141–150 of 699 posts
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Europe is currently facing electricity and chip shortages. Banning crypto in the EU would be an acceptable measure for addressing that.
Does anyone mine in Europe? I can't imagine that, considering the cost of electricity here.
For those of you keeping track, this is about the 20th time China has declared to have banned Bitcoin or crypto. The only thing they've done is demonstrated that crypto is a threat to their all-reaching power grab and that they are mostly powerless to control it.
For those of you keeping track, this is about the 20th time China has declared to have banned Bitcoin or crypto. The only thing they've done is demonstrated that crypto is a threat to their all-reaching power grab and that they are mostly powerless to control it.
What makes you think that? You do realise that they could easily outlaw 1) miners, 2) exchanges that convert to fiat, and 3) people privately exchanging to fiat, and (domestically) enforce that reasonably well, too.
And sure, there could still be an underground market - you can get still get weed and cocaine in China or Singapore, but I wouldn't recommend participating in it.
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Europe is currently facing electricity and chip shortages. Banning crypto in the EU would be an acceptable measure for addressing that.
Only PoW cryptos need extensive electricity and hardware. Its completely absurd to ban crypto. Thats like if you would ban all motorized vehicles to get rid of coal blasting diesel trucks without catalytic converter. Needless to say that its also technically impossible to ban crypto. Its like banning torrents or even harder and we all know torrent was attacked heavily in the past but it did not go away.
No one wants to ban crypto. The goal is to ban financial institutions that handle fiat from trading with institutions that handle crypto.
From there, if people want to accept funny money as payment for pizzas, it's up to them really.
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Yours is the top comment on this thread and it's a bit surprising. When you say less than 5%, what are you talk about? Can you point to any sources that back that up?
HN has a well known hatred for anything crypto. I’m not really sure why, to be honest. Very odd that an authoritarian action by an extremely centralized government is being applauded on here.
Maybe these people feel this way because they feel the government needs to protect people against themselves. Or maybe because they somehow fear central banks losing power and they feel central banks are needed in a monetary system. Or maybe they are concerned with the energy use for mining some crypto currencies (mainly Bitcoin).
On the other hand there's the libertarians that want as little government as possible. Libertarians tend to feel that people should be free to make their own choices as long as it doesn't harm other people. And that it's ok to make mistakes and learn from them and government doesn't need to protect people from mistakes.
I believe the tech sector has plenty of people on either side.
I myself am on the libertarian side and think crypto is a force of good. I do wonder if this crypto crackdown in China could somehow be related to the situation with Evergrande.
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Europe is currently facing electricity and chip shortages. Banning crypto in the EU would be an acceptable measure for addressing that.
Why not to ban steelmaking first? Steel manufacturing requires tons of electricity, and it is already impossible in EU without enormous subsidies. It's an industry surviving entirely on life support.
I hope the rest of world follows. There is nothing more volatile than a decentralised crypto currency. The amount of people making a profit from it is less than 5% and energy consumption is beyond acceptable. Crypto as a tech to serve something different is totally fine of course.
I don't fly in airplanes but I use crypto. So why should you get to choose to do some activities that blast CO2 directly into the atmosphere but I can't? It is a disgusting, authoritarian ideology you have.
Besides that crypto can run on solar. Airplanes cannot. So I propose we ban airplanes. /s
The reality is you just don't like the politics behind the crypto movement. The climate is just a convenient bludgeon for you.
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This is a country rounding up a whole population of a religious minority and sending them to reeducation camps. A country that mobilized over a billion people to almost completely control covid. You are vastly underestimating the CCP, as most Westerns continue to do.
I've noticed this quite a bit, and I don't understand it. People keep writing articles and saying things amounting to 'it just won't last forever'. But the reason is, because it just won't, totalitarian governments don't last. Why wouldn't it? Strong central government. Clear economic and social goals with the ends justifying whatever unethical means. A complacent middle and upper class satiated by enough new wealth…
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Only PoW cryptos need extensive electricity and hardware. Dont make crypto just bitcoins. If you really want to help make a dent in the energy consumption then people need to move away from PoW coins not from crypto in general.
Only PoW cryptocurrencies can be fairly distributed and avoid wealth concentration (although many fail to do so by concentrating most of emission in just the first few years).
Here's an interesting take on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFp86n7QCf0 This analysis suggests that the value of tracking every financial transaction will eventually cause governments to all want to institute there own crypto currencies and eventually outlaw independent crypto currencies.