India to propose cryptocurrency ban, penalising miners and traders
reuters.com
reuters.com
Here's the link to the post made earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26460907
That said, this move -- if enacted into law -- will be an incredibly foolish act on the Indian government's part and will act as a catalyst in driving away the next generation of bright young Indian innovators and engineers from the country.
Somehow I doubt there's much of an intersection between "the next generation of bright young Indian innovators and engineers" and crypto miners who care enough or run an operation large enough to justify leaving the country over this.
Also the country is veering towards authoritarianism rapidly, and this bitcoin ban is just a mere symptom of a much much larger problem that lies ahead for India.
I was talking about the 'brain drain' in that context.
The URLs merely differ in "us" versus "uk".
Do you sincerely believe these are possible ?
Also, if most of mining & hardware required for it is controlled by China and we are buying this digital gold via real currency, isn't a significant global wealth transfer happening to China ?
I don't know if India's decision is right or wrong, we do have a history of taking incredibly stupid "shooting oneself in the foot" decisions, but questions above do bother me.
Party officials can be very nationalistis, communism forever, death to Taiwan. But their family is in western country and 60% of their assets are out of communist shithole their call home.
Also, Bitcoin is not technologically capable of getting anywhere near close to functioning as a global currency on large scale.
Governments lost the war against information, cryptography, and money. The most charitable interpretation one can have for tyranny is that if you're going to talk about the tanks in Tienanmen, it's more costly to do it privately.
Political power very much has the ability to impose its preference on "reality". That is exactly why it exists.
I don't think so. The vast majority of people communicating around the world today are doing so through backdoored platforms like Whatsapp or WeChat, and running backdoored operating systems or backdoored processors. Sure, there is a tiny population of cypherpunks who might really have good opsec, but at this point it is no longer a government's "war" against anything: the war is won and some ultra-low-level unrest doesn't change that fact.
As others have probably already mentioned, Bitcoin's transaction costs are very high and transaction time is quite slow compared to most other transactions. One major exception to this is international transfer of small amounts, though I don't think that's enough to threaten government backed currencies.
In the long term though, it is inevitable, like all technological progress in the World.
You can only contain it for so long.
1 decade, it can be taken seriously...
More than that and we're in pure speculation territory..
China is now much more powerful now than it was in the last century and seeking more power everyday.
> Do you sincerely believe these are possible ?
"Possible" isn't the word I'd use, but "inevtiable". How long do we think that, for example, the petrodollar will last? 1,000 years? 500? 100? Shorter?
The real question is whether the adults and patriots within the state apparatus will see the writing on the wall and conclude that a better way forward for humanity is due.
BTC is far less widely owned and far less legitimate than gold was in the 1930s (it actually was the global reserve currency then). The political friction is low for heavy regulation or an outright ban across even developed markets.
My bet is that the green argument will be the first attempt to neuter BTC.
Disclaimer: BTC neutral. I own a small amount, and treat it like an option on a speculative asset.
Seeing a lot of seemingly inorganic noise on this. At the same time in the US, we are running a power grid like a country that inherited it from its imperialist colonizers from the distant past with no inherent capability to improve or even sustain it. 650K miles of transmission lines are oversubscribed and there are less than a dozen regional substations that act as an aggregate single-point-of-failure for the entire country. Texas was the canary in the coal mine.
The fact that we're not having the genuine discussion around improving the efficiency, cleanliness, and resiliency of our infrastructure lays the true capabilities of my country and the intentions of those in power bare: we are a declining power managed by corrupt and power mad psychopaths. Bitcoin is the least of our worries - it's actually a symptom of loss of faith in the system.
While I agree that we are managed by corrupt and power mad psychopaths, I'm not sure infrastructure spending (or lack thereof) should lay at their feet.
It is a symptom of our elections that infrastructure and other non-sexy spending takes a backseat to large, mega projects designed to funnel federal and state dollars to localities. Politicians do not set the rules, voters set the rules. And the rule is that stability and planning are less important than flash and PR.
And it's sad, and I'm convinced that this shortsightedness will cause people I know to die from something that could've been prevented (not coronavirus, like cancer or starvation or war).
bans are a very strong advertisement for piling into the asset being banned. especially when holders of the asset in question are quite difficult to identify
another related point is that busting regulations is a great way to create great wealth. Dhirubhai Ambani created his first capital by smuggling. the Rothschilds did too – by busting Napoleon's sanctions
make your own conclusions about ways to behave in response to economic regulations ;)
121 TWh/y for bitcoin (just bitcoin, not crypto), 205TWh/y for the Internet data centers.
Just pause for a second and think about the magnitude of the waste.
