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Comment by yabones | Hacker News Reader

Lotteries and casinos don't have massive externalities like crypto does. If running a casino required burning coal 24/7 to produce an absurd amount of energy, creating kilotonnes of CO2 & sulfur dioxide and causing respiratory illnesses, environmental damage, climate change, etc., then it would absolutely be illegal.

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Bitcoin mining uses energy, it does not generate it. What needs to be regulated is the dirty ways of producing energy, they should be banned out right. All fossil fuels.

But miners just pay their energy bills like any other citizen. Who are you to tell them what activity should they perform with the energy they purchase?

If you ban fossil energies and nuclear/gas I am not sure from where you are going to take all energy from.

With the current technology it is just impossible.

They aren't like any other citizen, because they use a really, really huge amount of energy. If they did use as little energy as any other citizen, there wouldn't be a problem. If anything, you'd have to compare them to huge companies or something. And those are still significantly different to (and usually more useful to society) cryptominers.

>If anything, you'd have to compare them to huge companies

Sounds like this is a good reason for them to pay lower rates per kwh.

Sure, so compare them with Google if you want (because I guess google's electricity bill for data centers is huge). Now, why would you want to forbid what bitcoin miners do with the energy they purchase while you don't forbid what Google does with the energy they purchase?

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