15 ms·

White House Is Mulling a Ban on Bitcoin Mining

159 points by malermeister 4y ago

MrMan 4y ago
need a carbon tax not this
throwayyy479087 4y ago
Good.
nitin05 4y ago
brobdingnagians 4y ago
Huh? That's not the President's job; how did we get to this point? If the President can ban a specific, commonly used algorithm for arbitrary reasons, then we are in for a wild ride.
- nl 4y ago
  Read the report: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-2022-Crypto-Assets-and-Climate-Report.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-202... The plan isn't "banning bitcoin". It's to consider regulation on high-energy usage crypto operations, and then "should these measures prove ineffective at reducing impacts, the Administration should explore executive actions, and Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining." It's unclear why you think this shouldn't be the Administration's role? If it is taking a significant proportion of power across multiple states and affecting power prices and grid stability it seems like it should at least something one branch of the federal government should have an interest in.
  - jjulius 4y ago
    >The plan isn't "banning bitcoin". That phrase was not in OP's post, yet you're quoting them on it and then excoriating them for saying something that they didn't. They said: >... commonly used algorithm... Which is exactly how coins are mined! Which makes OP correct (sort of, they said "President" and not "Congress") because your own quoted comment says: >... Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining.
    - nl 4y ago
      >> >The plan isn't "banning bitcoin". > That phrase was not in OP's post, yet you're quoting them on it and then excoriating them for saying something that they didn't. They said: It was in their post when I responded and they edited to correct it. The edit window for my post has expired though.
  - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
    Which constitutional power gives the president this ability?
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > Which constitutional power gives the president this ability? Congress has delegated broad authority to the President with respect to energy, environment and financial services.
      - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
        Congress has delegated the authority for the president to ban a random technology? Citation needed. Honestly, would Congress itself even have that power?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Test0129 4y ago
      Chevron deference which like firearms and several other things is how they attack the constitution while keeping their hands clean. They will probably defer to the EPA, who will make a regulation based on their suggestion. This allows them to bypass congressional oversight at least until someone very rich manages to bring the case in front of the supreme court. Extremely common unfortunately.
    - MeltingAaah 4y ago
      You are aware that a government can make laws and change laws right? And also change the constitution right? Of course it could imply that it needa to go through certain channels but no one should assume that it literally meant 'the president will now say x and now x is the law'.
      - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
        Sure, if the required supermajority wants to change the constitution, go for it. We’re only talking about executive action because congress isn’t interested though.
- kasey_junk 4y ago
  It’s a clickbait headline that isn’t even backed up by the 2 paragraph puff piece it’s attached to. The actual report recommends development (not even mandatory) of low energy use “digital assets”.
- bluescrn 4y ago
  The future is increasingly centralised and authoritarian, it seems.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    This specific link does not contribute to that because it is pure speculation with no evidence.
  - MeltingAaah 4y ago
    Because why? It's obvious that the money streams are under control of the state. Your sentiment indicate that Bitcoin should be okay because why exactly? The country doesn't want crypto that was and is clear since ever And I also brought this point up for the last 5 years.crypto is solving a problem people like you think they wanna solve without understanding that it's on purpose how it is. It's nothing to be fixed.
    - bluescrn 4y ago
      > "The country doesn't want crypto" Crypto may be wasteful nonsense and no real solution to anything. But that no reason to ban it, when we accept that capitalism allows vast amounts of wasteful behaviour in many ways, so long as people are prepared to pay the market rate for their wastefulness. If a government is elected with an explicit policy of a hard crackdown on wasteful energy use, it would surely have to extend way beyond crypto, and certainly affect those cooling mega-mansions and heating private swimming pools - but potentially even limit the power/performance of gaming hardware, domestic appliances, and power tools, amongst other things. But that's not what's happening here. IMHO, the post-Covid world needs to somehow look past its tribalism and rediscover the importance of freedom in it's many forms, and also look back more critically at the Covid response and related events around the globe. Covid has shown that there's a very high demand from an easily-terrified populace for centralised authoritarian power during a crisis. It has also shown that when that power is exercised, the resistance is likely to be minimal, and crushing that resistance causes little backlash beyond small outbursts of online anger. We now face a perpetual crisis - the 'climate emergency'. And we should all be concerned about attempted solutions imposed by such centralised authoritarian means, and even more concerned about things done claiming to be about the climate, but actually being ideological in nature.
- Beltalowda 4y ago
  "The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy recommended in a report" is not the same as "the president will [...]". Anyone can recommend or say anything, including The White House. It's still up to congress to vote for it. The President can issue an executive order, but nowhere that I can see in the report does it recommend that (it does not seem to recommend a ban at all).
- MeltingAaah 4y ago
  You should read up on other algorithm which were not allowed to be exported outside of USA. But just to be clear about your wishi washy argument: It's not arbitrary when they state a reason. And it's not just some algorithm. I'm also not sure what a difference it makes if you do something manually or a computer automatically if it's harming others you should be able to ban it. Like the action of moving your hand very fast into the face of someone else. Or consuming a lot of energy to guess a random text string faster than others. Btw. You should also advocate against Bitcoin. The chance that the climate change from Bitcoin is hurting you more than the benefit of Bitcoin is very high And if you made bank thanks to crypto, feel free to accept that jlyou only took the money you have now from others. One way or the other Bitcoin is garbage. And yes every crypto bro who exchanges crypto back to Fiat is not believing in crypto either.
nl 4y ago
This is the linked report: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-2022-Crypto-Assets-and-Climate-Report.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-202... I think this is good. Whether or not blockchain is a good thing, it's very clear that proof-of-stake is an adequate and energy efficient alternative.
- bsaul 4y ago
  has pos been deployed in the wild at large scale yet ?
  - pawelduda 4y ago
    Ethereum switching to PoS in 5 days, and a bunch of large blockchains have been running PoS (with various consensus mechanisms) for quite some time now.
  - sudodude 4y ago
    Ethereum is about to transition in a fortnightt after years of development and testing.
  - nl 4y ago
    Yes. Most L1 chains outside Bitcoin and Ethereum use PoS or variants of it. For example Solana, Cardano, Polkadot, Polygon, Avalanche and NEAR all are proof-of-stake chains. Ripple has another non-PoW mechanism too.
  - lloeki 4y ago
    ETH Beacon Chain uses PoS, shipped on December 1, 2020: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/beacon-chain/ https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/beacon-chain/ ETH Mainnet is due to replace PoW by PoS by merging with Beacon Chain this September: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/ https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  Prediction: One day western countries (or maybe some other faction) will prohibit transactions with certain entities. Many (most?) large stakeholders will need to abide and not approve those transactions (because they're large public entities). People will attempt to run slashers against the regulated stakeholders because they're not doing their job right and just kind of hope that in a system that only works because wealthy people would refuse to lose money otherwise; that the wealthy people would be willing to lose money. So the rich regulated forks will say fuck you and a fork will be the only solution that schisms the chain into a regulated fork where the rich people maintain a truth hat they've never done wrong and a non regulated fork where they have. People like off ramps to actual dollars so the regulated one will retain value while the other one drops rapidly. Stakeholders that think its cool to help people dodge sanctions will just lose their stakes by means of PoS because they're not maintaining "The Truth" in the regulated fork that they don't approve of and by declining market value in the fork that they do. And in one glorious moment the PoS ecosystem will kick out all the decentralized dreamers
