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Comment by VMG | Hacker News Reader

This merely pushes Bitcoin mining to countries that do not have this kind of regulation (and probably have less renewable energy).

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Then let’s ban this waste of electricity everywhere. I’m all for the idea of crypto currency, but I’m not in support or baking the planet just so a few people can get some virtual goods.

How you define waste of electricity? You writing that comment might as well be declared a waste and prohibited.

People decide that democratically. This is just like how California bans all showerheads that gives you more than a trickle of water, since they see good showers as a waste of water (All of USA has a similar ban but less restrictive). Just that in Sweden they ban wasteful businesses rather than "wasteful" quality of life improvements.

And like many other "democratic" decisions, it's just a feel-good measure. Watering your lawn is apparently a worthwhile use of resources, according to the Demos.

California bans the sale, not the use. Discrimination of how we use power is like discrimination of how we use internet service.

What happened to power network neutrality?

Well every time I visit California the showers are horrible in the hotels, so I bet hotels has to have those shitty showerheads. It would work the same here, you ban crypto mining for businesses but people will still mine privately since you can't really ban that.

This shitty comment uses a kilojoule max. A single BTC transaction uses 1880 kWh.

https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption

A Bitcoin transaction doesn't consume much energy, only the block generation does. An empty Bitcoin block still consumes the same amount of energy. Which in the end makes it even worse.

this calculation ignores layer-2 transactions which are just a few TCP packets

Like any other waste, when it does more bad than good.

Isn't it interesting that it is never a "waste" if it is the Pentagon that is polluting and poisoning the world.

But if there is a technology that threatens government power, suddenly it's suddenly all about the Earth.

For many people, Bitcoin is the only reliable technology to prevent their savings to be destroyed by inflation and to evade cruel sanctions. Your opinion has no value to them.

The first point is classic whataboutism. Would you defend a murder court case by claiming people don't care when the police kill people? It's the same thing, but people being replaced by the planet.

Second point - who are these people, and how much of BTC usage comes from that, vs greedy 'investors'/'evangelists' who have bought in, and get rich by other people buying in?

It's a rich people's plaything. Poor people in third world countries own very little of it, because they are poor. Bitcoin, and crypto as a whole, is a solution in search of a problem. It can be hammered into lots of use cases, but most are solved more quickly and efficiently by a backend and a database.

Bitcoin is targeted because it is a threat to power, not because of any environmental concerns.

The people who use it do not have to justify it for you or anyone else. That's what makes it successful.

Sweden wouldn't be the first western country to ban crypto mining if it was just about power. Sweden has a lot of environmentalists in its government though, so it makes sense that Sweden is the first western country to ban it for environmental reasons.

If you think a government wouldn't ban crypto for environmental reasons, can you believe a country would ban drinking straws for environmental reasons? Yeah, that happened, banning crypto is much more reasonable than banning drinking straws.

How is BitCoin a threat to power? It’s no more a threat to power than 1990s Beanie Babies on EBay.

Do you really have to just make stuff up like that?

Speak for yourself. YOU may not have any environmental concerns because you don't give a shit about the environment, but you can't blame everybody else for being that negligent.

Compare and contrast this with military spending. Arguably, all of it is pure waste since you wouldn't need it in the first place if people weren't using violence as a means to resolve conflict. And yet here we are, so states have to allocate certain spending to maintain healthy military balance and support the walls of peace, so to speak. Even if the military is never going to be used offensively, to seize profit for the state, nations still have to waste resources on its maintenance as a deterrent of foreign aggression. (Oh, and occasionally some military-related or military-funded research results in something with non-military applications.)

Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies are the same thing but for wealth and trade, being a necessary spending on deterrent maintenance. But this time it's not tied to any government, so naturally all governments are pissed off about it to a certain degree.

The military industrial complex has destroyed millions of lives and poisoned counties for decades to come. The abolition of the system that is perpetrating these crimes should be the top priority for any environmentalist and humanitarian.

Governments ability to print money is a critical component of this system.

Bitcoin can run on completely emission free energy and end the era of money printing.

we should ban videogames, they use more energy than ethereum network (u.s. video game industry uses more energy than small countries!!) and the virtual goods are locked inside one game and cant even be exchanged or resold after use.

not a fan of using energy for some peoples private flights of fancy. we should prioritise actual infrastructure with social value.

Yet more whataboutism. People need entertainment, but an investment medium that is designed to use as much power as possible is not remotely comparable to the basic needs of humans.

It would still raise the cost of mining. And those countries that do not ban mining will face increasing pressure to do so, due to miners pushing energy prices up.

But yes, an international treaty banning PoW crypto mining would be more effective. Then confiscate the equipment and use it to attack the networks.

Unless they buy their own coal plant?

How about an international treaty instituting a carbon tax, if C02 is what you actually want to minimize. Sounds like that's not the goal based on your comment though.

High mining cost is what provides network security.

I doubt there will be popular support for military interventions against Bitcoin. But if a "War against Bitcoin" were to happen, it would probably be as successful as the "War on Drugs" and "War on Terror"

It would actually make the network more secure, since mining would shift from big industry players to local private users who mine from home electricity. You can't hide a power dependent business and poor countries lack the power production for significant mining operations.

Security is the argument of last-resort for so many bad technologies.

like Governments

"Governments" is a bit broad but some policies almost certainly.

Yes and the same argument is used for all green laws which makes things like manufacturing more expensive. When becoming greener, we have to start some where

Sure, let them go ahead. Then see what happens when they start having blackouts (or other problems).

Then those countries can solve the problem in their local environment.

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