[1] https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-d...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption#Energ...
The electricity is around 20,000. So the Internet consumes ~ 1% of that.
> In 2014, world primary energy supply amounted to 155,481 terawatt-hour (TWh) or 13,541 million tonne of oil equivalent (Mtoe), while the world final energy consumption was 109,613 TWh or about 29.5% less than the total supply.[12] World final energy consumption includes products as lubricants, asphalt and petrochemicals which have chemical energy content but are not used as fuel. This non-energy use amounted to 9,723 TWh (836 Mtoe) in 2015.[13]
Given the amount of shady practices, it wouldn't surprise me if some exchanges operated on fractional reserves, being vulnerable to bank runs, a practice that many BTC adherents decry the traditional banking sector for.
Source : https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/india-today-conclave-no...
The comment I was replying to speculated that the disagreement was between legislature as a whole and the finance ministry.
My comment pointed out that the disagreement could be internal to the legislature itself.
I was pointing out that the proposal of a bill does not mean it will get passed nor that the majority of the legislature supports it. This is similar to how you were pointing out that the finance minister disagreeing with the bill doesn't mean the Indian government is fully against it.
This is really like banning computers and internet in the 90s. Literally no one cares.
You could lose out to others on the longer run, and badly. But there are enough issues to keep the masses busy with.
If they wanted, they could pass it without a contest.
Her words were that they are preparing a note to thee Cabinet on it. The cabinet will then take a call and then propose it to the legislature as a bill.
It is still in early stages, but if Nirmala Sitharaman's words are any indication, they seem to be contemplating allowing crypto currencies to circulate in a regulated manner. Balajis mentioned that crypto could be treated as a foreign exchange currency. You can hold, for example, USD as an Indian resident, but it is not legal tender for exchange and is taxed (not sure about this) if you use it for the purpose of trading.
Germany also treats crypto as private money, not as an asset/investment to be paid capital gains on. I think this is a nice, legal alternative for crypto.
Untaxed, illegal transactions for large sums are a big problem in India (especially in Real Estate/property markets), so the govt. is trying to walk a fine line in regulating without killing the crypto market.
One interesting advantage of crypto to India would be that it will allow India to bypass USD and SWIFT , and whatever scheme China cooks up in the future. This will really dent the ability of the USA to abuse the Dollar's status as the reserve currency to stop printing tonnes of money and raking up public debt in the long term without facing inflationary consequences.
PAN cards are mandatory for registrations in Karnataka State for more than 15 years now. And everything is already digitised. The government knows who is buying what.
Real estate gets a lot of bad rep for no reason. This was the biggest revelation in the immediate after math of demonetisation, people were expecting the real estate market to crash totally, it just didn't happen. The assumption was it was all done on black cash and demonetisation would bring down the whole pyramid. The market barely moved. People realised the hard way contrary to what they believed most transactions were genuine.
Recently due to the COVID remote work phenomenon the Real Estate market was expected to crash. That didn't happen either. People capable of buying properties never left Bangalore(Access to Schools, Career opportunities, hospitals etc reasons). The people who went back, are now returning.
Most developing countries are at a high risk of capital flight by the rich and hence they regulate foreign exchange with Capital controls. India already has a cap of USD 250k limit on capital flight by individuals.
Nowadays bitcoin is a common method to escape capital controls.
This law will prevent capital flight by the rich which they earned with the patronage of Indian citizens and escape reinvestment locally
US doesn't need capital controls because their currency is treated as a reserve currency and the buffer to prevent hyperinflation is very high
“But if we remove the tourniquet the person will bleed out!”
....
Okay, you’re right. Perhaps we should ask instead, why do we need the tourniquet? What conditions were put in place that capital is attempting to leave?
Money goes where it’s safe and it can grow.
The Berlin Wall was the monetary equivalence of a capital control.
Being poor and/or corrupt is usually the source of the problem. Lack of capital makes it impossible to fix.
Without strict capital controls China's rise would have been impossible, for instance - much like a lot of Africa.
This is an amazingly apt analogy, just not the one you think it is.
