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CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

netherlandsnewslive.com

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Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#131

Post by simonw »

celticninja wrote: post #114
dataflow wrote: post #4

Everyone needs to ban Bitcoin... and likely other cryptocurrencies. Not only are they by far the biggest enablers of ransomware (which we're supposedly taking seriously now), but Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. [1] Bitcoin already consumes 0.55% of energy produced globally. [2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 [2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-a…

Cheap plastic disposable goods shipped from China on polluting cargo ships are a huge source of environmental damage. This is a direct result of consumerism. Where is the plan to deal with that? Bitcoin energy use is just a stick used to beat it, it is not a genuine concern. Why? Because most people who raise the issue are not green environmentalists, they are just bitcoin detractors. They don't highlight the issues…

> Because most people who raise the issue are not green environmentalists, they are just bitcoin detractors.

Why would someone be a Bitcoin detractor if not for environmental reasons?

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#132

Post by sofixa »

celticninja wrote: post #114
dataflow wrote: post #4

Everyone needs to ban Bitcoin... and likely other cryptocurrencies. Not only are they by far the biggest enablers of ransomware (which we're supposedly taking seriously now), but Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. [1] Bitcoin already consumes 0.55% of energy produced globally. [2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 [2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-a…

Cheap plastic disposable goods shipped from China on polluting cargo ships are a huge source of environmental damage. This is a direct result of consumerism. Where is the plan to deal with that? Bitcoin energy use is just a stick used to beat it, it is not a genuine concern. Why? Because most people who raise the issue are not green environmentalists, they are just bitcoin detractors. They don't highlight the issues…

Bad whataboutism is bad.

> Cheap plastic disposable goods shipped from China on polluting cargo ships are a huge source of environmental damage

New regulations are here about polluting ships. Single use plastics are (progressively) being banned - in the EU they're heavily taxed and will be absolutely banned since ~2022.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#133

Post by emn13 »

celticninja wrote: post #117
dataflow wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Equivalent to the carbon footprint of 1,659,173 VISA transactions or 124,768 hours of watching Youtube. https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

And YouTube streams 1 billion hours of video a day, what's the carbon footprint of that? Is watching despacito or gangnam style really better for the world than a bitcoin transaction? Is it worse? Who is the arbiter if these decisions?

You can make a rough estimate of e.g. the CO2 emissions due to youtube and bitcoin, and thus get an idea of how the two relate.

E.g. a quick google finds this: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22256-3 or this https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56012952 - so let's say bitcoin uses 150 TWh in 2021. Here's another one: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/

By contrast, various sources list global datacenter power usage as "just" ~200TWh (e.g. https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-carbon-footprint-of-str... or https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-d...) and it's likely the average datacenter isn't as reliant on coal power plants in china as bitcoin is, so I'd say it's at least plausible that bitcoin by itself emits as much if not more CO2 than all the worlds datacenters combined. Let alone just teeny singular sites like youtube.

Of course, if you're going to include client power consumption, that's a different story... Then again, a youtube video is an actual desirable product in and of itself, whereas a bitcoin transaction is not; it's just a way to (perhaps in the future) acquire something desirable.

Ideally we'd price carbon conservatively (i.e. higher than necessary), and then this would all be a moot point. However, by the time we get all the relevant countries on board with that, and get democrats and republicans to sufficiently cooperate (even harder), the universe's heat death is likely nigh, so perhaps in the interim it's reasonable to just outright ban exceptionally pointless wasteful activities such as bitcoin mining.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#134

Post by paulgb »

emn13 wrote: post #126
bigger_inside wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and the US military effectively backs the dollar, which makes this the energy footprint of the dollar. meanwhile, gold stripmines the soil in poor countries, where children die in mines, while the loot is carried off to the west, AND it uses much more energy than bitcoin. and bitcoin is technology to replace, at least partially, those two things. And like a car versus a bike, it does so with more utility: better t…

This makes no sense. Are you suggesting that e.g. the US military wouldn't exist if the US used bitcoin rather than dollars? And similarly for other currency+military combos? That strikes me as really implausible.

I think the best representation of the argument is that if governments couldn’t print fiat they wouldn’t be able to fund huge militaries and we’d have less destructive wars.

