9 ms·

Can we just blanket ban all crypto mining?

krapp 3y ago
The entire point of crypto is that it should be impossible for governments to regulate it or the markets it facilitates.
- npoc 3y ago
  and in the case of bitcoin, it is impossible for the governments to regulate it.
  - krapp 3y ago
    Maybe? I think that remains to be seen because governments have only relatively recently taken crypto seriously enough to care. There's also the problem that most people (even most people using crypto) want some degree of regulation, so it's likely that regulated crypto will outpace the growth of unregulated crypto at least in the forseeable future.
    - npoc 3y ago
      I'm talking about the bitcoin network, not some government-controlled representative tokens. Government-controlled tokens (i.e. fiat currency) is why bitcoin was invented in the first place. And the growth in demand for bitcoin is evidence of what people want. The government cannot control the bitcoin network. They can either choose to embrace it or not.
      - kelnos 3y ago
        > And the growth in demand for bitcoin is evidence of what people want. I don't think we can support that claim. Growth in demand can mean a lot of things. Since Bitcoin is still largely driven by speculators (not to mention scammers), I don't think we can assume that growth in demand is strictly due to people who want to use it as a store of value, or as a currency. > The government cannot control the bitcoin network. True, but they can make it difficult for people to use it, and penalize people who are found to be using it. That doesn't mean no one will use it, or that no one will get value out of it, but it does mean that it would be marginalized and of limited use to most people.
        npoc 3y ago
        > I don't think we can assume that growth in demand is strictly due to people who want to use it as a store of value. Incorrect. The only way that the _lowest_ value of bitcoin continues to increase significantly each halving epoch is that more and more value is being stored in it long term. > True, but they can make it difficult for people to use it, and penalize people who are found to be using it. That doesn't mean no one will use it, or that no one will get value out of it, but it does mean that it would be marginalized and of limited use to most people. They can't penalise people for using it as it would be unlawful/unconstitutional to do so. Sure, they can _slow down_ the adoption in their country through various underhand means like allowing the banking system to prevent people from sending their own money to exchanges, and capital "gains" taxes but they can't control the network itself. People in other countries without an oppressive regime will be unaffected (and will thrive as a result of having better access to a better store-of-value).
  - kelnos 3y ago
    As long as you are physically residing in and doing things within the jurisdiction of a government, that government can regulate what you do. Depending on the activity, their effectiveness at doing so will of course vary. But governments can absolutely ban Bitcoin and (especially) mining, and that will greatly reduce the usefulness of Bitcoin for people, even if they can't fully stamp it out.
    - npoc 3y ago
      In the UK at least, the government only has authority to execute legislation. And parliament only has authority to create legislation. If the legislation they create is not lawful then it can't be enforced in the courts as doing so would be inherently unjust. Hashing data and purchasing electricity obtained from approved sources have never been shown to be (and unlikely ever will be) unlawful activities.
- kelnos 3y ago
  And yet, if governments want to ban it, they are free to do so. Enforcement won't always be simple, but e.g. shutting down exchanges that let you convert Bitcoin into local currency will definitely hurt.
ashwagary 3y ago
Are you saying the state should dictate what you can do with the energy you buy?
- kelnos 3y ago
  They already do, at least in terms of second-order effects. You can't use the energy you buy to electrocute someone. You can't use that energy to power a meth lab. That's not because the law specifically says you can't use electricity to do those things (it's about murder and illegal drug production and distribution), but the end result is the same. Banning Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining need not be a specific energy-use law, even if that might be the purpose behind such a law.
npoc 3y ago
Who is anyone to tell me not to perform calculations on my computer? That's insanity.
- krapp 3y ago
  "perform calculations on your computer" can comprise bank fraud, planning a murder, identity theft, child porn and any number of well established and (mostly) uncontroversial illegal activities. What's insane is believing computers are somehow beyond legal and social consequence because, as the argument is often stated, "it's just math." Sure. And building a bomb is just chemistry. And shooting someone is just physics. Reductionist arguments which ignore context never work, because the context always matters. Even anarchists tend to accept that a balance needs to be struck between individual liberties and the needs of society, and the question of regulating or banning Bitcoin mining isn't one of "performing calculations" but the practical environmental and societal consequences of Bitcoin mining at scale. See TFA.
  - npoc 3y ago
    But hashing some data is not causing harm to anyone. The real issue here is that you think doing the hashing is a waste of energy/money. Well you have no right to tell me how efficiently I should use my own property.
    - krapp 3y ago
      I have as much right to tell you so as you have to tell me otherwise. Your property rights aren't absolute. You're using resources provided by society, thus society has a legitimate interest in the cost and benefit of that usage.
