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> The whole idea that you can sort energy usage into useful for society or not buckets is pretty ridiculous. > > Ok, Bitcoin bad. What about video games? Netfli

• greyface- 3y ago
  > larger and larger usage of energy by design It's actually the opposite: its energy usage shrinks and shrinks, by design. Every 210,000 blocks (~4 years), the block reward (mining subsidy) drops in half. At the limit, it approaches zero, and the network can only afford to spend as much on energy as users pay in transaction fees. Admittedly, "the limit" is quite a few years off, and there's a big subsidy still. I'm surprised we haven't seen taxing authorities go after block rewards specifically - they're why miners are currently willing to spend 10~20x on energy vs what users pay them for transactions.
• RedNifre 3y ago
  Sure you can, what is called "Proof of work" in the context of Bitcoin is actually "Proof of money lost" in the form of paid electricity. If you taxed mining at 90%, you would also reduce mining and thus electricity consumption by 90%. (Ideally, this would be a global tax and not too high, since reducing mining too much would compromise security)
  • Detrytus 3y ago
    Relying on taxes instead of Proof of Work kind of goes against core premise of Bitcoin: not relying on centralized authority. To make sure that all miners pay taxes you need tax office to collect them. And of course some criminal miners would find a way to avoid those taxes, making it 90% cheaper for them to mount 51% attack.