flarg 4y ago
Doing so would certainly assuage climate change concerns without any huge damage to bitcoin itself, which has enough coins and coon subdivisions to operate successfully. Hopefully bitcoin will see the light and terminate further coin generation.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  You can't use bitcoin without coin generation. Coin generation is what enables transactions at all.
  - red_trumpet 4y ago
    Afaiu, generation of new coins is set to stop at some point in the future. This will not change the power consumption though, miners are still required to process transactions (which might become more expensive, because miners don't get "free" coins anymore)
  - cableshaft 4y ago
    Well, not exactly. There's a hard limit to the coin generation. Although it won't hit that limit until around 2140[1]. Miners will still be incentivized to keep the network going thanks to transaction fees at that point. Assuming there's still a civilization and computers at that point, which seems to be a bit up in the air to me (although not because of bitcoin, because of several environmental tipping points we're reaching[2]). [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/bitcoin-halving-4843769 https://www.investopedia.com/bitcoin-halving-4843769 [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on...
- danuker 4y ago
  A much fairer law would tax all emissions. But the fossil lobby threw PoW under the bus as a red herring.
itsoktocry 4y ago
I'm curious what states like Wyoming, who run advertorials on Bloomberg TV placing themselves as a crypto haven, will think of this. And Florida too, where all the VCs moved. More divisiveness!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
danuker 4y ago
Ah yes, let's ban random uses of electricity, instead of addressing the root cause: actual emissions being taxed or limited.
- zbrozek 4y ago
  I don't know what legal avenue will be taken should the federal government pursue a ban, but that's probably not it. As you point out, that would have unpleasant slippery slope consequences. At the same time, it's pretty obvious that something needs to change. As-is, currency mining is an effective means to leverage low electricity prices around the world and is very-often more lucrative than producing things we actually use to improve our standard of living. Suppose you impose carbon taxes, you'll (often) be preferentially biasing towards mining over e.g., aluminum or glass manufacturing, driving physical goods shortages. And even if the entire grid were renewables, you haven't really solved the "it's more profitable to make digital goods than physical ones" problem. So you search for regulation that is biased against the digital currency but not against uses of energy. Maybe a digital currency transaction fee, like a sales tax, that puts a ton of drag and downward pressure on the currency? It could be huge, and it could be modulated by the energy use that any given currency represents or the CPI. Of course you have the cooperation problem; taxing the life out of a currency in one country is only modestly useful. It's a thorny problem.
  - chii 4y ago
    > you haven't really solved the "it's more profitable to make digital goods than physical ones" problem. why isn't digital goods just as useful? I dont think you can just assume that making physical goods is _always_ going to be better. Let bitcoin miners mine. tax carbon emissions from energy usage, and let the free market choose the right allocations based on prices, demand and supply. The free market works when externalities are accounted for using regulation.
    - zbrozek 4y ago
      I don't think this is a seriously considered question. Digital goods are obviously less useful (or at least less important). Physical goods feed, clothe, and shelter populations. If digital goods crowd out physical ones, even to a small degree, you have a serious problem.
323 4y ago
It will not happen. The Bitcoin lobby is already to strong in the US. Crypto firms are among the top Democrat donors. Crypto CEO SBF plans on donating $100mil - $1bil in the 2024 election, and calls political donation the highest form of return of investment that exists: > He was also one of just a handful of donors who spent $10 million-plus backing President Joe Biden in 2020, and in the last year, he’s hired a network of political operatives and spent tens of millions more shaping Democratic House primaries. It was a shocking wave of spending that looked like it could remake the Democratic Party bench in Washington, candidate by candidate. Looking ahead to the 2024 election, he has said he could spend anywhere from $100 million to $1 billion. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/04/democratic-megadonor-sam-bankman-fried-00049048 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/04/democratic-megadono...
- PontifexMinimus 4y ago
  > political donation the highest form of return of investment that exists Which is why it should be banned.
  - nordsieck 4y ago
    > Which is why it should be banned. Functionally, this isn't possible. If the open method is banned, people will start using layers of indirection. It's fundamentally a problem with democracy.
    - TomSwirly 4y ago
      "There's no point in passing laws, because people will get around them." Why does anyone believe this?
      - nordsieck 4y ago
        > "There's no point in passing laws, because people will get around them." > Why does anyone believe this? Good laws are great. And there are plenty of them. But passing bad laws just because "we need to do something" is worse than doing nothing.
gwnywg 4y ago
Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining,” so how would they enforce this? by running escrow on every single server to ensure this particular algorithm is not executed..? or would they simply measure energy consumption by the server and demand proof that the load is legitimate?
- perlgeek 4y ago
  Companies might simply have to sign statements that they aren't doing forbidden mining, and in doubt auditors are sent.
  - danuker 4y ago
    So, private citizens are not subject to this potential law?
  - gwnywg 4y ago
    How would they audit and who would pay for it?
    - liketochill 4y ago
      Where does companies revenue come from? Do they have servers in their data centers or obvious mining rigs?
      - gwnywg 4y ago
        Where I live you don't declare where revenue comes from, tax man only requires to declare how much revenue was made. Maybe it's not how it works in US? On the other hand I did not know there is specialized hardware you can only use for mining cryptocurrency, this would be clear evidence.
- plankers 4y ago
  enforcement would probably happen at the level of the power utility. large mining operations have agreements with utilities to buy power at wholesale prices, the utilities know what the power is being used for the real beneficiaries of this would be small miners (small business owners?) who either use their own locally generated power or the residential grid. oh, and all the people who don't mine in the US
user3939382 4y ago
Speculation warning. If their tax collection/law enforcement interest outweighed the part of the financial sector invested in Bitcoin they would have banned it during the Russian sanctions which provided perfect cover. Instead, after a lot of noise about banning it, they “commissioned a study” which is well known in politics as “we have to save face/pretend to do something for optics”. Wall St wins, this train has left the station. This is coming from someone who tracked bitcoin since $0.25 and was, to my poverty, convinced that it would be legislatively squashed the second it got on the radar of DC or the Fed.
- danuker 4y ago
  On the other hand, the government moves slowly. I argue that, since mining is done in the US, mining is clearly providing more value than the electricity used, since it continues. The power use is just an excuse. Of course, the price of electricity should reflect its externalities (i.e. greenhouse gas emissions). That way, the market could find a better solution. But the fossil lobby has got deep pockets.
jmyeet 4y ago
Given the impending energy crisis in Europe this winter, expect the EU to follow suit. As much as advocates tout crypto as being extra-governmental, it would honestly take very little to effectively cripple crypto. For example, a ban on financial institutions that want access to the US financial system from dealing in crypto. When energy becomes a sufficiently important political concern it’s going to be a huge problem for PoW crypto.