Sure, you can debate about how the person should/would never have been injured in the first place if everybody involved in the situation did everything right. But they are injured, right now, and they will die, right now, if they're not provided with first aid and further medical attention - and until the patient is stabilised, those lofty questions are useless pontifications.
Except it's not just one person at risk. It's millions and millions of people and their livelihood.
Emphasis on the further medical attention, because they will simply never be able to get it if first aid is not applied. This is the exact reason why first aid exists, even though it is often technically destructive (e.g. properly administering CPR runs quite a high risk of breaking the patient's ribs).
> And a limbless person will have a much lower quality of life
A person who has lost a limb is alive, and (I digress) the hand-wringing that abled people do over the quality of life of the disabled is a bit weird.
"I'm nowhere near a hospital yet but this tourniquet has been on for ages so let me take it off and continue freely bleeding out" is frankly a foolish decision for anybody to make.
I find it both funny and a bit frustrating when people try to impose standards from wealthy developed countries on the developing world without further critical thought. Just because it's not a reasonable measure for your situation doesn't mean it's not a reasonable measure in a different one.
And frankly, personally, I do not really care what my ruling class thinks is best for me. I will figure it out on my own, thank you very much. I have seen the job done so far.
...and said audience coincidentally happens to mostly live in places that actually have that freedom of movement. On the other hand, I, my passport that can take me basically nowhere, and the awfulness of visa acquisition know very well that "freedom of movement" is already a joke. And I remain extremely sceptical of the opinions of people from countries that are not impacted by brain and capital drain (and which, in fact, benefit from it) on situations like this.
Skilled professionals and investors are reluctant to invest their time/money in a country that taxes the crap out of them without giving much back. Excessive protectionism and high costs of living punish the people that can move the country forward just to prevent stagnant industries from suffering an inevitable blow for a little longer.
* Because higher capital inflows and outflows correlate to the frequency and severity of financial crises.
This is pretty much like saying that abolishing the privileges of aristocracy and clergy would have reduced everybody status. It was only true from the point of view of someone holding a title.
Our current Western wealth and working condition are the result of centuries of colonialism and exploitation for the rest of the world which continues to this day. The only reason you could technically afford to buy clothing wear them once and then discard them is because they are effectively produced by slave labor somewhere out of sight.
If capital controls benefitted ex colonies the IMF wouldn't threaten to withhold western investment from democratically elected governments if they didn't eliminate them.
Unless you are for free movement of people as well, you can't honestly argue for application of monetary policies of the developed economies to the developing economies.
If crypto only had the underground attention it had 5 years ago, maybe.
This is a developing country risk
If it was instead used to suck wealth out of the US it would be criminalized yesterday.
There was a mirrored double standard with tariffs. The US wanted them eliminated until China started reaching and surpassing technological parity at which point it couldn't put them up fast enough.
No it's not. The definition of "hypocrisy" from wiktionary:
> 1. The contrivance of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, while concealing real character or inclinations, especially with respect to religious and moral beliefs; hence in general sense, dissimulation, pretence, sham.
> 2. The claim or pretense of having beliefs, standards, qualities, behaviours, virtues, motivations, etc. which one does not really have. [from early 13th c.]
> 3. The practice of engaging in the same behaviour or activity for which one criticises another; moral self-contradiction whereby the behavior of one or more people belies their own claimed or implied possession of certain beliefs, standards or virtues.
hypocrisy requires some sort of contradiction between the actions of the entity, and the belief that it espouses. The US urging countries to have free trade, while also having free trade policies isn't hypocritical, even if free trade is against the other countries' interests. On the other hand, the US urging countries to have free trade, while simultaneously implementing anti-free trade policies themselves (eg. tariffs) would be hypocritical.
until the USD is not the dominant reserve, USD themselves is considered wealth. You cannot suck wealth out of an infinite fountain.
So the time when the US gov't would institute such controls would be if China's dominance continues to grow, until chinese currency (whatever it may be - digital or fiat) is the new reserve. Because USD at that time would have become worthless.
I would bet nuclear war would occur before that.
If BTC ever becomes a threat, developed countries will not hesitate to make moves.
In 1934, the Gold Reserve Act prevented Americans from holding gold which was the global reserve currency at the time and universally considered hard money.
I have a feeling BTC will be a little easier to regulate.
