of regulation.) But the mean argument against was more or less the above. Dismissal without evidence or even attempt at argument. Hence the 2-year term. If nobody can make an actual argument in that time, the moratorium should expand to all power generation (you can do whatever you want after the meter, this targets behind-the-meter deals) indefinitely.
olalonde 4y ago
This is about government deciding how electricity should or should not be used and seems like an extremely bad idea. Cryptocurrency mining doesn't pollute in itself. If the idea is that electricity consumption in general is polluting, the law should penalize/regulate electricity consumption in general.
- krageon 4y ago
  Thank you. A lot of folks in the comments currently seem to focus on whether or not they feel cryptocurrencies are legitimate at all, but this is the real crux of the matter. I don't appreciate the government letting me buy things and then informing me I'm using them wrong. If they feel there is some negative externality associated with the good I'm buying then they should mitigate it there, not based on some holier-than-thou judgement about whether not not I'm applying it right. This reminds me strongly of a house I once rented that had in the rental contract that the rental agency was allowed to "monitor my electricity use" so they could "give me advice on better spending" if I fell out of some undefined norm. Simply uncalled for.
  - IanCal 4y ago
    Unless the thing you bought is a fossil fuel based electricity generation facility I don't think this affects you.
    - krageon 4y ago
      I think I can conceptually disagree even with things that don't affect me. Similar to how I'm not a fan of blood diamonds or ethnic cleansing.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
    > I don't appreciate the government letting me buy things and then informing me I'm using them wrong. If they feel there is some negative externality associated with the good I'm buying then they should mitigate it there, Government does that all the time. You pay for water from the water utility, but they also have restrictions on lawn watering during droughts. You can buy a car, but there are restrictions on who can drive it and under what circumstances. You can buy alcohol, but there are restrictions on when you can drink (drinking and driving, open container laws).
rep_movsd 4y ago
Americans should first look at the other energy wastage they do - oversized automobiles, excessive consumption and wastage of food, factory farming, military. This "cryptocurrency causes global warming" is a nice story for the gullible.
- freemint 4y ago
  I mean it literally does and the climate does not care about the order heating factors are removed. It only cares about the integral. Downsizing cars is a way harder problem politically.
- zhrvoj 4y ago
  Yes, when war starts, like now in Ukraine, nobody is worried about environmental issues. Like war planes flying on alcohol. We are separating garbage for years now, but our effort is wiped out with such 'approved' behaviour like wars. Similar with Right to repair. Big tech just acts in making more waste by opposing to RTR.
IanCal 4y ago
Note - This is about permits for mining operations that run their own fossil fuel based electricity generation, not what random people at home can do (edit, as best as I can tell, I'm not used to reading these bills) > We must determine whether the growth of Proof-of-Work authentication cryptocurrency mining companies that operate their own electric generat- ing facilities and produce energy by burning fossil fuels is incompat- ible with our greenhouse gas emission targets established in law.
- aquaticsunset 4y ago
  Yeah, I feel like a lot of the outrage here is from the title, not the contents of the bill itself. I'm fully in favor of this effort.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    When the published summary of the bill isn’t an accurate summary, I think it’s fair to be outraged at several aspects of the overall political process.
endisneigh 4y ago
I swear people don’t read: > Section 2 places a moratorium on air permit issuance and renewal for an electric generating facility that utilizes a carbon-based fuel and that provides, in whole or in part, behind-the-meter electric energy consumed or utilized by cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions.
- tromp 4y ago
  Even as a PoW author, I support this bill. Note that PoW is a consensus method, not an authentication method. It's also separate from transaction validation.
  - endisneigh 4y ago
    Yes, some of the details are wrong but it’s irrelevant to the point of the bill. The point is mining with carbon based power is something they want to stop.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Proven 4y ago
gregwebs 4y ago
Current Bitcoin usage is literally a rounding error of global energy usage (0.1%) and if wildly successful would still be < 1% of energy usage. https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ However, when miners concentrate in one place the energy usage is certainly noticeable. This bill is for the New York senate. Banning mining from using more than 1% of the grid energy in their location would make sense. Better might be to require mining to shutdown during peak energy usage. At peak energy becomes the scarcest and fixed rate users may be subsidized. It is also usually the dirtiest at peak due to peaker plants coming online. Edit: others are saying this bill ends miners from operating non renewable power plants- that also makes sense.
- Noughmad 4y ago
  > Current Bitcoin usage is literally a rounding error of global energy usage (0.1%) A tenth of a percent is definitely not a rounding error of global energy usage. It's equivalent to the consumption of 8 million people. Would you call New York City a rounding error?
  - gregwebs 4y ago
    Did you read the article I linked to? It’s literally a rounding error because we can’t accurately measure global energy usage down to the 0.1% level.
- vishnugupta 4y ago
  > Current Bitcoin usage is literally a rounding error of global energy usage.. That's not very useful comparison. How does it stack up against payment systems' energy consumption?
  - chrischattin 4y ago
    Significantly (incomparably) less factoring all the elements in traditional finance and the military industrial complex used to secure it. PoW mining energy consumption is massively exaggerated. Christmas lights alone use more energy than the entire Bitcoin network.
newaccount2021 4y ago
lexa1979 4y ago
what if they decided to replace "cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work" with "pornography on the internet" ? or with "non-useful streamers and their platforms" ? What's a good use of energy and what's not ?
cft 4y ago
All sponsors are democrats.
gbronner 4y ago
Somebody bought an old power plant, reactivated it, and stuffed a bunch or crypto mining gear in it. The local community feels that it adds no jobs and produces a lot of pollution, and the Senate Bill is trying to stop this.