- andrewinardeer 4y ago
  Why not mine on renewables? Throw a solar panel array up, maybe a wind turbine or hydro?
  - MeltingAaah 4y ago
    Great idea! Instead of Bitcoin just consuming energy and producing hardware garbage Asics and consuming chip capacity, let's also eat it solar panels which could just create normal energy for non Bitcoin use. Bitcoin is not becoming green just because you use renewable energy.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    If we are investing in renewables, that investment should first and foremost be used to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. If we replace fossil fuels and there is spare energy left, fine. Until then is crypto really a reasonable priority?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
azeemh 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
drexlspivey 4y ago
Shouldn’t free market take care of this? If electricity prices go to $0.2/kWh you’re losing money when mining and you turn of your ASICs.
- cableshaft 4y ago
  The free market is waiting until there's only a few puddles of freshwater left and charging a million dollars a sip, as the Colorado River is proving[1] (or overfished waters, or all sorts of things). It's terrible at being proactive, it only benefits a company for exploiting a resource until it's gone, and ratcheting up the price until it is[2]. [1]: https://utahrivers.org/blog-post/2021/12/13/new-report-upper-basin-states-overusing-colorado-river-water https://utahrivers.org/blog-post/2021/12/13/new-report-upper... [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2016/02/09/unless-it-changes-capitalism-will-starve-humanity-by-2050/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2016/02/09/unless-it...
  - highwaylights 4y ago
    The free market as a religion is a phenomenon that’s pretty unique to the US, though starting to metastasise around the world too. American polarism (e.g. if you suggest there’s a single negative consequence to capitalism you’re automatically a communist) is spreading at the same time. I think we should all be concerned about the consequences.
  - someguydave 4y ago
    California environmentalist activists on the Costal Commission refuse to allow desalinization which is what is truly threatening the Colorado river.
  - radford-neal 4y ago
    "The free market is ... terrible at being proactive, it only benefits a company for exploiting a resource until it's gone ..." To the extent that this happens, it's not unique to a free market economy. The Soviet Union was notable for causing environmental devastation. Theoretically, if real interest rates are sufficiently high, it might be profitable to, for example, over-fish some species to extinction, since the present value of future catches declines exponentially with time, according to the interest rate. However, for the past few decades, real interest rates have been at historically low levels, so it's hard to see this as an explanation for any current short-sighted behaviour.
morpheos137 4y ago
It would make more sense to block fiat on and off ramps to Bitcoin since its only uses are gambling (speculative investment) and money laundering. Very, very few people who own bitcoin mined it themselves.
- andrewinardeer 4y ago
  Sarcasm, right?
motohagiography 4y ago
Bitcoin mining converts energy into currency so that instead of having to transmit the energy from where it is generated to where it is needed, you transmit the fungible currency that can be used to buy things in in other regional markets. The anti-cryptocurrency movement isn't ignorant, it's mendacious and cynical as I'm begining to think they really appear to imagine on a psychological level that everyone else is their subject. This regime uses ideology as a kind of mass neutralizing force where almost everyone is speaking in elliptical gibberish, and even principled people get tarpitted by challenging it, and then a small number of activated people encounter no resistance to locking down the means of production (energy, currency, etc), making them impossible to dig out. A bitcoin ban isn't merely stupid, it's a meta-evil level attempt to sabotage the development of our entire species and secure the reins for these activated few. If that sounds like a conspiracy, consider how many people work directly for the Whitehouse, and it's less than a couple of thousand, with a core policy group of fewer than a couple of hundred, working playbooks provided by their party, which is a machine for working ideological playbooks. Some of the same would be the case with the other team, but this particular playbook I've seen before. I would consider a ban to be an attack on the private economy.
- e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
  This is quite a silly view. Bitcoin mining doesn’t convert energy into currency, it’s using computation as a consensus mechanism for a distributed ledger. This consensus can be achieved many other ways, as seen by the myriad of other coins popping up with their own mechanisms. Proof of work is the most wasteful way of doing so. It creates an infinite race of seeing who has more compute, as it actively rewards those who consume more energy. You’re seeing things that aren’t there in both sides of the argument. I have no idea what the last few sentences are supposed to mean, but bitcoin dying is not the end of the human species, that’s just silly.
  - motohagiography 4y ago
    I'm not sure this response is from a mind equipped to apprehend the adequate or necessary level of abstraction to address the issue, but it bears addressing because it is representative of the quality of argument made in favour of bitcoin bans and regulations. The crux of bitcoin is sound money tied to compute costs - which directly are energy costs. It rewards people who find and apply sources of energy they can convert into compute wherever they may be. I've found some people say they don't understand things when doing so would create a conflict with their ability to sustain dissonance. My comment wasn't for them, it was for people with the need and ability to understand the macro dynamics of the policies that impact us all, and that there is a view that is upsteam of all this anti-crypto hysteria.
aaron695 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Gordonjcp 4y ago
While I agree with banning the turning of as much power as Malaysia uses in a year into pretend money, I don't think this is going to work. How do they plan on doing it?
LatteLazy 4y ago
I'm confused what exactly allows a president to ban certain uses of electricity? Could a president similarly ban computer games? Or (computer accessed) porn?
- MeltingAaah 4y ago
  Same laws which allow similar things. Greater good for society would be a good reason. Climate change laws as well. You can't buy lead paint anymore as well. Why do you assume a country can't create new laws? There is also no logical base system which would only allow certain laws to be allowed.
- bluescrn 4y ago
  If they can ban the internal combustion engine and potentially leave large swathes of the working class unable to travel to work, they could certainly ban energy-hungry high-end gaming machines. The elite will still be able to enjoy private jets and superyachts, though (How else would they travel to climate conferences?)
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    Has the president unilaterally banned ICEs?
- BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
  I’m going to get partisan for this post, but Blue Team seems far more willing to commit itself towards doing something even if it seems like they don’t actually have the authority to do it. The student loan forgiveness from the executive branch is a good example of this. It has been announced, but it seems like only Congress actually has the authority to do it. But the point is to get it out there and count on political pressure to make it be realized. If they want to get something done, and some interpretation of the law or constitution allows it, they go with it. If a court finds it unconstitutional they regroup and try again, but their M.O. appears to be act first and let the courts decide later whether or not it was something they were allowed to do.
bilsbie 4y ago
Why don’t we provide more electricity instead? It’s like we can’t build things anymore.
- eimrine 4y ago
  Because we afraid of nuclear energy. There are lots of fossil fuel fans masquerading as green activists who claims that nuclear is kind of no eco-friendly. And yes, the possibility of building great things is decreasing nowadays since the best minds are working on letting us to see more ads.
- MeltingAaah 4y ago
  Why? Because right now everything we do creates more CO2. Producing more energy means more CO2. Even producing more solar panels creates more CO2. The problem is CO2 and climate change. your and mine climate change. It will cost us less to avoid producing the mass amount of energy for Bitcoin than trying to make it real CO2 neutral which is very very far away
- cesarb 4y ago
  Because PoW is designed to use as much electricity as possible. If electricity becomes cheaper (as a consequence of providing more electricity), PoW miners will simply use more of it.