And to a very little success. People hoarding gold in US scored millions, at the expense of a average Joe gold buyer.
I believe the parallel is very relevant here. People buying bitcoin retail, and mining at gaming video cards are only a fodder for bigger fishes today.
India's iron handed squeeze of the middle class via insane policies is already causing a massive brain drain, the government seems either too stupid or willfully ignorant in recognizing the insidiousness of this issue.
Anybody who owns a legitimate business in India has no reason to do this.
The only people in India who could do this are bribe makers, and the ecosystem around that. And those people already have means to not just park that money some where(many times outside India), but also whiten it at will.
The bribe makers already park money in gold, lands(in the names of relatives). In cities lots of Ola/Uber cars are owned by bribe makers and then they get some one from native places and get them to drive it for a share in profit. You will be surprised how that money is invested. Building a hospital/hotel? Put a word out, people invest in as little as a hotel/hospital room in return for some rent. There are even stories of people buying Green Cards for their siblings, relatives etc.
This is illegal collection. The legalised corruption goes really really deep. There's reason most government housing colony plots are generally owned by people who are in civil services or in some way connected to them.
Coming to capital flight. There was recently a number of ponzi schemes in Bangalore, in the name of Islamic Sharia investments. A number of firms came down, and investor money in literally thousands of crores was laundered. A famous one was called the 'IMA Scam'. The owner has luxury palaces in UAE, and apparently has gold in underground warehouse vaults outside India. He was arrested but is out on bail for medical reasons :)
When people say there is some $250K limit on these things I burst out of laughter. $250k, which around 2 crores is likely a single day bribe collection of a sub registrar office in anywhere in Bangalore.
>>This law will prevent capital flight by the rich which they earned with the patronage of Indian citizens and escape reinvestment locally
'The Rich' don't even get their money to India. The big businesses, including the big IT services firms, only get as much money to India as much as they need to run operations here. This is why every time the dollar gets stronger IT services firms get richer. So do the investors. Most of the business is run on rented campuses, and apart from the core businesses you contract most of your work to local companies. So it's not like the big businesses hoard a lot of money in INR.
Nobody is actually that stupid to legally bring their billions into a country from which they can only take $250K back.
Lastly the only reason I see, and I don't think its malice. But I think it's 'new tech phobia'. The established order of society doesn't like disruptive stuff. That's pretty much it. In 1980s there was once a Bharat Bandh called in India when Rajiv Gandhi introduced computers.
Really? So none of the rich folks in India send their kids to college in the US or Europe? None of them own homes or boats or cars in those countries? They have no reason AT ALL to extract capital from India besides bribes?
While I won't even begin to try to claim India doesn't have a ton of issues socially, trying to claim anyone moving capital elsewhere made the money illegally seems like more than a bit of a stretch.
They are not going to sweat over some one eating candy when there's gigatons of sugar smuggling going around.
If you're going to make definitive statements like:
>Anybody who owns a legitimate business in India has no reason to do this.
>The only people in India who could do this are bribe makers, and the ecosystem around that
Then you better be prepared to back them up or apologize for making broad statements that you have no intention of standing behind.
Which previously would require some kind of capital intense activity like Aluminium Smelting - which at least would promote development of local infrastructure, industrial capacity, and skills.
Bitcoin mining does none of that - local efforts to make electricity more affordable for local usage and business (ie. subsidies) are basically monetised.
In addition many countries like India have problems with illegal electricity usage. The shortage of GPUs and general computer chips (how much of TSMC output goes towards mining machines?) is also negatively impacting supply chains, particularly for countries at the very end of them.
Crypto mining is hugely disruptive and harmful to developing countries, and these bans are completely justified.
I understand that the US and other Western fiat currencies are being run into the ground to fund pension obligations - but you can just buy Apple or other blue-chip stocks if you want a long-term asset.
Rather than electricity prices being driven down by more green production and storage, there's this floor where it's better to just convert the energy into blockchain coin flips and heat.
I wasn't aware that China had banned mining. Whenever mining crypto is brought up, often people say that most miners are in China using hydroelectric power.
And yes, yes - a bit of that goes on in the West too.
I actually like this feeling and most expats do as well but I believe this way the government almost always have control over individuals. If they want to find something to arrest you, they will find something.
[1] You could say it's not a freedom unless it's guaranteed. That view is not universal. Freedom in practice trumps freedom on paper for a lot of people.
