A bit unrelated, but this submission was top 3 on HN and suddenly seems removed from the /news page?
Because HN is a centralized platform and its owner has a big stack in crypto. So such "regulation" is logical.
Ironically, isn't it?
CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
141–150 of 210 posts
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Price the electricity accordingly So I should pay significantly more on my bills, just because you want to play with some virtual coins?
I don't think that's the point. They could just increase price on higher usage. So everyone pays the same, but those who use more pay more²
Wouldn't a graduated pricing scheme be circumvented by additional hookups?
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#143Everyone 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…
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Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, please don't tax something because it is wasteful or not, but tax something based on how much resources it uses. In fact, tax the resource usage not the activity. Even an extremely efficient car uses a ton of energy to move around. New cars often have engines in the multiple hundred kW range, which is insane compared to any other appliance you own. If fossil fuels were taxed properly, that would discourage using/…
> No, please don't tax something because it is wasteful or not, but tax something based on how much resources it uses. "Wasteful" = "using more resources than it genuinely needs". We're saying very, very similar things here. I don't find the difference between them significant enough to be worth arguing about honestly. I'm just suggesting an alternative that I think might be more viable, but if we go with your propos…
It's semantics, but in this case, semantics do matter. There's a real difference in result between taxing gasoline per gallon and taxing the ownership of a fuel-inefficient vehicle.
The latter is roughly equivalent to the US's CAFE standards and leads to gaming the system by manufacturers.
The former is much harder to game - either you use the gasoline (and paid the tax at purchase) or you don't. Doesn't matter (to the tax authority) what car you drive - only how much gasoline you burn.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#145Everyone 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…
Well, a country can't _really_ ban bitcoin and other crypto currency because of its decentralised nature. As longs as there is usefulness to it, there will always be people vying to make it a thing. The governments can collectively make it unusable - prevent all financial institutions from recognising it, and never exchange their currency to these crypto coins. This way, sure bitcoins will continue to exist, and ther…
Sure they can. Ban all legal exchanges, continue auditing income as usual usual. Bitcoin will still exist for illegal purposes, but that's fine.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#146Everyone 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…
Good luck banning internet access. Even if you ban crypto exchanges and money transfers to them, you cannot ban a single entity called Bitcoin Co, nor you can ban individuals from possessing it. You could potentially ban crypto miners from using the electrical energy, but that doesn't ban Bitcoin either. Any other ideas? :)
As everyone else is saying: ban the points of contact. It's basically going to look like the War On Drugs (ironic, for NL). And likewise, it won't be 100% effective.
All of the following are entirely feasible measures for "banning bitcoin" that are already applied to other things:
- directly ban sales or receipts through normal financial intermediaries (banks etc). Try to wire money to Coinbase and get prosecuted.
- directly ban advertising of cryptocurrency products (problem here is you hit the celebrities, good luck prosecuting Musk in NL)
- directly ban holding or making cryptocurrency transactions. Not very effective, but provides an additional charge that can be made against people who've been prosecuted and had their computers seized for other reasons (e.g. drugs, CP). Incidentally criminalizes paying ransoms!
- use all the anti-CP measures against Bitcoin related sites; put the exchanges and known network nodes on the IWF blocklist.
- put bitcoin related software on AV alert lists (I think this has already happened with miner software because it keeps getting installed by malware)
- add it to the list of things checked in border phone sweeps. I don't think NL does a lot of these, but you occasionally hear about the US doing them. Some countries have also started doing device searches as part of other police searches, e.g. https://www.scotland.police.uk/spa-media/zqxibu3s/cyber-kios... ; combine with the ban on crypto tech and this can be used to prosecute people for having cryptocurrency apps on their phones.
Does anyone else remember the "crypto is a munition" era? It used to be illegal to export actually secure crypto from the US, which meant in practice it was illegal to host it on US-based websites. I'm not sure it's possible to go back to that era, but it's possible to imagine github banning crypto-related apps due to international pressure.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe we should in general ban things that are a certain amount less energy efficient (say, 5x more wasteful) than the best technology we've achieved for a similar purpose so far. And progressively tax anything that's moderately more wasteful (say, 2x-5x). It's bad enough that we have cars on roads that are twice as wasteful as they could be, let alone a transaction processing…
> literally a million times more wasteful than our existing technology This is not a fair comparison. Did you count all the banking services and data centers? Also, cryptocurrencies provide features which banks can't provide, e.g., independence on a third party.
Even if cryptocurrencies had unique features that some people demand, the fact remains that these cryptocurrencies could provide the same exact features without wasting enormous amounts of energy (e.g. by using a "proof of stake" mechanism). Therefore the wastefulness can't be justified on these grounds.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say maybe we should in general ban things that are a certain amount less energy efficient (say, 5x more wasteful) than the best technology we've achieved for a similar purpose so far. And progressively tax anything that's moderately more wasteful (say, 2x-5x). It's bad enough that we have cars on roads that are twice as wasteful as they could be, let alone a transaction processing…
No, please don't tax something because it is wasteful or not, but tax something based on how much resources it uses. In fact, tax the resource usage not the activity. Even an extremely efficient car uses a ton of energy to move around. New cars often have engines in the multiple hundred kW range, which is insane compared to any other appliance you own. If fossil fuels were taxed properly, that would discourage using/…
The problem with bitcoin mining is that it is really easy to move the servers to a different country that does not have this tax.
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 glob…
Look just be honest with yourself, you were in a prime position to buy bitcoin early (you are on HN so you likely heard about it before, let's say 2013). And you didn't, so your vested interest is in it failing. The environmental considerations just give you the flag to rally around. Your comment history has plenty of negative mentions of cryptocurrency/BTC but I cannot find anything related to environmental concern that is not cryptocurrency related. I also have never seen a comment where you want to ban something, does that mean that bitcoin is the only " exceptionally pointless wasteful activity" that you know of? If so, even that should tell you something about your true motives, if not where do you protest about these other activities?
Re: CPB director: The Netherlands must ban Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
I agree, literally the only negative is it's current energy use, but even that has been blown out of proportion and has not been fairly compared with the energy use of other sectors and technologies.