rufusroflpunch 4y ago
I read the WH report and my impression, despite the one line everyone is citing, is that Washington is slowly working its way to justifying acceptance of proof of work, despite whatever reservations they have, because its would be almost impossible, practically or politically, to ban it.
- MeltingAaah 4y ago
  It's easy to ban. Why wouldn't it be? This makes it much harder for companies to get proper electric contracts, you can snitch on companies, you can audit them etc. It might not be able to ban small setups but for sure makes a big dent in crypto companies. Official ones.
- blantonl 4y ago
  Impossible? You are kidding, right? The United States has a outstanding history of banning things. Alcohol. Drugs. /s
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    Sure, but both things were widely available during the ban. [fixed weird typo]
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > both things started widely available during the ban Also, and I thought this was obvious, alcohol and drugs are either more fun and popular or more fun and addicting. That combination of wide and deep makes them insidious and sympathetic. Bitcoin is neither.
      - BurningFrog 4y ago
        Bitcoin is money, which is how you can buy all the other fun/popular/addicting things.
        4y ago
seydor 4y ago
IF this happens the transformation of crypto to trinkets for the rich is complete. Whoever keeps taking it seriously will be a fool
logicalmonster 4y ago
Putting aside the technical impossibility of banning mining, I'd ask a moral question. If it's widely believed that monopolies are bad, why is this proposal to support the government money monopoly good? Governments that are inflating their own currencies to hell and impoverishing their own citizens are trying to FUD and diminish a potential competitor that cannot possibly be hyperinflated. The suffering and human misery that is going to come from government destroying the currency with no alternatives available is far worse than even the worst climate change doomsday predictions.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > the technical impossibility of banning mining These charges of open lawlessness in tax evasion and money laundering, largely by millionaires, is why we see popular support for such measures. Also, a ban on proof of work is far from a ban on cryptocurrency, web3 or DeFi.
  - logicalmonster 4y ago
    "Banning mining" has literally nothing to do with whether or not legal taxes are paid.
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > has literally nothing to do with whether or not legal taxes are paid Someone claiming “technical impossibility” in banning mining implies the government can’t catch them mining illegally. Most criminals don’t pay tax on their gains.
      - logicalmonster 4y ago
        > Someone claiming “technical impossibility” in banning mining implies the government can’t catch them mining illegally. I think my statement is pretty correct. Short of something like cutting off power or global communication, you can't really technically prevent Bitcoin mining by decree. Of course, anything that exists in physical space can be jailed/shot/seized/destroyed, so your statement is also correct. Goody. > Most criminals don’t pay tax on their gains. It goes without saying, but somebody who doesn't pay tax on their gains is considered a criminal by our system. PS: I don't want to get into a mind-reading session with you, but your beef seems to be with rich people who you consider to not pay enough taxes. That is a wholly separate issue from whether or not Bitcoin mining is "allowed" or not.
Taniwha 4y ago
90% of bitcoin has already been mined, I'm sure it will function just as well as it will when it's 100% mined if that last 10% is left "in the ground" and we might save a glacier or two
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Logistically, and legislatively, that would be extremely difficult. That’s the White House saying you cannot run a piece of software. The enforcement mechanism would have to be so extraordinarily heavy-handed, and probably violate civil rights. It would take an act of Congress to stop mining, and this administration can barely tie its own on shoes.
socialismisok 4y ago
One hopes they successfully create said ban.
wonderwonder 4y ago
I understand why they might want to do it, but really not a fan of our government banning technologies.
yuan43 4y ago
Ridiculous. First, try to imagine the form this ban would take. Think about the specific language required to abolish proof-of-work computations without kneecapping the foundations of modern cryptography. I have yet to see anything remotely specific and plausible. Second, let's say said language can be constructed and that it threads the proverbial needle. Who cares? Its effect on Bitcoin would be to drive mining to other political jurisdictions. But electricity costs and political actions have been doing that for years now. If anything, a successful ban would merely further distribute proof-of-work mining around the globe and among clandestine operations within countries that have "banned" it. By making proof-of-work untenable at scale, governments will have only succeeded in setting Bitcoin back on its original path - greater distribution of hash power across a greater chunk of the world's geography and political boundaries.
- c7DJTLrn 4y ago
  Politicians don't understand cryptography. Theresa May tried to ban E2EE a few years ago.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > the specific language required to abolish proof-of-work computations without kneecapping the foundations of modern cryptography Trivial. Name Bitcoin and give the Treasury authority to restrict anything similar.
baazaa 4y ago
I feel like this is guaranteed to happen because everyone involved in the decision making can make a lot of money from it very easily. Easy to get caught insider-trading when it's shares and there's a broker, but buying up proof-of-stake currencies? This is a zero-risk windfall for politicians and you should invest accordingly.
- anonporridge 4y ago
  You could make an argument the opposite way too. If the US government came out with legislation strongly in support of bitcoin, they trade for the upside just as easily. And there's much more money to be made on the upside than the downside. And it's probably much safer to make the upside bet, because a) the PoS market is very dilute and contested, so there's no clear winner to bet on unlike the PoW market and b) you can ban bitcoin or PoW in the US, but the US can't control how other parts of the world treat it, which means you don't know exactly how the globally driven price of bitcoin is going to go based on the actions of the US alone. Down for sure, but not all the way to zero. Hell, we can see what happened when China banned PoW mining. Price went down temporarily, and then it roared back up.
superkuh 4y ago
The war on general purpose computing continues. But they'll always go after the things many people don't like first in order to smooth their attacks.
neonate 4y ago
https://archive.ph/3xvgD https://archive.ph/3xvgD
anonporridge 4y ago
If even authoritarian China can't effectively ban bitcoin mining, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/china-is-second-biggest-bitcoin-mining-hub-as-miners-go-underground.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/china-is-second-biggest-bitc..., I don't have a ton of hope for the US to succeed where they are actively failing. Though perhaps the hammer simply has not yet been forcefully swung. Like what we saw with drug prohibition, bans that can't be enforced and defy the will of a sufficient number of people tend to backfire in the form of nurturing organized crime and a general decrease of trust in the government in the population. Good governance needs to be careful to not declare bans it can't enforce.
willnonya 4y ago
I have to wonder what they believe grants them the authority to tell Americans they cannot use their computers to do math...
Cupertino95014 4y ago
People will just get around it? Not so fast. Let's compare this to large-scale pot growing inside your house. You think you're safe from helicopters and drones? All those grow lights use a lot of power. That is detectable, and I'm certain that a surveillance society like China would have a much easier time detecting it than we will. All those plants use water. Also easily detectable. There will be more heat created by all those plants. Easy to see with a drone. Merely buying all the supplies exposes you to police suspicion. Do people still do it? Yes, but they're now the mouse in a cat-and-mouse game.
jinpa_zangpo 4y ago
Instead of picking and choosing what types of energy use should be allowed, the government should determine what the environmental cost of all energy use is and apply that as a tax. A so-called "carbon tax." One would think that this is Economics 101, but the idea evades many intelligent people.
- ianai 4y ago
  Back in the earlier 2010s this was estimated (in an journal article I read) on the order of $16 USD per gallon of gas.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