In China, often, if you master social tricks, you will be able to obtain it.
Coal is a huge part of the grid in China.
Not necessarily; the excess power goes to waste after whatever batteries the grid has are filled.
Pumped hydroelectric was invented afterwards to fill the same role.
Once that changes and (some) crypto starts to generate genuine profits reversing the ban would make sense, but until then, let Westerners with more money than they know what to do with play ponzi games with each other. In the West even losing everything is an inconvenience in the grand scheme of things - there's ample food, jobs and welfare. Being poor in India can mean you actually starve to death [1]
There's no reason to ban mining however.
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...
Look at demonetization - people with large amounts of illicit funds would bribe bank managers to create thousands of new accounts in their name, to overcome the reporting/exchange limits. The aam aadmi (Hindi for common man) ended up with the short end of the stick, as the cash supply dwindled and people had to spend hours waiting at the ATM.
Lack of regulation can be much worse.
False dichotomy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis...
In 1999, the son of a powerful Indian politician publicly murdered a bartender in cold blood with many witnesses. He was only convicted in 2006 after a massive media uproar, and was released from prison last summer.
Also, no, I don't think he killed himself.
Perhaps they're confusing the whole China with one of its regions, Inner Mongolia? [1]
Edit: by the way, it seems to me that this is the key part in the article:
> The measure is in line with a January government agenda that called for banning private virtual currencies such as bitcoin while building a framework for an official digital currency.
I'd read this as India trying to pave the way for a huge adoption of its local digital currency, and therefore banning other crypto might be seen (by govt officials) as the way to go.
[0]: https://www.loc.gov/law/help/cryptocurrency/china.php
[1]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-inner-mongolia-end-cry...
It does not matter whether it's just some math or signals on a computer - torrenting CP is just "doing some math" on your computer, but it is similarly banned.
The commentator then called a critique of that lens a "strawman", despite CP and many other computations (see other comments in the thread) already being illegal.
Should we ban pen and paper problem solving? Who is to decide which numbers and operators are public good? Is math in its entirety blasphemous?
Although comparing pen and paper calculations with the greedy wasteful world of bitcoin mining is ridiculous, I think it’s less ridiculous then associating anything you don’t agree with drugs or any other boogieman argument.
Law and ethics are not as clear cut as you are trying to portray. Nature and ecology are precious but so are Personal freedoms. They were not given to society, they were earned with blood and tears and they’re equally precious.
Unless this is some suggestion that banning CP is a slippery slope as well, there's clear precedent for banning certain things that computers can do which doesn't cause the entirety of mathematics to become heretical.
Isn't that true for all computing?
(And no, I don't like this)
We will see some interesting P2P exchange platforms where anonymity becomes paramount.
Electronic p2p and a network of gold dealers that exchange electric for physical gold.
I say ban mining, the sooner the better.
That's why miners use highly specialized and efficient machines and not just any random computer that draws a lot of power.
Your phone is highly specialized and efficient. Coin mining is a noise parade and heat monstrosity that grows up to the limit of how much power it can draw at affordable rates.
I have run billion dollar datacenters. They are dwarfed by small mining operations in their heat production and power consumption.
Undervolting chips to increase efficiency is quite common, for example.
And my phone is not very specialized at all, when compared to a mining ASIC.
Miners make money by generating hashes. The more computing power the more hashing power you have. The value of expected rewards determines how much you will be willing to spend on the mining operation. Let’s say you have a gain of 10% efficiency, meaning you spend 10% less on your expenses while winning the same number of rewards. So what is your incentive? Is it to stay like this and be happy that you saved some energy? Of course not, you will spend these extra 10% to gain more rewards. And now your competition also has to up their game.
By design, the higher Bitcoin price is, the more energy is worth spending on Proof of Work. More efficient hardware doesn’t change that fact. It’s by design not sustainable.
If a factory increases efficiency by 10% it will simply produce more of whatever it makes as long as there's demand for it. And then other factories have to up their game.
Also the higher the price of the product the factory produces, the more it is worth spending extra resources producing it.
And of course this isn't limited to factories, it's true for businesses in general.
What is special about mining is that energy is just about the only resource it uses, so it's more obvious, while a factory might be bottle-necked by other resources like floor space and a software company might be bottle-necked by how many programmers it can hire/manage. Miners are similarly limited by how much mining hardware they have or are capable of managing.