      - npoc 3y ago
        The benefit to society of providing me resources is that I pay them for them. Once that deal is done and I've paid for my electricity, I'm free to do what I want providing I cause no harm - this is my inalienable right.
EA-3167 3y ago
A ban might be hard to word and implement, but a tax? Just tax the living hell out of it. Congress has access to more subtle and effective levers than an outright ban.
- npoc 3y ago
  Who has the right to steal my property if I perform calculations on my computer that cause no harm to anyone? No one! How about a tax for computer gaming? Explain the difference.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    > Who has the right to steal my property if I perform calculations on my computer that cause no harm to anyone? Did you read the article? Harm is definitely being caused.
    - npoc 3y ago
      I assumed that person I replied to wanted to ban it due to the normal fallacies people perpetrate (that its a waste of energy and that people shouldn't be allowed to waste the energy they buy). Wanting to ban it because of an easily resolved incidence of noise disturbance would be even more insane than I usually expect.
- suid 3y ago
  You could, instead, ration the amount of electricity that you can consume for an industrial facility (at least at "normal" or long-term negotiated rates). Every additional KwH needs to be purchased at spot rates. That will protect the conscientious consumers of electricity, and punish the profligate wasters (or encourage them to create their own sources of energy, preferably renewable).
  - npoc 3y ago
    Conscientious consumers of electricity are fundamentally protected because people have to pay for electricity. If you use a lot you have to spend a lot, if you use a little you don't. What gives someone the right to tell someone else what they must use the electricity they've bought for? The only right I can think of would be an indirect one - i.e. if their use of the electricity directly broke a law (e.g. they electrocuted someone)
MrMan 3y ago
The carbon tax we should have started 20 years ago how about
philwelch 3y ago
As long as you can run your own crypto algorithms and freely run a peer-to-peer protocol over the internet, you can mine cryptocurrency. I am curious which of these freedoms you would sacrifice. Back in the 1990’s, hackers fought for—and won—the right to do whatever cryptographic computation they wanted to do on their own computers while the US government was trying to prohibit strong cryptography and require all secured communications to use a secret algorithm designed by the NSA with keys held and managed by the federal government. The failure of the Clipper Chip and the proliferation of cryptography has been a victory for privacy and a thorn in the side of the FBI for decades. And the entire time hackers and privacy activists have been fighting this fight, the feds and their enablers have smeared them with accusations of enabling drug dealers and pedophiles. So unless you can convince people that crypto mining is even worse than child rape, I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere on that front. Besides, all of the cryptographic algorithms are too well known at this point. I don’t think you can stop people from doing math on their own damn computers. And that leaves peer to peer networking. While cryptography was smeared for enabling pedophilia, peer to peer networking was smeared for something even worse, at least in the hearts of our government and corporate overlords—downloading music! Now that we have the opportunity to pay our corporate overlords for the privilege of “streaming”, they don’t seem to care so much and this fight has also faded into the background. But what’s at stake here was much bigger: whether or not your home internet connection allowed to be anything other than a passive one-way pipe to receive content from our corporate overlords. And in reality, this question also reduces to the other, because if you use cryptography, no one will be the wiser regarding what, exactly, you are doing with your internet connection. But maybe this was all just a relic of a forgotten time, when hackers were people who scoffed at the idea that the internet should be locked down to stop people from depriving poor Lars Ulrich of album royalties or whatever. Clearly the moral panics of today are much more pressing than those of the 1990’s, and there is simply no need to just allow people to do math on their own computers. Just one of those silly, optimistic ideas we old fools still hold onto, like freedom of speech. Maybe China had the right idea when they built the Great Firewall.
- kelnos 3y ago
  That's not how the law works. It can specifically ban cryptocurrency mining -- after defining what that is -- without impacting other uses. Not sure I agree with the idea to ban this, though. I think it's a huge waste of time, money, and electricity, but people should be able to do that if they want. But they should have to pay their fair share for it: penalties for these noise complaints should meaningfully cut into their profit to the point that it would be more cost-effective for them to build proper noise isolation. Electricity prices should be set higher for commercial activity of that kind so local communities aren't harmed, and in places where they aren't mining off renewable energy, the carbon impact of the mining should be accounted for somehow. And we should ensure that these companies are paying their fair share of taxes. I expect the low taxes in Texas is a reason why mining companies like it there, though. And if paying for these externalities makes mining no longer profitable, that's just the system working as it should.