159 points by malermeister 4y ago

MrMan 4y ago

need a carbon tax not this

throwayyy479087 4y ago

Good.

nitin05 4y ago

brobdingnagians 4y ago

Huh? That's not the President's job; how did we get to this point? If the President can ban a specific, commonly used algorithm for arbitrary reasons, then we are in for a wild ride.

nl 4y ago
Read the report: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-2022-Crypto-Assets-and-Climate-Report.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-202... The plan isn't "banning bitcoin". It's to consider regulation on high-energy usage crypto operations, and then "should these measures prove ineffective at reducing impacts, the Administration should explore executive actions, and Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining." It's unclear why you think this shouldn't be the Administration's role? If it is taking a significant proportion of power across multiple states and affecting power prices and grid stability it seems like it should at least something one branch of the federal government should have an interest in.
- jjulius 4y ago
  >The plan isn't "banning bitcoin". That phrase was not in OP's post, yet you're quoting them on it and then excoriating them for saying something that they didn't. They said: >... commonly used algorithm... Which is exactly how coins are mined! Which makes OP correct (sort of, they said "President" and not "Congress") because your own quoted comment says: >... Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining.
  - nl 4y ago
    >> >The plan isn't "banning bitcoin". > That phrase was not in OP's post, yet you're quoting them on it and then excoriating them for saying something that they didn't. They said: It was in their post when I responded and they edited to correct it. The edit window for my post has expired though.
- NotYourLawyer 4y ago
  Which constitutional power gives the president this ability?
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Which constitutional power gives the president this ability? Congress has delegated broad authority to the President with respect to energy, environment and financial services.
    - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
      Congress has delegated the authority for the president to ban a random technology? Citation needed. Honestly, would Congress itself even have that power?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Test0129 4y ago
    Chevron deference which like firearms and several other things is how they attack the constitution while keeping their hands clean. They will probably defer to the EPA, who will make a regulation based on their suggestion. This allows them to bypass congressional oversight at least until someone very rich manages to bring the case in front of the supreme court. Extremely common unfortunately.
  - MeltingAaah 4y ago
    You are aware that a government can make laws and change laws right? And also change the constitution right? Of course it could imply that it needa to go through certain channels but no one should assume that it literally meant 'the president will now say x and now x is the law'.
    - NotYourLawyer 4y ago
      Sure, if the required supermajority wants to change the constitution, go for it. We’re only talking about executive action because congress isn’t interested though.
kasey_junk 4y ago
It’s a clickbait headline that isn’t even backed up by the 2 paragraph puff piece it’s attached to. The actual report recommends development (not even mandatory) of low energy use “digital assets”.
bluescrn 4y ago
The future is increasingly centralised and authoritarian, it seems.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  This specific link does not contribute to that because it is pure speculation with no evidence.
- MeltingAaah 4y ago
  Because why? It's obvious that the money streams are under control of the state. Your sentiment indicate that Bitcoin should be okay because why exactly? The country doesn't want crypto that was and is clear since ever And I also brought this point up for the last 5 years.crypto is solving a problem people like you think they wanna solve without understanding that it's on purpose how it is. It's nothing to be fixed.
  - bluescrn 4y ago
    > "The country doesn't want crypto" Crypto may be wasteful nonsense and no real solution to anything. But that no reason to ban it, when we accept that capitalism allows vast amounts of wasteful behaviour in many ways, so long as people are prepared to pay the market rate for their wastefulness. If a government is elected with an explicit policy of a hard crackdown on wasteful energy use, it would surely have to extend way beyond crypto, and certainly affect those cooling mega-mansions and heating private swimming pools - but potentially even limit the power/performance of gaming hardware, domestic appliances, and power tools, amongst other things. But that's not what's happening here. IMHO, the post-Covid world needs to somehow look past its tribalism and rediscover the importance of freedom in it's many forms, and also look back more critically at the Covid response and related events around the globe. Covid has shown that there's a very high demand from an easily-terrified populace for centralised authoritarian power during a crisis. It has also shown that when that power is exercised, the resistance is likely to be minimal, and crushing that resistance causes little backlash beyond small outbursts of online anger. We now face a perpetual crisis - the 'climate emergency'. And we should all be concerned about attempted solutions imposed by such centralised authoritarian means, and even more concerned about things done claiming to be about the climate, but actually being ideological in nature.
Beltalowda 4y ago
"The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy recommended in a report" is not the same as "the president will [...]". Anyone can recommend or say anything, including The White House. It's still up to congress to vote for it. The President can issue an executive order, but nowhere that I can see in the report does it recommend that (it does not seem to recommend a ban at all).
MeltingAaah 4y ago
You should read up on other algorithm which were not allowed to be exported outside of USA. But just to be clear about your wishi washy argument: It's not arbitrary when they state a reason. And it's not just some algorithm. I'm also not sure what a difference it makes if you do something manually or a computer automatically if it's harming others you should be able to ban it. Like the action of moving your hand very fast into the face of someone else. Or consuming a lot of energy to guess a random text string faster than others. Btw. You should also advocate against Bitcoin. The chance that the climate change from Bitcoin is hurting you more than the benefit of Bitcoin is very high And if you made bank thanks to crypto, feel free to accept that jlyou only took the money you have now from others. One way or the other Bitcoin is garbage. And yes every crypto bro who exchanges crypto back to Fiat is not believing in crypto either.

nl 4y ago

This is the linked report: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-2022-Crypto-Assets-and-Climate-Report.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-202... I think this is good. Whether or not blockchain is a good thing, it's very clear that proof-of-stake is an adequate and energy efficient alternative.

bsaul 4y ago
has pos been deployed in the wild at large scale yet ?
- pawelduda 4y ago
  Ethereum switching to PoS in 5 days, and a bunch of large blockchains have been running PoS (with various consensus mechanisms) for quite some time now.
- sudodude 4y ago
  Ethereum is about to transition in a fortnightt after years of development and testing.
- nl 4y ago
  Yes. Most L1 chains outside Bitcoin and Ethereum use PoS or variants of it. For example Solana, Cardano, Polkadot, Polygon, Avalanche and NEAR all are proof-of-stake chains. Ripple has another non-PoW mechanism too.
- lloeki 4y ago
  ETH Beacon Chain uses PoS, shipped on December 1, 2020: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/beacon-chain/ https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/beacon-chain/ ETH Mainnet is due to replace PoW by PoS by merging with Beacon Chain this September: https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/ https://ethereum.org/en/upgrades/merge/
spywaregorilla 4y ago
Prediction: One day western countries (or maybe some other faction) will prohibit transactions with certain entities. Many (most?) large stakeholders will need to abide and not approve those transactions (because they're large public entities). People will attempt to run slashers against the regulated stakeholders because they're not doing their job right and just kind of hope that in a system that only works because wealthy people would refuse to lose money otherwise; that the wealthy people would be willing to lose money. So the rich regulated forks will say fuck you and a fork will be the only solution that schisms the chain into a regulated fork where the rich people maintain a truth hat they've never done wrong and a non regulated fork where they have. People like off ramps to actual dollars so the regulated one will retain value while the other one drops rapidly. Stakeholders that think its cool to help people dodge sanctions will just lose their stakes by means of PoS because they're not maintaining "The Truth" in the regulated fork that they don't approve of and by declining market value in the fork that they do. And in one glorious moment the PoS ecosystem will kick out all the decentralized dreamers

flarg 4y ago

Doing so would certainly assuage climate change concerns without any huge damage to bitcoin itself, which has enough coins and coon subdivisions to operate successfully. Hopefully bitcoin will see the light and terminate further coin generation.