All the climate savings that Tesla advertises themselves as having achieved over the lifetime of the company, Bitcoin cancels out in a month.
Bitcoin is currently closing in on having the carbon emissions of the Gulf War oil fires at their peak.
Bitcoin is now considered by some important for our future finance system. While not everybody agrees, this may be more important than countless other ways we use energy, for much more trivial reasons.
Being judgmental about how others use energy they pay for reeks of hypocrisy, virtue signaling and holier-than-thou attitude.
Absolutely.
It's very useful for facilitating money laundering (e.g. Tesla cars), drug dealing, child exploitation material etc.
1. It has not succeeded in becoming a valid currency as it is a technology attempting to solve a social problem.
2. It is held as digital gold with rapidly changing value
3. It is literally nonsensical as a future currency system due to the limits of mining as it couldnt possibly keep up with daily money use unless you had way more mining activity that would cause it to cost far more than existing systems to do transactions
Here is the thing: All of the things you mentioned have a path to efficiency, Bitcoin itself does not. Eth, maybe! BTC, no. Here is the other thing: At a global scale, m Bitcoin would use more energy than everything you just described combined globaly. It's a climate-bankrupt technology solution looking for a problem it is not equipped to solve. Crypto in some form may work, but this will never work.
Pretty sure you're orders of magnitude wrong about that.
Also there are very specific, actionable and already growing things on the roadmap to sustainability:
- Green energy/proper carbon taxing of energy production
- Lowering of block reward to stabilize the transaction fee and find the proper price, with relation to how many miners we really need vs how much people are willing to pay for transactions.
- L2 solutions making bitcoin a payment network and not only a store of value. Like Lightning network which works today, as we speak, is stable, and is still only going to get better and better because it's very early in the lifecycle of that technology.
> Bitcoin is considered by nearly zero of anyone of any actual note to be important to our future finance system.
How can you even be honest with yourself with that line, when it nowadays rarely goes 3 weeks between each consecutive All-Time-High? What is your theory behind that?
That's why miners use very efficient ASICS instead of whatever computer they can find that draws the most power regardless of output.
You seriously want to equate all these numerous example of entertainment, joy and satisfaction with some useless crypto "currency" that literally doesn't do anything and could be replaced by hundreds of other crypto currencies? Seriously?
You are very disconnected from reality of millions of people. Can you not try to see that? Can you not respect their opinion and their values? Do you just consider your opinion of Bitcoin the valid and truthful one?
How exactly is that different from someone who hates porn and calls it "useless time waster that doesn't do anything"?
No it's just a value judgement. We all have to be able to make them.
- Premise: Bitcoin is not important or useful
- Conclusion: It's a massive waste of energy
To give another example:
- Premise: Most activity on the internet is just people making themselves feel better about the nightmare of consciousness
- Conclusion: It's a massive waste of energy
Sounds like, not useful to all the people in the world minus the people to whome it's useful.
There are much faster, more reliable ways to store value or send / receive money.
Bitcoin’s two main use cases are investment and also making payments to drug traffickers or hitmans.
Bitcoin doesn't. We can ban bitcoin tomorrow, and not a single person will be seriously inconvenienced, other than speculators.
Sure, let's also ban all motor racing, tourism, recreational shopping, etc. It's a big waste of resources and it'll only inconvenience the people that care about those things, but they can still live their lives so it's fine.
You can have a very small (in relative numbers) community deciding for the rest of the world that dedicating all our energy to making them rich is the future and so far we don’t seem to be able to say “no”.
Proof of Work has been a horrible poisoned gift to the world.
Current policies and regulations seem to have a hard time addressing this problem.
What about Bitcoin makes it more intentional than any other industry? The product is proof of work, not energy wasted. That's why miners keep making their machines more efficient at producing proof of work instead of simply building larger power supplies and electric heaters.
There's also nothing in Bitcoin that makes it favor fossil fuels over green energy.
You are mistaken, Sir. We are legion.
Absolutely. But I just want to remind the group that not all crypto relies on mining! And not all crypto is about chasing fads like NFTs. I believe the world (some parts more than others) will need a decentralized means of exchange in the future. I personally am betting on Nano, but others are also promising.
I find the emotion quite surprising.. I don't see the same amount toward other forms of pollution. Consumerism is also a bit absurd these days and global trade is a large producer of CO2 too.