The entire point of crypto is that it should be impossible for governments to regulate it or the markets it facilitates.

npoc 3y ago
and in the case of bitcoin, it is impossible for the governments to regulate it.
- krapp 3y ago
  Maybe? I think that remains to be seen because governments have only relatively recently taken crypto seriously enough to care. There's also the problem that most people (even most people using crypto) want some degree of regulation, so it's likely that regulated crypto will outpace the growth of unregulated crypto at least in the forseeable future.
  - npoc 3y ago
    I'm talking about the bitcoin network, not some government-controlled representative tokens. Government-controlled tokens (i.e. fiat currency) is why bitcoin was invented in the first place. And the growth in demand for bitcoin is evidence of what people want. The government cannot control the bitcoin network. They can either choose to embrace it or not.
    - kelnos 3y ago
      > And the growth in demand for bitcoin is evidence of what people want. I don't think we can support that claim. Growth in demand can mean a lot of things. Since Bitcoin is still largely driven by speculators (not to mention scammers), I don't think we can assume that growth in demand is strictly due to people who want to use it as a store of value, or as a currency. > The government cannot control the bitcoin network. True, but they can make it difficult for people to use it, and penalize people who are found to be using it. That doesn't mean no one will use it, or that no one will get value out of it, but it does mean that it would be marginalized and of limited use to most people.
      - npoc 3y ago
        > I don't think we can assume that growth in demand is strictly due to people who want to use it as a store of value. Incorrect. The only way that the _lowest_ value of bitcoin continues to increase significantly each halving epoch is that more and more value is being stored in it long term. > True, but they can make it difficult for people to use it, and penalize people who are found to be using it. That doesn't mean no one will use it, or that no one will get value out of it, but it does mean that it would be marginalized and of limited use to most people. They can't penalise people for using it as it would be unlawful/unconstitutional to do so. Sure, they can _slow down_ the adoption in their country through various underhand means like allowing the banking system to prevent people from sending their own money to exchanges, and capital "gains" taxes but they can't control the network itself. People in other countries without an oppressive regime will be unaffected (and will thrive as a result of having better access to a better store-of-value).
- kelnos 3y ago
  As long as you are physically residing in and doing things within the jurisdiction of a government, that government can regulate what you do. Depending on the activity, their effectiveness at doing so will of course vary. But governments can absolutely ban Bitcoin and (especially) mining, and that will greatly reduce the usefulness of Bitcoin for people, even if they can't fully stamp it out.
  - npoc 3y ago
    In the UK at least, the government only has authority to execute legislation. And parliament only has authority to create legislation. If the legislation they create is not lawful then it can't be enforced in the courts as doing so would be inherently unjust. Hashing data and purchasing electricity obtained from approved sources have never been shown to be (and unlikely ever will be) unlawful activities.
kelnos 3y ago
And yet, if governments want to ban it, they are free to do so. Enforcement won't always be simple, but e.g. shutting down exchanges that let you convert Bitcoin into local currency will definitely hurt.

ashwagary 3y ago

Are you saying the state should dictate what you can do with the energy you buy?

kelnos 3y ago
They already do, at least in terms of second-order effects. You can't use the energy you buy to electrocute someone. You can't use that energy to power a meth lab. That's not because the law specifically says you can't use electricity to do those things (it's about murder and illegal drug production and distribution), but the end result is the same. Banning Bitcoin or Bitcoin mining need not be a specific energy-use law, even if that might be the purpose behind such a law.

npoc 3y ago

Who is anyone to tell me not to perform calculations on my computer? That's insanity.

krapp 3y ago
"perform calculations on your computer" can comprise bank fraud, planning a murder, identity theft, child porn and any number of well established and (mostly) uncontroversial illegal activities. What's insane is believing computers are somehow beyond legal and social consequence because, as the argument is often stated, "it's just math." Sure. And building a bomb is just chemistry. And shooting someone is just physics. Reductionist arguments which ignore context never work, because the context always matters. Even anarchists tend to accept that a balance needs to be struck between individual liberties and the needs of society, and the question of regulating or banning Bitcoin mining isn't one of "performing calculations" but the practical environmental and societal consequences of Bitcoin mining at scale. See TFA.
- npoc 3y ago
  But hashing some data is not causing harm to anyone. The real issue here is that you think doing the hashing is a waste of energy/money. Well you have no right to tell me how efficiently I should use my own property.
  - krapp 3y ago
    I have as much right to tell you so as you have to tell me otherwise. Your property rights aren't absolute. You're using resources provided by society, thus society has a legitimate interest in the cost and benefit of that usage.
    - npoc 3y ago
      The benefit to society of providing me resources is that I pay them for them. Once that deal is done and I've paid for my electricity, I'm free to do what I want providing I cause no harm - this is my inalienable right.