spywaregorilla 4y ago
You can't use bitcoin without coin generation. Coin generation is what enables transactions at all.
- red_trumpet 4y ago
  Afaiu, generation of new coins is set to stop at some point in the future. This will not change the power consumption though, miners are still required to process transactions (which might become more expensive, because miners don't get "free" coins anymore)
- cableshaft 4y ago
  Well, not exactly. There's a hard limit to the coin generation. Although it won't hit that limit until around 2140[1]. Miners will still be incentivized to keep the network going thanks to transaction fees at that point. Assuming there's still a civilization and computers at that point, which seems to be a bit up in the air to me (although not because of bitcoin, because of several environmental tipping points we're reaching[2]). [1]: https://www.investopedia.com/bitcoin-halving-4843769 https://www.investopedia.com/bitcoin-halving-4843769 [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on...
danuker 4y ago
A much fairer law would tax all emissions. But the fossil lobby threw PoW under the bus as a red herring.

itsoktocry 4y ago

I'm curious what states like Wyoming, who run advertorials on Bloomberg TV placing themselves as a crypto haven, will think of this. And Florida too, where all the VCs moved. More divisiveness!

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

danuker 4y ago

Ah yes, let's ban random uses of electricity, instead of addressing the root cause: actual emissions being taxed or limited.

zbrozek 4y ago
I don't know what legal avenue will be taken should the federal government pursue a ban, but that's probably not it. As you point out, that would have unpleasant slippery slope consequences. At the same time, it's pretty obvious that something needs to change. As-is, currency mining is an effective means to leverage low electricity prices around the world and is very-often more lucrative than producing things we actually use to improve our standard of living. Suppose you impose carbon taxes, you'll (often) be preferentially biasing towards mining over e.g., aluminum or glass manufacturing, driving physical goods shortages. And even if the entire grid were renewables, you haven't really solved the "it's more profitable to make digital goods than physical ones" problem. So you search for regulation that is biased against the digital currency but not against uses of energy. Maybe a digital currency transaction fee, like a sales tax, that puts a ton of drag and downward pressure on the currency? It could be huge, and it could be modulated by the energy use that any given currency represents or the CPI. Of course you have the cooperation problem; taxing the life out of a currency in one country is only modestly useful. It's a thorny problem.
- chii 4y ago
  > you haven't really solved the "it's more profitable to make digital goods than physical ones" problem. why isn't digital goods just as useful? I dont think you can just assume that making physical goods is _always_ going to be better. Let bitcoin miners mine. tax carbon emissions from energy usage, and let the free market choose the right allocations based on prices, demand and supply. The free market works when externalities are accounted for using regulation.
  - zbrozek 4y ago
    I don't think this is a seriously considered question. Digital goods are obviously less useful (or at least less important). Physical goods feed, clothe, and shelter populations. If digital goods crowd out physical ones, even to a small degree, you have a serious problem.

323 4y ago

It will not happen. The Bitcoin lobby is already to strong in the US. Crypto firms are among the top Democrat donors. Crypto CEO SBF plans on donating $100mil - $1bil in the 2024 election, and calls political donation the highest form of return of investment that exists: > He was also one of just a handful of donors who spent $10 million-plus backing President Joe Biden in 2020, and in the last year, he’s hired a network of political operatives and spent tens of millions more shaping Democratic House primaries. It was a shocking wave of spending that looked like it could remake the Democratic Party bench in Washington, candidate by candidate. Looking ahead to the 2024 election, he has said he could spend anywhere from $100 million to $1 billion. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/04/democratic-megadonor-sam-bankman-fried-00049048 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/04/democratic-megadono...

PontifexMinimus 4y ago
> political donation the highest form of return of investment that exists Which is why it should be banned.
- nordsieck 4y ago
  > Which is why it should be banned. Functionally, this isn't possible. If the open method is banned, people will start using layers of indirection. It's fundamentally a problem with democracy.
  - TomSwirly 4y ago
    "There's no point in passing laws, because people will get around them." Why does anyone believe this?
    - nordsieck 4y ago
      > "There's no point in passing laws, because people will get around them." > Why does anyone believe this? Good laws are great. And there are plenty of them. But passing bad laws just because "we need to do something" is worse than doing nothing.

gwnywg 4y ago

Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining,” so how would they enforce this? by running escrow on every single server to ensure this particular algorithm is not executed..? or would they simply measure energy consumption by the server and demand proof that the load is legitimate?

perlgeek 4y ago
Companies might simply have to sign statements that they aren't doing forbidden mining, and in doubt auditors are sent.
- danuker 4y ago
  So, private citizens are not subject to this potential law?
- gwnywg 4y ago
  How would they audit and who would pay for it?
  - liketochill 4y ago
    Where does companies revenue come from? Do they have servers in their data centers or obvious mining rigs?
    - gwnywg 4y ago
      Where I live you don't declare where revenue comes from, tax man only requires to declare how much revenue was made. Maybe it's not how it works in US? On the other hand I did not know there is specialized hardware you can only use for mining cryptocurrency, this would be clear evidence.
plankers 4y ago
enforcement would probably happen at the level of the power utility. large mining operations have agreements with utilities to buy power at wholesale prices, the utilities know what the power is being used for the real beneficiaries of this would be small miners (small business owners?) who either use their own locally generated power or the residential grid. oh, and all the people who don't mine in the US

user3939382 4y ago

Speculation warning. If their tax collection/law enforcement interest outweighed the part of the financial sector invested in Bitcoin they would have banned it during the Russian sanctions which provided perfect cover. Instead, after a lot of noise about banning it, they “commissioned a study” which is well known in politics as “we have to save face/pretend to do something for optics”. Wall St wins, this train has left the station. This is coming from someone who tracked bitcoin since $0.25 and was, to my poverty, convinced that it would be legislatively squashed the second it got on the radar of DC or the Fed.

danuker 4y ago
On the other hand, the government moves slowly. I argue that, since mining is done in the US, mining is clearly providing more value than the electricity used, since it continues. The power use is just an excuse. Of course, the price of electricity should reflect its externalities (i.e. greenhouse gas emissions). That way, the market could find a better solution. But the fossil lobby has got deep pockets.

jmyeet 4y ago

Given the impending energy crisis in Europe this winter, expect the EU to follow suit. As much as advocates tout crypto as being extra-governmental, it would honestly take very little to effectively cripple crypto. For example, a ban on financial institutions that want access to the US financial system from dealing in crypto. When energy becomes a sufficiently important political concern it’s going to be a huge problem for PoW crypto.

