No, but there should be a ban on proof of waste.
Of course, just as most of yesterday's crypto experts are today's AI experts, the main wastage seems to be moving towards LLMs these days.
In contrast, switching off all crypto farms would be a free reduction in emissions, and indirectly save lives.
The "maker" sphere in China is analagous to that in EU/US, the people are waiting for societal change.
The consumer electronics people use to post environmentalist takes with. That'd be a good start.
My only objection to it is the fact all that energy is being poured into obsolete technology like bitcoin. I wouldn't even mind if Monero used even more energy. That energy is buying us something: a true cryptocurrency.
If we accept the analogy, 0.5% of the oceans is 5 100 000 km³, which is quite a bit more than "a literal drop": https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=0.5%25+of+the+volume+of...
This is self-evidently insane.
I want to ask rhetorically if you are out of your mind but, like I said, it’s self evident.
We have to ban accounts that do it repeatedly, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it.
Cryptocurrencies and the relative irrelevance of the energy consumption associated with them.
> just for currency?
Not just any currency, one that guarantees privacy and anonymity.
> You think using the worlds energy to generate random numbers is a form of freedom?
I don't see anyone complaining about the energy that gets poured into processors every single day to make them generate random numbers that are then used as secret keys in cryptography just so that users can securely shitpost on social media. All those advertisers are making a killing so all this activity must be moral, right?