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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.
by 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 agoAcceptable to me. Such bills on the other hand seem perfectly inappropriate to me.
- DonHopkins 4y ago
- troorl 4y agoYes, I openly dismiss your petty and uncalled for attacks on me and the PoW blockchains entirely.
- karamanolev 4y agoPetty - 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.
- malermeister 4y agoCould you please elaborate the advantages of pow crypto mining that outweigh the environmental concerns associated with it? Please cite specific, real-world examples if possible, not vague ideas and promises that haven't come to fruition yet.
- eis 4y agoYou should probably specifically mention PoW and not crypto mining in general. There are crypto mining mechanisms like PoS which use a negligible amount of energy.
- malermeister 4y agoFair point, edited.
- tromp 4y agoThe term mining is only used for PoW. For PoS the term staking is used.
- cortic 4y agoThere really aren't any environmental concerns with crypto. Crypto (PoW), like any other industry, invests in energy infrastructure. The concern right now is that its sometimes cheaper to pollute than to use green energy. All our politicians have had plenty time to ensure this is not the case; We should be more than angry that they have failed. If we establish, through regulations, subsidies and taxes, a situation where it is always cheaper to use green energy; Crypto would bring nothing but massive investment in green energy development.
- malermeister 4y agoIf we accept that energy is a limited resource, we have to think about how we allocate it. PoW Crypto takes up a lot - what does it give us to justify that expense? Even if we get to a point where we can power crypto purely with green energy - that might still mean that not enough green energy is available to power other, potentially more important use cases.
- chrischattin 4y agoWashing machines alone across the U.S. use more electricity than the entire Bitcoin network, just to put things in perspective.
- gchamonlive 4y agoYet clothes can't be washed by using proof of stake methods
- troorl 4y agoThey can be washed by hands, like billions of people still do in the 3rd world. But that's a sacrifice most western environmentally-conscious folks aren't willing to make.
- gchamonlive 4y agoHand washing clothes is a regression, specially considering industrial applications, whereas proof of stake is in many ways a progress in the way consensus is reached for blockchains. Being environmentally-conscious is about reducing carbon footprint with smarter processes, not reverting to older ways for the sake of cutting electricity consumption. That was an unfortunate fallacy.
- mcfedr 4y agoBut they provide value, in a way mining does not
- chrischattin 4y agoThat is entirely your subjective opinion. I think the exact opposite – that Bitcoin is one of the most positive for humanity, world changing inventions ever created.
- alkonaut 4y agopotentially. Any day now. Just over the horizon. Just like last year.
- cft 4y agoThe ongoing fiat dollar experiment, initially to finance the Vietnam war is unacceptable to me. The resulting impending unraveling of USD as the world reserve currency might be unacceptable to you. Money and government should be separated, otherwise it provides the government with wrong incentives.
- yossarian1408 4y ago100% this. I wonder if people consider the carbon footprint of maintaining petrodollar hegemony. But they will lose that hegemony. It happened to the denarii, it will happen to the dollar. The question is - what would be best suited to replace it? Our contenders are the Euro, the Yuen or Bitcoin. Seems an obvious choice.