andrewinardeer 4y ago
Why not mine on renewables? Throw a solar panel array up, maybe a wind turbine or hydro?
- MeltingAaah 4y ago
  Great idea! Instead of Bitcoin just consuming energy and producing hardware garbage Asics and consuming chip capacity, let's also eat it solar panels which could just create normal energy for non Bitcoin use. Bitcoin is not becoming green just because you use renewable energy.
- 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
  If we are investing in renewables, that investment should first and foremost be used to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. If we replace fossil fuels and there is spare energy left, fine. Until then is crypto really a reasonable priority?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

azeemh 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

drexlspivey 4y ago

Shouldn’t free market take care of this? If electricity prices go to $0.2/kWh you’re losing money when mining and you turn of your ASICs.

cableshaft 4y ago
The free market is waiting until there's only a few puddles of freshwater left and charging a million dollars a sip, as the Colorado River is proving[1] (or overfished waters, or all sorts of things). It's terrible at being proactive, it only benefits a company for exploiting a resource until it's gone, and ratcheting up the price until it is[2]. [1]: https://utahrivers.org/blog-post/2021/12/13/new-report-upper-basin-states-overusing-colorado-river-water https://utahrivers.org/blog-post/2021/12/13/new-report-upper... [2]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2016/02/09/unless-it-changes-capitalism-will-starve-humanity-by-2050/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/drewhansen/2016/02/09/unless-it...
- highwaylights 4y ago
  The free market as a religion is a phenomenon that’s pretty unique to the US, though starting to metastasise around the world too. American polarism (e.g. if you suggest there’s a single negative consequence to capitalism you’re automatically a communist) is spreading at the same time. I think we should all be concerned about the consequences.
- someguydave 4y ago
  California environmentalist activists on the Costal Commission refuse to allow desalinization which is what is truly threatening the Colorado river.
- radford-neal 4y ago
  "The free market is ... terrible at being proactive, it only benefits a company for exploiting a resource until it's gone ..." To the extent that this happens, it's not unique to a free market economy. The Soviet Union was notable for causing environmental devastation. Theoretically, if real interest rates are sufficiently high, it might be profitable to, for example, over-fish some species to extinction, since the present value of future catches declines exponentially with time, according to the interest rate. However, for the past few decades, real interest rates have been at historically low levels, so it's hard to see this as an explanation for any current short-sighted behaviour.

morpheos137 4y ago

It would make more sense to block fiat on and off ramps to Bitcoin since its only uses are gambling (speculative investment) and money laundering. Very, very few people who own bitcoin mined it themselves.

andrewinardeer 4y ago
Sarcasm, right?

motohagiography 4y ago

Bitcoin mining converts energy into currency so that instead of having to transmit the energy from where it is generated to where it is needed, you transmit the fungible currency that can be used to buy things in in other regional markets. The anti-cryptocurrency movement isn't ignorant, it's mendacious and cynical as I'm begining to think they really appear to imagine on a psychological level that everyone else is their subject. This regime uses ideology as a kind of mass neutralizing force where almost everyone is speaking in elliptical gibberish, and even principled people get tarpitted by challenging it, and then a small number of activated people encounter no resistance to locking down the means of production (energy, currency, etc), making them impossible to dig out. A bitcoin ban isn't merely stupid, it's a meta-evil level attempt to sabotage the development of our entire species and secure the reins for these activated few. If that sounds like a conspiracy, consider how many people work directly for the Whitehouse, and it's less than a couple of thousand, with a core policy group of fewer than a couple of hundred, working playbooks provided by their party, which is a machine for working ideological playbooks. Some of the same would be the case with the other team, but this particular playbook I've seen before. I would consider a ban to be an attack on the private economy.

e63f67dd-065b 4y ago
This is quite a silly view. Bitcoin mining doesn’t convert energy into currency, it’s using computation as a consensus mechanism for a distributed ledger. This consensus can be achieved many other ways, as seen by the myriad of other coins popping up with their own mechanisms. Proof of work is the most wasteful way of doing so. It creates an infinite race of seeing who has more compute, as it actively rewards those who consume more energy. You’re seeing things that aren’t there in both sides of the argument. I have no idea what the last few sentences are supposed to mean, but bitcoin dying is not the end of the human species, that’s just silly.
- motohagiography 4y ago
  I'm not sure this response is from a mind equipped to apprehend the adequate or necessary level of abstraction to address the issue, but it bears addressing because it is representative of the quality of argument made in favour of bitcoin bans and regulations. The crux of bitcoin is sound money tied to compute costs - which directly are energy costs. It rewards people who find and apply sources of energy they can convert into compute wherever they may be. I've found some people say they don't understand things when doing so would create a conflict with their ability to sustain dissonance. My comment wasn't for them, it was for people with the need and ability to understand the macro dynamics of the policies that impact us all, and that there is a view that is upsteam of all this anti-crypto hysteria.

aaron695 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Gordonjcp 4y ago

While I agree with banning the turning of as much power as Malaysia uses in a year into pretend money, I don't think this is going to work. How do they plan on doing it?

LatteLazy 4y ago

I'm confused what exactly allows a president to ban certain uses of electricity? Could a president similarly ban computer games? Or (computer accessed) porn?

MeltingAaah 4y ago
Same laws which allow similar things. Greater good for society would be a good reason. Climate change laws as well. You can't buy lead paint anymore as well. Why do you assume a country can't create new laws? There is also no logical base system which would only allow certain laws to be allowed.
bluescrn 4y ago
If they can ban the internal combustion engine and potentially leave large swathes of the working class unable to travel to work, they could certainly ban energy-hungry high-end gaming machines. The elite will still be able to enjoy private jets and superyachts, though (How else would they travel to climate conferences?)
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  Has the president unilaterally banned ICEs?
BuyMyBitcoins 4y ago
I’m going to get partisan for this post, but Blue Team seems far more willing to commit itself towards doing something even if it seems like they don’t actually have the authority to do it. The student loan forgiveness from the executive branch is a good example of this. It has been announced, but it seems like only Congress actually has the authority to do it. But the point is to get it out there and count on political pressure to make it be realized. If they want to get something done, and some interpretation of the law or constitution allows it, they go with it. If a court finds it unconstitutional they regroup and try again, but their M.O. appears to be act first and let the courts decide later whether or not it was something they were allowed to do.

bilsbie 4y ago

Why don’t we provide more electricity instead? It’s like we can’t build things anymore.

eimrine 4y ago
Because we afraid of nuclear energy. There are lots of fossil fuel fans masquerading as green activists who claims that nuclear is kind of no eco-friendly. And yes, the possibility of building great things is decreasing nowadays since the best minds are working on letting us to see more ads.
MeltingAaah 4y ago
Why? Because right now everything we do creates more CO2. Producing more energy means more CO2. Even producing more solar panels creates more CO2. The problem is CO2 and climate change. your and mine climate change. It will cost us less to avoid producing the mass amount of energy for Bitcoin than trying to make it real CO2 neutral which is very very far away
cesarb 4y ago
Because PoW is designed to use as much electricity as possible. If electricity becomes cheaper (as a consequence of providing more electricity), PoW miners will simply use more of it.

rufusroflpunch 4y ago

I read the WH report and my impression, despite the one line everyone is citing, is that Washington is slowly working its way to justifying acceptance of proof of work, despite whatever reservations they have, because its would be almost impossible, practically or politically, to ban it.