It seems fairly utopian to me, given that wars existed on the gold standard too, and if they were less destructive it was for want of technology. But maybe if I held Bitcoin I’d be more inclined to believe it was the solution to world peace.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#135

Post by posix_me_less »

adflux wrote: post #115
f6v wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that the Netherlands is the country where wealth is routinely stolen from common folk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_in... Take a look at this list and see which country has the highest wealth inequality in the world. Hint: it's the Netherlands.

Wow.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#136

Post by betwixthewires »

jl6 wrote: post #42
SCHiM wrote: post #8

Why should others decide if I can run useless hashing functions on my computer? Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible. Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. The real enablers of ransomware are the countries that shelter the R10 groups, raking in millions. There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian languag…

Cryptocurrency is absolutely an enabler of ransomware. Is there any ransomware that extorts money in a form other than cryptocurrency? And yes, who would have thought that running useless hash functions on your computer could have enormous global externalities? Compute what you like on your own computer, but sending the results is intentionally participating in a worldwide crimewave and environmental disaster.

Cryptocurrency is a tool that is useful to ransomware perpetrators. That's not the same as being an enabler, unless you want to classify computers and digital data storage as enablers of ransomware.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#137

Post by tluyben2 »

skrebbel wrote: post #9
22c wrote: post #5

The HN headline is a bit alarmist. The headline I see is "CPB director: The Netherlands must ban bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies". This is the opinion of the CPB director in a letter, so it's not binding in any way. > A cryptocurrency crash is inevitable, he says. That is why the Netherlands must intervene. Should the government be banning any speculative investment that appears to be in a bubble?

Well, pyramid games are routinely banned. There are good arguments to be made that Bitcoin is a pyramid game much more than a "asset class in a bubble".

He does not say that though: he acts like he wants to protect the 'dumb people' (dumb is mine: but what else fits?) by banning stuff (which NL seems to want to do more and more) (I am Dutch). Does not explain why he would not want to ban stock markets as assets like MSFT are massively overvalued as well and will crash badly next crisis. Sure cryptocurrencies have no intrinsic value and energy waste etc etc but banning something because it might crash... is somewhat weird. Especially as you screw over all people who currently are in it. So you protected far too late. And actually hurt a lot of people.

Make the ponzi/pyramid scheme case from top to bottom and educate people if you cannot make a case for illegal practice.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#138

Post by pjc50 »

teekert wrote: post #76
dataflow wrote: post #4

Everyone needs to ban Bitcoin... and likely other cryptocurrencies. Not only are they by far the biggest enablers of ransomware (which we're supposedly taking seriously now), but Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2°C. [1] Bitcoin already consumes 0.55% of energy produced globally. [2] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0321-8 [2] https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-a…

Ban knifes! The biggest enabler of stabbings!

https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/poundland/poundland-writes-to-po...

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#139

Post by betwixthewires »

johbjo wrote: post #36
SCHiM wrote: post #8

Why should others decide if I can run useless hashing functions on my computer? Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible. Cryptocurrency is no the enabler of ransomware. Ransomware was prevalent before cryptocurrencies. The real enablers of ransomware are the countries that shelter the R10 groups, raking in millions. There's a reason some ransomware doesn't run when your system has a Russian languag…

> Price the electricity accordingly, and make PoW impossible. The problem is that other productive things are priced out before "mining". The environmental cost will be born either way, but mining is by definition not productive. It has been profitable to some people, but it is destructive to civilisation altogether.

Mining is absolutely productive, as a secondary effect of course. The process creates potential money that is impossible to counterfeit. This simply did not exist before, maintaining that is of enormous value.

Of course, if this can be done without ongoing expenditure that would be better.

Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

#140

Post by tirpen »

Varqu wrote: post #121
dataflow wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any other ideas? :) Yeah, make it illegal.

And how exactly do you make it illegal? Arrest people that own Bitcoin? Or ban them from the internet. Good luck with that :)

Yes, some people will ignore the law and it's impossible for law enforcement to catch all law breaker. Great insight.

I guess we might just as well make murder legal as well, since it's some people will still kill each other no whether it's illegal or not.

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