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> The Bitcoin lobby is already to strong in the US. Banning PoW would benefit Bitcoin; it's the main thing preventing it from becoming more popular right now.

> The Bitcoin lobby is already to strong in the US. Banning PoW would benefit Bitcoin; it's the main thing preventing it from becoming more popular right now. Having the government force the Bitcoin community to do what they've been unable to do themselves would be the best of all worlds for them.

danuker 4y ago
Even better would be to tax all industries fairly, according to their greenhouse gas emissions. Or even energy production directly. The US is the second largest polluter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_person#/media/File:20210626_Variwide_chart_of_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...
- kitten_mittens_ 4y ago
  The third per capita by your link.
  - mkl 4y ago
    Only in the graph, which shows a subset of countries. In the main list it's 11th by the 2018 column.
  - danuker 4y ago
    If you look at area (pollution per capita x population), it's the second.
- lettergram 4y ago
  > Even better would be to tax all industries fairly, according to their greenhouse gas emissions. I mean, that would mean exponentially more expensive food… https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086822 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086822 My take is we need to allow unlimited emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen (reduction in other stuff though actually toxic). It increases food growth (plants love carbon) and arable land and decreases poverty. Plus cheaper energy means improved quality of life and technological advancement. We have centuries of known fuel sources and can move to nuclear any time we wish. A carbon tax effectively increases human suffering for the hope of reduced temperatures. In reality, the cost is passed to consumers and there’s no indication it will reduce global temperatures.
  - freshpots 4y ago
    "My take is we need to allow unlimited emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen (reduction in other stuff though actually toxic). It increases food growth (plants love carbon) and arable land and decreases poverty." Your take is so misinformed that we all have to wonder how you could have twisted yourself into such a position CO2 is the primary driver of climate change and will do far more harm to these plants/crops that 'love' excess CO2 than you seem to understand. https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
    - lettergram 4y ago
      > Your take is so misinformed that we all have to wonder how you could have twisted yourself into such a position Having worked on climate models and read many papers I have become skeptical we know the manner or degree humans have an effect. Those with a statistics background should look at the data honestly. We have relatively poor data (very sparse, unknown error rate, high variance, measurements taken with different mechanisms, etc) that can’t be validated. With correlations abounding in every which way. We also have a precision problem when we look at global temperatures in the past, we simply don’t know when we are taking a 1-5% change in temp. You cannot prove carbon does absolutely anything. We have a correlation not causation. It could be natural carbon increases with temperatures. It could be our measurement mechanism is just wrong. It could be plant growth will expand to meet a new homeostasis with the carbon (imo highly likely). From the same measurements we use to show the Earth is warming we can show carbon levels have been higher previously on Earth. > CO2 is the primary driver of climate change and will do far more harm to these plants/crops that 'love' excess CO2 than you seem to understand. North America was covered in a sheet of ice until a few thousand years ago. The largest desert in Africa was a full of life during the same time period. Both disappeared before the industrial revolution and we have been seeing carbon increase exponentially ever since; as visible in the linked website https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm Now once we cover that, the question is what too do? We know cheap energy directly correlates with quality of life. Easy thought exercise - is your life easier walking or driving a car? Is it easier with a wood burning stove or a gas oven? The argument we should reduce something that we know improves life and remove it requires a high level of proof. The threshold hasn’t been met. Even if it had, is China going to cut emissions? Do you really think wealthy will? No. They won’t. China will expand and continue to produce more overtaking the US in every category - they’ll use the cheap energy we aren’t using. The US will be destitute due to us cutting all energy production. Now what? Is the world better off? Germany is doing that right now, let’s check back in a couple years and see how that goes… My point is that (1) we don’t have solid enough evidence to reduce the quality of life in our civilization and (2) even if we had said evidence, we couldn’t meaningfully make an impact- tax or no tax. So you’ll have all the downside, with no gain.
- eli 4y ago
  What if you tax them based on the ratio of greenhouse gas to utility of the product? So still ban bitcoin in other words, but let people hear their homes.
- hx833001 4y ago
  Carbon dioxide is not pollution.
  - blooalien 4y ago