EA-3167 3y ago

A ban might be hard to word and implement, but a tax? Just tax the living hell out of it. Congress has access to more subtle and effective levers than an outright ban.

npoc 3y ago
Who has the right to steal my property if I perform calculations on my computer that cause no harm to anyone? No one! How about a tax for computer gaming? Explain the difference.
- kelnos 3y ago
  > Who has the right to steal my property if I perform calculations on my computer that cause no harm to anyone? Did you read the article? Harm is definitely being caused.
  - npoc 3y ago
    I assumed that person I replied to wanted to ban it due to the normal fallacies people perpetrate (that its a waste of energy and that people shouldn't be allowed to waste the energy they buy). Wanting to ban it because of an easily resolved incidence of noise disturbance would be even more insane than I usually expect.
suid 3y ago
You could, instead, ration the amount of electricity that you can consume for an industrial facility (at least at "normal" or long-term negotiated rates). Every additional KwH needs to be purchased at spot rates. That will protect the conscientious consumers of electricity, and punish the profligate wasters (or encourage them to create their own sources of energy, preferably renewable).
- npoc 3y ago
  Conscientious consumers of electricity are fundamentally protected because people have to pay for electricity. If you use a lot you have to spend a lot, if you use a little you don't. What gives someone the right to tell someone else what they must use the electricity they've bought for? The only right I can think of would be an indirect one - i.e. if their use of the electricity directly broke a law (e.g. they electrocuted someone)

MrMan 3y ago

The carbon tax we should have started 20 years ago how about

philwelch 3y ago

As long as you can run your own crypto algorithms and freely run a peer-to-peer protocol over the internet, you can mine cryptocurrency. I am curious which of these freedoms you would sacrifice. Back in the 1990’s, hackers fought for—and won—the right to do whatever cryptographic computation they wanted to do on their own computers while the US government was trying to prohibit strong cryptography and require all secured communications to use a secret algorithm designed by the NSA with keys held and managed by the federal government. The failure of the Clipper Chip and the proliferation of cryptography has been a victory for privacy and a thorn in the side of the FBI for decades. And the entire time hackers and privacy activists have been fighting this fight, the feds and their enablers have smeared them with accusations of enabling drug dealers and pedophiles. So unless you can convince people that crypto mining is even worse than child rape, I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere on that front. Besides, all of the cryptographic algorithms are too well known at this point. I don’t think you can stop people from doing math on their own damn computers. And that leaves peer to peer networking. While cryptography was smeared for enabling pedophilia, peer to peer networking was smeared for something even worse, at least in the hearts of our government and corporate overlords—downloading music! Now that we have the opportunity to pay our corporate overlords for the privilege of “streaming”, they don’t seem to care so much and this fight has also faded into the background. But what’s at stake here was much bigger: whether or not your home internet connection allowed to be anything other than a passive one-way pipe to receive content from our corporate overlords. And in reality, this question also reduces to the other, because if you use cryptography, no one will be the wiser regarding what, exactly, you are doing with your internet connection. But maybe this was all just a relic of a forgotten time, when hackers were people who scoffed at the idea that the internet should be locked down to stop people from depriving poor Lars Ulrich of album royalties or whatever. Clearly the moral panics of today are much more pressing than those of the 1990’s, and there is simply no need to just allow people to do math on their own computers. Just one of those silly, optimistic ideas we old fools still hold onto, like freedom of speech. Maybe China had the right idea when they built the Great Firewall.

kelnos 3y ago
That's not how the law works. It can specifically ban cryptocurrency mining -- after defining what that is -- without impacting other uses. Not sure I agree with the idea to ban this, though. I think it's a huge waste of time, money, and electricity, but people should be able to do that if they want. But they should have to pay their fair share for it: penalties for these noise complaints should meaningfully cut into their profit to the point that it would be more cost-effective for them to build proper noise isolation. Electricity prices should be set higher for commercial activity of that kind so local communities aren't harmed, and in places where they aren't mining off renewable energy, the carbon impact of the mining should be accounted for somehow. And we should ensure that these companies are paying their fair share of taxes. I expect the low taxes in Texas is a reason why mining companies like it there, though. And if paying for these externalities makes mining no longer profitable, that's just the system working as it should.