52 points by ianai 4y ago

,, Establishes a moratorium on cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions’’ Proof of work is not used for validation of transactions at all. It is used for ordering transactions / solving the double spending problem. The people creating this law clearly don’t understand the problem space and what the algorithm solves.

DonHopkins 4y ago
You're totally missing the point and pointlessly nit picking at irrelevant technicalities in the language, according to your own biased interpretation. People burning massive amounts coal and gas for fraudulent get-rich-quick pyramid schemes, rug pulls, pump-and-dump schemes, money laundering, fraud, ransomeware, ugly ape jpegs, insider trading, getting around international sanctions in response to unprovoked military attacks and war crimes against humanity, and other criminal enterprises clearly don't understand (or care about) the problem space of climate change, and what lowering carbon emission and regulating crime and fraud solve.
- carom 4y ago
  Technicalities of the language matter with respect to laws. To the second point, that sounds like a failure of the government to provide clean energy. In Los Angeles, we get 16% of our energy from coal and 28% from natural gas. I do not blame Bitcoin miners for this. It is a failure of the government to meet the energy needs of its people with clean sources. Write legislation that mandates building new nuclear power plants or wind farms off the coast.
  - DonHopkins 4y ago
    Not the subjective definitions and technicalities he's nit-picking about. Words have many different meanings in different contexts, and he's cherry picking one particular interpretation that's completely irrelevant and out of context. And governments can do multiple things at once to solve problems. The fact that they could build more nuclear power plants and wind farms doesn't mean they shouldn't also regulate burning coal to defraud people, commit crimes, and get around banking regulation and international sanctions.
  - spinchange 4y ago
    Government cannot create a bottomless supply of renewable energy by pen stroke. Proof of work mining is taking exponentially more resources out of the universe that anything facilitated by it is giving back to the economy or anything. It's terrible trade-off for humanity. This is precisely what mandates are for to stop harmful action not to wish into existence some magical thinking solution so that people can do bad things with negative consequences forever
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    That’s crazy. Why should a government spend taxpayer money to build energy supplies to support the “energy needs” of crypto scams? Its a terrible idea, if for no other reason than that a vanishingly small percentage of the population would benefit.
    - saalweachter 4y ago
      This is also one of the ways a government attempts to promote clean energy: by banning, in part or in whole, a source of dirty energy, people can either do without... or switch to a clean-energy source. Instead of electric vehicle tax credits, which cost the government in question an increasing amount of money as more people use them, you could apply a similar force with an ICE tax on purchasing new ICE vehicles, which raises a decreasing amount of revenue as people stop buying ICEs in response.
  - labster 4y ago
    While there is a failure to provide clean energy, increasing demand makes it harder to supply energy to everyone. If the rich keep on pushing demand by using energy on speculative financial products, we can’t make up the supply in time to prevent the worst of climate change. Bitcoin is basically class warfare, except because of climate and air pollution in general, it’s lethal class warfare. I’m not saying to stop all innovation, but crypto is 5+ orders of magnitude more energy inefficient, and it’s killer apps so far have been asset speculation, untaxed remittances, and cyber crime. Governments have no interest in those innovations at all.
- asah 4y ago
  Hey don, long time! So the thing with crypto: yeah sure there's bad crap on the margins, but the core of crypto is a completely new, faster and more flexible way to handle money, value, ownership and control. I liken it to "programmable money" but even that's too simplistic. With programmable real estate, the line between rental and ownership can blur, softening the risk and lability for owners, and creating more responsibility and upside for renters. A Bored Ape is a club membership and flexible ownership in a rapidly expanding brand that earns licensing fees: the folks at Disney are paying close attention. A $1+mm apartment is worth $1mm because people say it is and because zoning limits supply, not because the sum of the wood and metal adds up to $1mm. Today, we spend enormous time/energy/etc on nonsense that should be one line of code, from incorporating companies to paying taxes. As crypto continues to mature and weave itself into business systems, these processes become lines of code that execute while we conduct business. You spin up a company with complex ownership, conduct the transaction, send money to and from the parties (incl government) and year it all down - in seconds. Today, you need weeks and lawyers, accountants, notaries, etc. It's insane. As for the environment, we can't save our way to success: the solution is either geoengineering or murdering billions (plural) of people and slowing the rest from breeding. I'm hopeful for geoengineering. Anyway, we can raise our fists to the sky, but the next generation is going to demand 24x7x365 business and banking, have taxes woven into transactions, sophisticated fractional ownership, etc.
  - ShamelessC 4y ago
    Just gonna try to scam people out in the open? You sound like you're in a cult.
    - asah 4y ago
      Ad hominem attacks are not welcome on HN, and if lookup my HN profile, I'm about the last person anyone would ascribe as being a cultist. I've seen a lot of unusual tech and trends win when they "shouldn't." I've seen "first they ignore you, then they fight you, then you win" over and over and over. I don't personally care if crypto wins or loses or if today's crypto goes to infinity or zero, and I especially don't care if greedy speculators lose their life savings after everybody told them so. What's interesting to me are novel ways for people to communicate, transact, store and share things.
ourmandave 4y ago
What is "proof of work" or "proof of stake"? “Proof of work” and “proof of stake” are the two major consensus mechanisms cryptocurrencies use to verify new transactions, add them to the blockchain, and create new tokens. https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-of-work-or-proof-of-stake https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/what-is-proof-o...
- xiphias2 4y ago
  ,,The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work.'' (From the Bitcoin whitepaper) I would prefer to quote Satoshi Nakamoto or Dr Adam Back on the subject. Brian Armstrong is in the business of selling altcoins, he can sell Bitcoin only once, but new altcoins can be created every day.
  - randomhodler84 4y ago
    I like that message “he can Sell Bitcoin only once”, however, he is selling Bitcoin over and over again, being the most traded asset on the exchange. He might even be able to sell the same sats multiple times too, without having those sats for settlement. Get your coin off the exchange!