    It is, and isn't. Climate is a complex system, and CO² interacts with that system in a myriad of interesting ways. One of those ways is contributing to the whole "climate change" issue that so many climate scientists are concerned about, and that's a big honkin' part of what's causing the increased extreme weather issues, droughts, floods, etc, and directly contributing to wildfire dangers, among other fun stuff it's a big part of… On the other hand, if not for the drought issue affecting plant life in really negative ways, CO² is a thing plants happen to like, so there can be some benefits (to plants … in places not prone to drought). Still, in this particular case, the benefits do not appear to outweigh the dangers of continuing with "business as usual" as humans are so fond of doing.
    - hx833001 4y ago
      Carbon dioxide is the source of all life on Earth.
- eric_cc 4y ago
  Yes! Give more money to the government! Letting the government steal more money to spend on their agenda is always a fantastic idea!
  - blooalien 4y ago
    My problem with exactly that is that governments in general seem to be keen to spend money quite freely on making, participating in, and/or funding various wars and other military spending, yet are loathe to spend more than they absolutely must on things like education, infrastructure, and other things which most directly benefit their own people. It's the people's money they're spending, so logically they should be spending it most freely "at home" to it's own citizens' direct benefit instead of abroad. Not to say that we shouldn't support our allies in times of need, but … priorities?
  - ahtihn 4y ago
    The federal government's budget is completely unrelated to tax income. If the government wants to spend more money, it doesn't need to raise taxes it can just increase the deficit. More taxes just means less deficit.
    - sdenton4 4y ago
      Or just print more money...
  - danuker 4y ago
    You could cut other taxes. Or you could remove the received funds from existence (such as by paying down government debt). But fact is, greenhouse gases have the potential to end humanity, and the US is not addressing them enough.
    - AndrewUnmuted 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ben_w 4y ago
Bitcoin is by design not capable of being a major payment mechanism. Stuff on top of bitcoin might, but at that point the natural question is “then why bother when bitcoin?”
323 4y ago
I agree with you that PoW is the biggest threat to Bitcoin and that it will be the thing that takes it down, if not solved. But it's irrelevant, the community is already stuck in this place.
- api 4y ago
  The other crypto stuff seems like it’s designed for money or utility (or scammy crap). Bitcoin on the other hand seems like a religion. All hail the great Satoshi. Thou shalt not change but one #define.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    It's definitely a cliché to point it out but... religions themselves are pretty scammy and money-oriented in their own right.
    - ipaddr 4y ago
      So are the biggest charities.
wickoff 4y ago
Currently the immutability of Bitcoin is its core value proposition. Once that's gone, it becomes just another another altcoin, so the community will fight against the move to PoS.
sshine 4y ago
> Banning PoW would benefit Bitcoin Since Bitcoin relies on PoW, banning PoW effectively bans mining Bitcoin. On the surface, why that would make Bitcoin more popular is nonsensical, but I see two interpretations, and I’m guessing you mean the second one: 1) Banning PoW mining in the US, like they did in China, severely limits industrial-scale Bitcoin mining in another big part of the world, lowering the total mining incentive, and moving mining out to places where people don’t object to it and where electricity is cheap and in excess: this somewhat lowers the total hash rate, conflicts less with our growing energy demand in populated areas, but more significantly makes the environmental cost more abstract to people and thus easier to swallow. It’s a lot more upsetting to see a power plant down the river mining Bitcoin than knowing they come from somewhere called “the cloud”. 2) Banning PoW mining in the US could somehow incentivise towards a PoS transition, like with Ethereum. I don’t see that happening for Bitcoin. Sorry.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  IMO Moving from Bitcoin to e.g. Ethereum is akin to banning ICE engines and moving to EVs
  - eric_cc 4y ago
    > IMO Moving from Bitcoin to e.g. Ethereum is akin to banning ICE engines and moving to EVs You have a lot to learn then because your analogy is weak. PoW vs PoS debate is one of decentralization, power, democratization and control. As for bitcoin being dated: it’s ossification is intentional. It is, by design, a predictable and reliable monetary system.
    - couchand 4y ago
      > a predictable and reliable monetary system. Now that's funny!
      - eric_cc 4y ago
        What is unpredictable or unreliable about the monetary policy of bitcoin? In 2028, how many new US dollars will enter circulation? How many bitcoin?
cookie_monsta 4y ago
> Banning PoW would benefit Bitcoin; it's the main thing preventing it from becoming more popular right now. It would be interesting to see some real numbers on that claim. For me, much bigger would be volatile value, lack of places to spend it, weekly stories about people losing life savings because off coding errors and whatnot and just generally that it seems to be an interesting solution to a problem I don't have. PoW is in there somewhere, but nowhere near the top.
rufusroflpunch 4y ago
No. The average person (or even crypto user) doesn’t know anything about the difference between consensus algorithms and that is certainly not stopping growth. Also Bitcoin will 100% not remove proof of work ever. The overwhelming majority of node operators would not agree to that, ever. It goes against the ethos of Bitcoin. Proof of work is part of the social contract, right up there with 21 million hard cap and users running their own nodes.

