Sweden asks EU to ban Bitcoin mining... | Hacker News Reader

Sweden asks EU to ban Bitcoin mining...

theregister.com

64 pointsoblib37 comments

" ... and to legally prevent anyone doing it from calling it eco-friendly."

Ok, that bit I can agree with.

Buuuttt, what I have a problem with is this - if Sweden / EU wants to ban crypto mining then simply create a specific industry code [1] that covers crypto mining and legislate/tax accordingly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Industrial_Classifica...

Try being a Lebanese or Turkish or any of dozen African countries with hyperinflation.

Only the rich in those countries managed to exchange their local currency for foreign cash in time, everyone else saw their life savings vanish in front of their own eyes except the very few who converted their local currency to crypto in time when they saw the chips falling.

BitCoin allows kind of international currency bank account for everyone and anyone who needs it for minimal cost.

That besides the large markets for illegal goods, which is another cornerstone that's not gonna go away any time soon either, with people more or less being forced to buy crypto to get their goods.

What happens to people’s money during inflation when that money is tied up in stocks or mutual funds rather than in savings? Does the inflation affect the stock prices, and partially protect you from the inflation?

During hyperinflation the entire economy tanks, and the stock market will reflect that, if not worse (companies going bankrupt and you losing everything).

And, in those countries, investing in stocks is only for the upper class in general. It's nowhere as easy as in the US, and many of them don't even have a stock market or anything similar in the first place.

Closest alternative is buying precious metals like gold, but then you run into the risk of fakes, theft and difficulty of transportation.

> And, in those countries, investing in stocks is only for the upper class in general.

I'm not sure that is true at all. I mean, nowadays it's as hard to buy a position in crypto as it is to buy stocks from the, say, US stock market.

> Try being a Lebanese or Turkish or any of dozen African countries with hyperinflation.

Aren't you arguing in favour of capital flight instead of crypto?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_flight

> BitCoin allows kind of international currency bank account for everyone and anyone who needs it for minimal cost.

That doesn't really explain why should, say, Sweden or the EU be forced to pay, say, Turkey or Lebanon's ecological footprint of it's capital flight.

> That doesn't really explain why should, say, Sweden or the EU be forced to pay, say, Turkey or Lebanon's ecological footprint of it's capital flight.

It is Turkey and Lebanon today, it was Greece yesterday, it could be Sweden tomorrow.

Banning it now means it won't be there if it's needed in the future.

That's we we have the Euro, so we do not need some shady escape path to hypecapitalisms to a currency controlled by only by some people with money who do not care about the environment. I think it is time for governments to monitor and tax the trading of any unregulated currencies above small amounts and particularly raise import taxes to compensate for any CO2 emissions. I have no clue why legislators are so hesitant. IMHO negative effects on the economy would be unnoticeable.

Cause the euro is solid and isn't going anywhere... Greece like situations have been regulatory fixed and countries other than Germany are paying the bills.

Except not. The EU was desperate to find another financial supporter hence the failed bid calling for the death of the pound. That didn't happen, the euro is on its way out and has been.

I hate to see this being used as a blanket ban for anything that is not productive? Who is to say any GPU cluster experiments being done at banks/companies to "try out a new model" isn't along the same lines?

Telling what people can't do with their own compute/resources is just too much.

Please do it!

Tbh, while I'd welcome it, I'd prefer rigorous Carbon pricing with dividends

Do it. And ban any "proof of work" crypto

I would put a caveat on this. If there is to be a ban, it should only ban "non-useful" proof of work. There's a growing body of research on Proofs of Useful Work and squashing that body of research seems to be short-sighted.

If proof of work is outlawed, then only outlaws will have proof of work. Imagine if 10 raspberry pis in Libya was all it took to hijack every Blockchain

Not a concern. People have already imagined proof of stake, and proof of history into existence.

so state should be deciding what algorithms im not allowed run on my computer? thats absurd and fascist

It's not deciding what algorithms you are allowed to run. It only has to be actually useful. If you find the bitcoin algorithm has use then you are free to run it. If you consider that fascist. Then it's also fascist that you aren't allowed to burn trash in your own backyard, which is illegal in many countries. The government is simply doing the job it's supposed to. Protecting their subjects.

Actually useful is subjective. What's the carbon footprint of all the gpu rigs in the world used to play video games? Is that useful for you?