Now I find the crypto world a bit absurd and surely if they could kill the energy requirements then good.. but climate change is certainly not a consequence of btc miners.
Take your favorite evil mega-corporation: If you can offer them a way to perform the same task using half the energy, they'd immediately jump at the opportunity.
Bitcoin miners, on the other hand, would just... mine twice as fast, consuming exactly the same energy as before.
is it a waste if the result was useful? Why do you get to decide, rather tha whoever was paying for the electricity?
Because this waste has externalities and I'd argue that in a democracy, people should have a say in that.
I agree that in a democracy we all have a say in what we allow or not, but let's stop with this constant narrative that killing cryptocurrencies would significantly help with stopping climate change, it would barely make a difference, there are much more important things to focus on if that's really your goal.
But I feel like addressing it as a problem now rather than a few years down the road might be a good idea. Socially and politically normalizing the idea of intentionally wasting energy in exchange for financial gain seems like the wrong signal.
That's true of basically any industry.
not every issue can be democratically decided. I am a proponent of market forces - price into energy all externalities, and let those who find the cost worth the result decide.
> Bitcoin miners, on the other hand, would just... mine twice as fast, consuming exactly the same energy as before.
Both situations are the same, in your first example the mega-corp would just use the increased efficiency to produce more and sell more of whatever they sell, as long as there was demand for it.
news.yc doesn’t like the fact that its main craze for years has been outed as a global affliction, destroying the climate with impunity.
For example, the government will simply disallow any crypto exchanges from converting between ₹ and any crypto currencies. That will deter 99% of the potential users from ever trying it out.
Nah, we had this kind of ban on western fiat currencies in communist Poland. And guess what, illegal p2p trading of USD worked just fine.
It's almost like they are just setting up honeypots in the interim for later on surprise raids.
If you look at this from bullish bitcoin perspective, the large energy use is good for the climate as it will make people invest more in cheap renewable and this innovation will spread around. I find this argument to be tenuous at at best, but lets say it's true. It doesn't matter, what matters is that people view as an environmental problem and there is a perfect avenue to globally ban PoW, and even ban any crypto that use PoW, in a way the most people will go along with and view as helping them and not squashing the people's financial liberation or whatever we are calling it this week.
Some countries may not go along with this, I think Pakistan and some others, but if enough large countries(It's easy to see China, EU, USA, all jumping on board) say we are not doing this BTC will be pushed to the fringes and easy to be manipulated by state governments.
At least this is what I would do if I were a government official who was actually worried about crypto challenging the governments power, but must governments do not seem too worried about it.
A state wanting to continue to control currency, taxation etc seems like a fairly predictable and compelling reason though. It would be interesting if that's not the reason, but I don't think that we need to search hard for one.
1: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/15/india-plans-cryptocurrency-b...
India already has a cap of USD 250k limit on capital flight by individuals.
Nowadays bitcoin is a common method to escape capital controls.
This law will prevent capital flight by the rich which they earned with the patronage of Indian citizens and escape reinvestment locally
I recall back in the 90s there was a huge influx of "Indian" gold into the "West". It was identifiable from it's high purity and almost orange color, it was being carried out as jewelry and converted into real estate for the most part.
My point being, as long as there is a will to move wealth, the holders will find a way around any restrictions imposed by the state and infact restrictions usually create whole industries based on Enforcement of, and Evasion of state imposed restrictions.
Turning this around, why _would_ a country want to allow people to make anonymous(ish) large digital transactions? This is the same government that outlawed some bank notes in recent memory.
* https://www.forbes.com/sites/leezamangaldas/2018/04/18/under...
However, I can foresee electricity rationing (not in India but here in EU) after mismanaged transition to renewables. Both rolling blackouts and spot prices are unpopular...so what else is left when there's not enough baseload?
I'll still be pushing Bitcoin Cash as a solution to people in countries that don't ban crypto.
I don't think our currency qualifies as a "failing currency". The ₹ is quite strong, the people's trust in the government is quite high, and there is no need for citizens to run to other currencies.
As an example, the government outlawed all the cash in the country in 2016, with 4 hours' notice. This basically rendered 1 billion people helpless. But people still voted the for same government back in 2019, with an even greater majority.
Authorizing crypto exchangers without tight regulations opens the door to money laundering:
Only criminals and hardcore libertarians will argue against regulations.