MeltingAaah 4y ago
It's easy to ban. Why wouldn't it be? This makes it much harder for companies to get proper electric contracts, you can snitch on companies, you can audit them etc. It might not be able to ban small setups but for sure makes a big dent in crypto companies. Official ones.
blantonl 4y ago
Impossible? You are kidding, right? The United States has a outstanding history of banning things. Alcohol. Drugs. /s
- BurningFrog 4y ago
  Sure, but both things were widely available during the ban. [fixed weird typo]
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > both things started widely available during the ban Also, and I thought this was obvious, alcohol and drugs are either more fun and popular or more fun and addicting. That combination of wide and deep makes them insidious and sympathetic. Bitcoin is neither.
    - BurningFrog 4y ago
      Bitcoin is money, which is how you can buy all the other fun/popular/addicting things.
      - 4y ago

seydor 4y ago

IF this happens the transformation of crypto to trinkets for the rich is complete. Whoever keeps taking it seriously will be a fool

logicalmonster 4y ago

Putting aside the technical impossibility of banning mining, I'd ask a moral question. If it's widely believed that monopolies are bad, why is this proposal to support the government money monopoly good? Governments that are inflating their own currencies to hell and impoverishing their own citizens are trying to FUD and diminish a potential competitor that cannot possibly be hyperinflated. The suffering and human misery that is going to come from government destroying the currency with no alternatives available is far worse than even the worst climate change doomsday predictions.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> the technical impossibility of banning mining These charges of open lawlessness in tax evasion and money laundering, largely by millionaires, is why we see popular support for such measures. Also, a ban on proof of work is far from a ban on cryptocurrency, web3 or DeFi.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  "Banning mining" has literally nothing to do with whether or not legal taxes are paid.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > has literally nothing to do with whether or not legal taxes are paid Someone claiming “technical impossibility” in banning mining implies the government can’t catch them mining illegally. Most criminals don’t pay tax on their gains.
    - logicalmonster 4y ago
      > Someone claiming “technical impossibility” in banning mining implies the government can’t catch them mining illegally. I think my statement is pretty correct. Short of something like cutting off power or global communication, you can't really technically prevent Bitcoin mining by decree. Of course, anything that exists in physical space can be jailed/shot/seized/destroyed, so your statement is also correct. Goody. > Most criminals don’t pay tax on their gains. It goes without saying, but somebody who doesn't pay tax on their gains is considered a criminal by our system. PS: I don't want to get into a mind-reading session with you, but your beef seems to be with rich people who you consider to not pay enough taxes. That is a wholly separate issue from whether or not Bitcoin mining is "allowed" or not.

Taniwha 4y ago

90% of bitcoin has already been mined, I'm sure it will function just as well as it will when it's 100% mined if that last 10% is left "in the ground" and we might save a glacier or two

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Logistically, and legislatively, that would be extremely difficult. That’s the White House saying you cannot run a piece of software. The enforcement mechanism would have to be so extraordinarily heavy-handed, and probably violate civil rights. It would take an act of Congress to stop mining, and this administration can barely tie its own on shoes.

socialismisok 4y ago

One hopes they successfully create said ban.

wonderwonder 4y ago

I understand why they might want to do it, but really not a fan of our government banning technologies.

yuan43 4y ago

Ridiculous. First, try to imagine the form this ban would take. Think about the specific language required to abolish proof-of-work computations without kneecapping the foundations of modern cryptography. I have yet to see anything remotely specific and plausible. Second, let's say said language can be constructed and that it threads the proverbial needle. Who cares? Its effect on Bitcoin would be to drive mining to other political jurisdictions. But electricity costs and political actions have been doing that for years now. If anything, a successful ban would merely further distribute proof-of-work mining around the globe and among clandestine operations within countries that have "banned" it. By making proof-of-work untenable at scale, governments will have only succeeded in setting Bitcoin back on its original path - greater distribution of hash power across a greater chunk of the world's geography and political boundaries.

c7DJTLrn 4y ago
Politicians don't understand cryptography. Theresa May tried to ban E2EE a few years ago.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> the specific language required to abolish proof-of-work computations without kneecapping the foundations of modern cryptography Trivial. Name Bitcoin and give the Treasury authority to restrict anything similar.

baazaa 4y ago

I feel like this is guaranteed to happen because everyone involved in the decision making can make a lot of money from it very easily. Easy to get caught insider-trading when it's shares and there's a broker, but buying up proof-of-stake currencies? This is a zero-risk windfall for politicians and you should invest accordingly.

anonporridge 4y ago
You could make an argument the opposite way too. If the US government came out with legislation strongly in support of bitcoin, they trade for the upside just as easily. And there's much more money to be made on the upside than the downside. And it's probably much safer to make the upside bet, because a) the PoS market is very dilute and contested, so there's no clear winner to bet on unlike the PoW market and b) you can ban bitcoin or PoW in the US, but the US can't control how other parts of the world treat it, which means you don't know exactly how the globally driven price of bitcoin is going to go based on the actions of the US alone. Down for sure, but not all the way to zero. Hell, we can see what happened when China banned PoW mining. Price went down temporarily, and then it roared back up.

superkuh 4y ago

The war on general purpose computing continues. But they'll always go after the things many people don't like first in order to smooth their attacks.

neonate 4y ago

https://archive.ph/3xvgD https://archive.ph/3xvgD

anonporridge 4y ago

If even authoritarian China can't effectively ban bitcoin mining, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/china-is-second-biggest-bitcoin-mining-hub-as-miners-go-underground.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/18/china-is-second-biggest-bitc..., I don't have a ton of hope for the US to succeed where they are actively failing. Though perhaps the hammer simply has not yet been forcefully swung. Like what we saw with drug prohibition, bans that can't be enforced and defy the will of a sufficient number of people tend to backfire in the form of nurturing organized crime and a general decrease of trust in the government in the population. Good governance needs to be careful to not declare bans it can't enforce.

willnonya 4y ago

I have to wonder what they believe grants them the authority to tell Americans they cannot use their computers to do math...

Cupertino95014 4y ago

People will just get around it? Not so fast. Let's compare this to large-scale pot growing inside your house. You think you're safe from helicopters and drones? All those grow lights use a lot of power. That is detectable, and I'm certain that a surveillance society like China would have a much easier time detecting it than we will. All those plants use water. Also easily detectable. There will be more heat created by all those plants. Easy to see with a drone. Merely buying all the supplies exposes you to police suspicion. Do people still do it? Yes, but they're now the mouse in a cat-and-mouse game.

jinpa_zangpo 4y ago

Instead of picking and choosing what types of energy use should be allowed, the government should determine what the environmental cost of all energy use is and apply that as a tax. A so-called "carbon tax." One would think that this is Economics 101, but the idea evades many intelligent people.

ianai 4y ago
Back in the earlier 2010s this was estimated (in an journal article I read) on the order of $16 USD per gallon of gas.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]