It's not subjective. At least not in the way you are wording it. Bitcoins algorithm has no purpose. It's burning power to mine a resource that has no inherent value.

Gaming has obvious value. Entertainment in all forms is necessary for people to feel happy.

Although I might disagree with the use of the word "fascist" here, I don't think that's an entirely fair comparison. Societies usually ban things that are directly harmful to someone else (or in some cases to the person themselves), and burning trash in a populated area falls under that. Indirectly harmful things could also be banned, but the consumption of resources alone usually doesn't satisfy that in a liberal society unless the resource is rather scarce. (Think water during drought.) In other cases, use of resources and other indirectly harmful things just tend to be taxed.

A better comparison might be banning driving for no objectively useful or socially acceptable reason.

I can see how one could deem it kind of totalitarian if driving for no purpose were legally banned. Add in the fact that many people here probably take computing personally (as do I), and it's no surprise that it will seem totalitarian to decide which kinds of computation you can use your resources for, regardless of whether the computation actually makes any sense to an outsider.

edit: word choice

What if I generated my own electricity from solar in say sunny Spain or Portugal.

Yes, please do! And go ahead and use that energy to power your every day needs: lighting, cooking, heating and entertainment. Now tell me which of those categories Bitcoin falls under. Solar energy may be virtually infinite, but solar panels are not. If you really care about being eco-friendly, then you better put them to good use.

> Now tell me which of those categories Bitcoin falls under

Where do I put my workstation? I mean I do watch youtube on it sometimes but I mostly work with it... and it does heat up the room but that's mostly a side effect and not a feature. Please help.

I think workstations by definition fall under the same category as a space heater.

> you better put them to good use

and why do you get to decide what a "good use" is for somebody else?

Do not question the paperclip AI.

GP does not "get to decide" but hopes to persuade. One possible grim future is that home solar panels do not displace fossil fuels, but instead suffer the same fate as GPUs: eaten up by cryptocurrencies which produce negligible economic value but have a bottomless appetite through their role as a speculative investment. This is terrible for the climate. How do we avoid it?

> How do we avoid it?

Find a better solution to the issue that crypto currencies are trying to solve.

Bitcoin is seen as (among other things) a hedge against inflation, a way to quickly send money internationally, and a way to spend and receive money without needing other people's permission to do so.

Ethereum is seen as a way to create programs that runs in "the cloud" but not in a cloud that is under the control of any one group, and a way to create new organizations and consensus making systems that are designed from the group up based on internet assumptions (information is quick and essential free to transmit and the importance of geographic location is minimized).

I am saying seen to not try to keep it more neutral. You and I may disagree about whether ETH and BTC achieve or make progress on any of these goals, but I believe it's very clear that many people THINK that they do.

If you would like to get rid of ETH and BTC, you'd need to find a way to solve (or are perceived to solve) these problems better than ETH and BTC.

You would still be generating lots of heat with all those GPUs crunching numbers every day, and possibly even more to cool them down. And there's also chips scarcity, in which I'm sure the pandemic isn't the only culprit.

Cryptocurrencies should be banned everywhere, unless we find a way to send a mining farm in space; but they're doing only damage here on Earth.

Proof of stake and proof of history have already arrived as alternatives to your dilemma.

Replacing legacy tech (proof of work, in this case) isn't trivial, but better than banning a whole new industry for an already solved legacy problem.

Doesn't matter, you still don't get to just use that electricity for whatever you want. Why would you want to participate in a decentralized financial network, anyway? Now go sit in a dark room and recite the Law of Jante seven times.

> What if I generated my own electricity from solar in say sunny Spain or Portugal.

I'm not sure about Portugal, but nowadays Spain is undergoing a really rough time with historically high energy prices due to its overreliance on gas as it's energy source.

Can't they just state in service agreement with people they sell electricity to, that this electricity is not allowed to be used for mining cryptocurrencies?

And if they discover it is they would just stop selling electricity to that person/entity?

Why stop? Just raise the price. That's what WA state started doing.

Who is they? There are many electricity providers to choose from, with various levels of eco-friendliness.

They = energy producers and sellers.

They are surely under some control of Swedish government. Energy sector is largely regulated everywhere.

The Europe mostly missed the boat with the current era of web platforms. With enough regulation, maybe the result will be missing Web 3 as well.

I don't think so, though. France in particular, seems to have a lot of energy in its blockchain tech scene.

All roads lead to El Salvador and its geothermal powered Bitcoin City.

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