danuker 4y ago

Even better would be to tax all industries fairly, according to their greenhouse gas emissions. Or even energy production directly. The US is the second largest polluter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_person#/media/File:20210626_Variwide_chart_of_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita_by_country.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

kitten_mittens_ 4y ago
The third per capita by your link.
- mkl 4y ago
  Only in the graph, which shows a subset of countries. In the main list it's 11th by the 2018 column.
- danuker 4y ago
  If you look at area (pollution per capita x population), it's the second.
lettergram 4y ago
> Even better would be to tax all industries fairly, according to their greenhouse gas emissions. I mean, that would mean exponentially more expensive food… https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086822 https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/03/1086822 My take is we need to allow unlimited emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen (reduction in other stuff though actually toxic). It increases food growth (plants love carbon) and arable land and decreases poverty. Plus cheaper energy means improved quality of life and technological advancement. We have centuries of known fuel sources and can move to nuclear any time we wish. A carbon tax effectively increases human suffering for the hope of reduced temperatures. In reality, the cost is passed to consumers and there’s no indication it will reduce global temperatures.
- freshpots 4y ago
  "My take is we need to allow unlimited emissions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen (reduction in other stuff though actually toxic). It increases food growth (plants love carbon) and arable land and decreases poverty." Your take is so misinformed that we all have to wonder how you could have twisted yourself into such a position CO2 is the primary driver of climate change and will do far more harm to these plants/crops that 'love' excess CO2 than you seem to understand. https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm https://skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
  - lettergram 4y ago
    > Your take is so misinformed that we all have to wonder how you could have twisted yourself into such a position Having worked on climate models and read many papers I have become skeptical we know the manner or degree humans have an effect. Those with a statistics background should look at the data honestly. We have relatively poor data (very sparse, unknown error rate, high variance, measurements taken with different mechanisms, etc) that can’t be validated. With correlations abounding in every which way. We also have a precision problem when we look at global temperatures in the past, we simply don’t know when we are taking a 1-5% change in temp. You cannot prove carbon does absolutely anything. We have a correlation not causation. It could be natural carbon increases with temperatures. It could be our measurement mechanism is just wrong. It could be plant growth will expand to meet a new homeostasis with the carbon (imo highly likely). From the same measurements we use to show the Earth is warming we can show carbon levels have been higher previously on Earth. > CO2 is the primary driver of climate change and will do far more harm to these plants/crops that 'love' excess CO2 than you seem to understand. North America was covered in a sheet of ice until a few thousand years ago. The largest desert in Africa was a full of life during the same time period. Both disappeared before the industrial revolution and we have been seeing carbon increase exponentially ever since; as visible in the linked website https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm Now once we cover that, the question is what too do? We know cheap energy directly correlates with quality of life. Easy thought exercise - is your life easier walking or driving a car? Is it easier with a wood burning stove or a gas oven? The argument we should reduce something that we know improves life and remove it requires a high level of proof. The threshold hasn’t been met. Even if it had, is China going to cut emissions? Do you really think wealthy will? No. They won’t. China will expand and continue to produce more overtaking the US in every category - they’ll use the cheap energy we aren’t using. The US will be destitute due to us cutting all energy production. Now what? Is the world better off? Germany is doing that right now, let’s check back in a couple years and see how that goes… My point is that (1) we don’t have solid enough evidence to reduce the quality of life in our civilization and (2) even if we had said evidence, we couldn’t meaningfully make an impact- tax or no tax. So you’ll have all the downside, with no gain.
eli 4y ago
What if you tax them based on the ratio of greenhouse gas to utility of the product? So still ban bitcoin in other words, but let people hear their homes.
hx833001 4y ago
Carbon dioxide is not pollution.
- blooalien 4y ago
  It is, and isn't. Climate is a complex system, and CO² interacts with that system in a myriad of interesting ways. One of those ways is contributing to the whole "climate change" issue that so many climate scientists are concerned about, and that's a big honkin' part of what's causing the increased extreme weather issues, droughts, floods, etc, and directly contributing to wildfire dangers, among other fun stuff it's a big part of… On the other hand, if not for the drought issue affecting plant life in really negative ways, CO² is a thing plants happen to like, so there can be some benefits (to plants … in places not prone to drought). Still, in this particular case, the benefits do not appear to outweigh the dangers of continuing with "business as usual" as humans are so fond of doing.
  - hx833001 4y ago
    Carbon dioxide is the source of all life on Earth.
eric_cc 4y ago
Yes! Give more money to the government! Letting the government steal more money to spend on their agenda is always a fantastic idea!
- blooalien 4y ago
  My problem with exactly that is that governments in general seem to be keen to spend money quite freely on making, participating in, and/or funding various wars and other military spending, yet are loathe to spend more than they absolutely must on things like education, infrastructure, and other things which most directly benefit their own people. It's the people's money they're spending, so logically they should be spending it most freely "at home" to it's own citizens' direct benefit instead of abroad. Not to say that we shouldn't support our allies in times of need, but … priorities?
- ahtihn 4y ago
  The federal government's budget is completely unrelated to tax income. If the government wants to spend more money, it doesn't need to raise taxes it can just increase the deficit. More taxes just means less deficit.
  - sdenton4 4y ago
    Or just print more money...
- danuker 4y ago
  You could cut other taxes. Or you could remove the received funds from existence (such as by paying down government debt). But fact is, greenhouse gases have the potential to end humanity, and the US is not addressing them enough.
  - AndrewUnmuted 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ben_w 4y ago