mypastself 4y ago

I cannot download the PDF file. What is the reasoning?

Algent 4y ago
You can read it on the page using the "view more". Seem to be about asking if it's really ok to waste non renewable energy on this versus facilities that use "cleaner" approach. It also imply crypto mining create value which got me a good laugh.

OskarS 4y ago

Excellent news! The energy consumption required by proof-of-work blockchains is simply unacceptible, and it’s perfectly appropriate to adress it using new laws. Hopefully other states and countries will follow suit.

troorl 4y ago
Acceptable to me. Such bills on the other hand seem perfectly inappropriate to me.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  - troorl 4y ago
    Yes, I openly dismiss your petty and uncalled for attacks on me and the PoW blockchains entirely.
    - karamanolev 4y ago
      Petty - I don't think so. They're based on legitimate health and well being concerns. You're free to destroy your health/future, but not mine. Whether they're right or not (and I think they are) is irrelevant. They're not petty. Uncalled for - the context here (the bill) is about banning certain things related to mining on PoW blockchains for environmental reasons. Comments to ban PoW blockchains entirely for the same reasons is called for. Again, this is irrespective of the commenter's correctness.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > I openly dismiss your petty and uncalled for attacks on me and the PoW blockchains entirely I was involved with this bill. It’s being replicated in a few other state houses. I was on the fence, initially. (I am by default sceptical of regulation.) But the mean argument against was more or less the above. Dismissal without evidence or even attempt at argument. Hence the 2-year term. If nobody can make an actual argument in that time, the moratorium should expand to all power generation (you can do whatever you want after the meter, this targets behind-the-meter deals) indefinitely.

olalonde 4y ago

This is about government deciding how electricity should or should not be used and seems like an extremely bad idea. Cryptocurrency mining doesn't pollute in itself. If the idea is that electricity consumption in general is polluting, the law should penalize/regulate electricity consumption in general.

