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China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

reuters.com

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Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#41

Post by pstrateman »

mpoteat wrote: post #4
forkLding wrote: post #3

This will probably crush Bitmain and other Chinese bitcoin mining giants and they will probably move elsewhere, however Chinese courts have said bitcoin itself is legally allowed. Probably what is going to happen is that you can own but you can't mine or even obtain more bitcoins in China. https://www.ccn.com/chinas-merchants-are-legally-allowed-to-...

Bitmain makes huge margins on selling equipment, not mining. They make shovels in the gold rush.

That's simply not true, they have large mining operations.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#42

Post by endless1234 »

superkuh wrote: post #23
kevintb wrote: post #17

Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

But it still doesn't waste as much energy as the standing armies fiat currencies rely on. And if your country doesn't have a large standing army then your currency is being subsidized by those you ally with who do have standing armies of significance. And the good it brings to the world in being a non-nation state controlled currency is obvious. From enabling continuation of money transfer in failing or restrictive g…

If bitcoin had global adoption, there would be no more armies in the world? That's quite a stretch...

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#43

Post by KorematsuFred »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #13

From an energy-consumption standpoint, I'm not too surprised at this. They have better uses for their mostly-non-renewable power generation. This will probably continue the push towards bitcoin mining in places with stable renewables (like hydro and geothermal). That being said, I just found https://www.coindesk.com/norway-ends-power-tax-subsidy-for-b... , which makes me wonder if current prices would be able to supp…

It is actually other way around.

No one mines cryptos where energy in less supply because energy prices tend to be high. The current mining rigs in China are almost exclusively located in regions where energy is cheap and in oversupply. China has many power-plants that must run at certain capacity floor and despite of that the demand is much lower. It makes so much sense to let that energy be used to mine cryptos which is like store of that value. This way energy is not wasted.

Chinese move has less to do with energy or environment but more about undermining a threat to their monopoly on currency.

Bitcoin mining has a potential to push innovation to invest more in alternative and greener energy sources.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#44

Post by tfha »

kevintb wrote: post #17

Good. There are few things more wasteful in energy and minimal in doing good for the world. Widespread bitcoin adoption would be catastrophic for the Earth and climate change efforts [1]. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8

Why don't people rail like this against the aluminum industry? It's just as wasteful. Bitcoin provides substantial utility and value to society, the energy to secure bitcoin is a cost just the same as the energy to smelt aluminum.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#45

Post by lucb1e »

mrb wrote: post #35
CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #13

From an energy-consumption standpoint, I'm not too surprised at this. They have better uses for their mostly-non-renewable power generation. This will probably continue the push towards bitcoin mining in places with stable renewables (like hydro and geothermal). That being said, I just found https://www.coindesk.com/norway-ends-power-tax-subsidy-for-b... , which makes me wonder if current prices would be able to supp…

"their mostly-non-renewable power generation" Actually, most crypto mines in China are located in Sichuan or Yunnan, precisely because of an oversupply of hydroelectricity. More than a quarter of the world's hydropower is generated in China (350 GW) and most of that is from Sichuan & Yunnan. 350 GW is more hydropower generated than the next three biggest hydro producers combined (US + Brazil + Canada.) Because of the…

Then why did they even build it there? You know what the demand is going to be in the near future and you know what capacity you're designing for. Was this built purely for mining? Because if so, the money used to build this could have been used elsewhere.

People often bring this up when talking about bitcoin mining but it makes no sense to me. How can this be true (and the whole truth)? It sounds like the kind of argument that bitcoin supporters would spread happily. Which I used to be, by the way. I GPU mined back when it was all fun and games. I used to also doubt the claims that bitcoin uses the power of a small country. I assumed some journalist looked at the difficulty, derived the number of hashes that need be done, looked at an average computer in their office, and voila. But then I did the math, taking the hash rate and figuring in the most optimal case, using only the most efficient miners, and to my surprise it's true. A small country of power just being wasted. I'm all for proof of stake networks, but bitcoin just has to die, the sooner the better.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#46

Post by foepys »

billions wrote: post #37
benmarten wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from planet's perspective. everyone can be thankful

Banks run green. They only require lights in the building, the building, the branches, and the atms, the employee's cars, the oil deals financed, and the wars financed.

Same can be said about the Bitcoin exchanges. Minus the wars maybe but including the drug cartels.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#47

Post by kacamak »

billions wrote: post #37
benmarten wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from planet's perspective. everyone can be thankful

Banks run green. They only require lights in the building, the building, the branches, and the atms, the employee's cars, the oil deals financed, and the wars financed.

>and the wars created

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#48

Post by gayFaggot »

Meanwhile, there's incentive to operate high transaction volumes, migrating token values from wallet to wallet to wallet, so as to bury illegal activity deep in the ledger, to the point of overflow, so that it's costly and painful to index and extract identities and establish relationships, while building evidence to throw people in jail.

So the idea that there will always be a rational amount of activity is laughable. There's always an incentive for excessive noise, when illegal activity is involved, so as to drown out the ability to keep a watchful eye on criminal behavior.

Re: China says it wants to eliminate Bitcoin mining

#50

Post by Nursie »

polskibus wrote: post #40

Supply reduction should pump up the price, right? Good for holders.

Supply is constant, regardless of how many people mine. In theory it should have no effect on price.

I guess existing miners would get their coins cheaper, so there would be less pressure on them to sell to cover electricity costs, so the supply may reduce a little via that mechanism.

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