Bitcoin is by design not capable of being a major payment mechanism. Stuff on top of bitcoin might, but at that point the natural question is “then why bother when bitcoin?”

323 4y ago

I agree with you that PoW is the biggest threat to Bitcoin and that it will be the thing that takes it down, if not solved. But it's irrelevant, the community is already stuck in this place.

api 4y ago
The other crypto stuff seems like it’s designed for money or utility (or scammy crap). Bitcoin on the other hand seems like a religion. All hail the great Satoshi. Thou shalt not change but one #define.
- Bakary 4y ago
  It's definitely a cliché to point it out but... religions themselves are pretty scammy and money-oriented in their own right.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    So are the biggest charities.

wickoff 4y ago

Currently the immutability of Bitcoin is its core value proposition. Once that's gone, it becomes just another another altcoin, so the community will fight against the move to PoS.

sshine 4y ago

> Banning PoW would benefit Bitcoin Since Bitcoin relies on PoW, banning PoW effectively bans mining Bitcoin. On the surface, why that would make Bitcoin more popular is nonsensical, but I see two interpretations, and I’m guessing you mean the second one: 1) Banning PoW mining in the US, like they did in China, severely limits industrial-scale Bitcoin mining in another big part of the world, lowering the total mining incentive, and moving mining out to places where people don’t object to it and where electricity is cheap and in excess: this somewhat lowers the total hash rate, conflicts less with our growing energy demand in populated areas, but more significantly makes the environmental cost more abstract to people and thus easier to swallow. It’s a lot more upsetting to see a power plant down the river mining Bitcoin than knowing they come from somewhere called “the cloud”. 2) Banning PoW mining in the US could somehow incentivise towards a PoS transition, like with Ethereum. I don’t see that happening for Bitcoin. Sorry.

ricardobayes 4y ago
IMO Moving from Bitcoin to e.g. Ethereum is akin to banning ICE engines and moving to EVs
- eric_cc 4y ago
  > IMO Moving from Bitcoin to e.g. Ethereum is akin to banning ICE engines and moving to EVs You have a lot to learn then because your analogy is weak. PoW vs PoS debate is one of decentralization, power, democratization and control. As for bitcoin being dated: it’s ossification is intentional. It is, by design, a predictable and reliable monetary system.
  - couchand 4y ago
    > a predictable and reliable monetary system. Now that's funny!
    - eric_cc 4y ago
      What is unpredictable or unreliable about the monetary policy of bitcoin? In 2028, how many new US dollars will enter circulation? How many bitcoin?

cookie_monsta 4y ago

> Banning PoW would benefit Bitcoin; it's the main thing preventing it from becoming more popular right now. It would be interesting to see some real numbers on that claim. For me, much bigger would be volatile value, lack of places to spend it, weekly stories about people losing life savings because off coding errors and whatnot and just generally that it seems to be an interesting solution to a problem I don't have. PoW is in there somewhere, but nowhere near the top.

rufusroflpunch 4y ago

No. The average person (or even crypto user) doesn’t know anything about the difference between consensus algorithms and that is certainly not stopping growth. Also Bitcoin will 100% not remove proof of work ever. The overwhelming majority of node operators would not agree to that, ever. It goes against the ethos of Bitcoin. Proof of work is part of the social contract, right up there with 21 million hard cap and users running their own nodes.