krageon 4y ago
Thank you. A lot of folks in the comments currently seem to focus on whether or not they feel cryptocurrencies are legitimate at all, but this is the real crux of the matter. I don't appreciate the government letting me buy things and then informing me I'm using them wrong. If they feel there is some negative externality associated with the good I'm buying then they should mitigate it there, not based on some holier-than-thou judgement about whether not not I'm applying it right. This reminds me strongly of a house I once rented that had in the rental contract that the rental agency was allowed to "monitor my electricity use" so they could "give me advice on better spending" if I fell out of some undefined norm. Simply uncalled for.
- IanCal 4y ago
  Unless the thing you bought is a fossil fuel based electricity generation facility I don't think this affects you.
  - krageon 4y ago
    I think I can conceptually disagree even with things that don't affect me. Similar to how I'm not a fan of blood diamonds or ethnic cleansing.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 4y ago
  > I don't appreciate the government letting me buy things and then informing me I'm using them wrong. If they feel there is some negative externality associated with the good I'm buying then they should mitigate it there, Government does that all the time. You pay for water from the water utility, but they also have restrictions on lawn watering during droughts. You can buy a car, but there are restrictions on who can drive it and under what circumstances. You can buy alcohol, but there are restrictions on when you can drink (drinking and driving, open container laws).

rep_movsd 4y ago

Americans should first look at the other energy wastage they do - oversized automobiles, excessive consumption and wastage of food, factory farming, military. This "cryptocurrency causes global warming" is a nice story for the gullible.

freemint 4y ago
I mean it literally does and the climate does not care about the order heating factors are removed. It only cares about the integral. Downsizing cars is a way harder problem politically.
zhrvoj 4y ago
Yes, when war starts, like now in Ukraine, nobody is worried about environmental issues. Like war planes flying on alcohol. We are separating garbage for years now, but our effort is wiped out with such 'approved' behaviour like wars. Similar with Right to repair. Big tech just acts in making more waste by opposing to RTR.

IanCal 4y ago

Note - This is about permits for mining operations that run their own fossil fuel based electricity generation, not what random people at home can do (edit, as best as I can tell, I'm not used to reading these bills) > We must determine whether the growth of Proof-of-Work authentication cryptocurrency mining companies that operate their own electric generat- ing facilities and produce energy by burning fossil fuels is incompat- ible with our greenhouse gas emission targets established in law.

aquaticsunset 4y ago
Yeah, I feel like a lot of the outrage here is from the title, not the contents of the bill itself. I'm fully in favor of this effort.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  When the published summary of the bill isn’t an accurate summary, I think it’s fair to be outraged at several aspects of the overall political process.

endisneigh 4y ago

I swear people don’t read: > Section 2 places a moratorium on air permit issuance and renewal for an electric generating facility that utilizes a carbon-based fuel and that provides, in whole or in part, behind-the-meter electric energy consumed or utilized by cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work authentication methods to validate blockchain transactions.

tromp 4y ago
Even as a PoW author, I support this bill. Note that PoW is a consensus method, not an authentication method. It's also separate from transaction validation.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Yes, some of the details are wrong but it’s irrelevant to the point of the bill. The point is mining with carbon based power is something they want to stop.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Proven 4y ago

gregwebs 4y ago

Current Bitcoin usage is literally a rounding error of global energy usage (0.1%) and if wildly successful would still be < 1% of energy usage. https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ https://www.lynalden.com/bitcoin-energy/ However, when miners concentrate in one place the energy usage is certainly noticeable. This bill is for the New York senate. Banning mining from using more than 1% of the grid energy in their location would make sense. Better might be to require mining to shutdown during peak energy usage. At peak energy becomes the scarcest and fixed rate users may be subsidized. It is also usually the dirtiest at peak due to peaker plants coming online. Edit: others are saying this bill ends miners from operating non renewable power plants- that also makes sense.

Noughmad 4y ago
> Current Bitcoin usage is literally a rounding error of global energy usage (0.1%) A tenth of a percent is definitely not a rounding error of global energy usage. It's equivalent to the consumption of 8 million people. Would you call New York City a rounding error?
- gregwebs 4y ago
  Did you read the article I linked to? It’s literally a rounding error because we can’t accurately measure global energy usage down to the 0.1% level.
vishnugupta 4y ago
> Current Bitcoin usage is literally a rounding error of global energy usage.. That's not very useful comparison. How does it stack up against payment systems' energy consumption?
- chrischattin 4y ago
  Significantly (incomparably) less factoring all the elements in traditional finance and the military industrial complex used to secure it. PoW mining energy consumption is massively exaggerated. Christmas lights alone use more energy than the entire Bitcoin network.

newaccount2021 4y ago

lexa1979 4y ago

what if they decided to replace "cryptocurrency mining operations that use proof-of-work" with "pornography on the internet" ? or with "non-useful streamers and their platforms" ? What's a good use of energy and what's not ?

cft 4y ago

All sponsors are democrats.

gbronner 4y ago

Somebody bought an old power plant, reactivated it, and stuffed a bunch or crypto mining gear in it. The local community feels that it adds no jobs and produces a lot of pollution, and the Senate Bill is trying to stop this.