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Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

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Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#11

Post by thewakalix »

roenxi wrote: post #10

The basic idea of the economy is people can earn the right to energy, and then direct it to a goal of their choosing. The government making a value judgement about what type of commercial activity is worthwhile is extremely risky. Countries with innovative financial and credit systems have historically steamrolled those that don't have such innovations. We still don't understand the nature of crypto.

I think externalities should be priced into the cost of resources (e.g. with a Pigouvian tax), but otherwise I entirely agree.

Edit: I suppose, if you want to subsidize all uses of electricity except for cryptocurrency (and a few other areas of your choice), you could simplify this process by only applying the externality tax to miners (etc). But this should be limited to the externality, not arbitrarily high.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#12

Post by WanderPanda »

thewakalix wrote: post #11
roenxi wrote: post #10

The basic idea of the economy is people can earn the right to energy, and then direct it to a goal of their choosing. The government making a value judgement about what type of commercial activity is worthwhile is extremely risky. Countries with innovative financial and credit systems have historically steamrolled those that don't have such innovations. We still don't understand the nature of crypto.

I think externalities should be priced into the cost of resources (e.g. with a Pigouvian tax), but otherwise I entirely agree. Edit: I suppose, if you want to subsidize all uses of electricity except for cryptocurrency (and a few other areas of your choice), you could simplify this process by only applying the externality tax to miners (etc). But this should be limited to the externality, not arbitrarily high.

But in this case the negative externalities do not come from the mining but from the energy generation. So that is the level where the externalities should be priced in.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#13

Post by cblconfederate »

Thankfully, crypto mining is adversarial so even if it is cornered into remote islands powered by the sun or nuclear powered siberian mines , it will still work.

I understand that "Climate crisis" is becoming the new "Children and Terrorists" wrapping for the next decades' wave of state oppression, but overall this ban may not be a bad idea for sweden and most of the developed world. Westerners being monetarily dependent on poor and otherwise forgotten countries will be a breath of fresh air.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#14

Post by skohan »

roenxi wrote: post #10

The basic idea of the economy is people can earn the right to energy, and then direct it to a goal of their choosing. The government making a value judgement about what type of commercial activity is worthwhile is extremely risky. Countries with innovative financial and credit systems have historically steamrolled those that don't have such innovations. We still don't understand the nature of crypto.

One role of government is to curtail negative externalities. If it's possible for a few people to profit by causing general harm through accelerating climate change, that would be well within the government's mandate to regulate against this.

It's possible that cryptocurrency will be the future of finance. It's also entirely possible that crypto - which is incredibly expensive energy-wise per transaction - is actually a waste of energy and is a net drain on economies which embrace it. It might be a competitive advantage to ban mining.

I guess Sweden will be a part of that experiment and we will see what happens.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#15

Post by Glavnokoman »

roenxi wrote: post #10

The basic idea of the economy is people can earn the right to energy, and then direct it to a goal of their choosing. The government making a value judgement about what type of commercial activity is worthwhile is extremely risky. Countries with innovative financial and credit systems have historically steamrolled those that don't have such innovations. We still don't understand the nature of crypto.

"The government making a value judgement about what type of commercial activity is worthwhile is extremely risky" Bullshit. That's what government is for. It already forbids commercial activities as robbery, stealing, fraud etc. If they put crypto into the same basket I wouldn't cry much.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#16

Post by i_am_proteus »

roenxi wrote: post #10

The basic idea of the economy is people can earn the right to energy, and then direct it to a goal of their choosing. The government making a value judgement about what type of commercial activity is worthwhile is extremely risky. Countries with innovative financial and credit systems have historically steamrolled those that don't have such innovations. We still don't understand the nature of crypto.

"Historically" the financial innovation that benefitted society was the joint stock company and similar systems of credit that essentially permitted risk pooling on wide scales.

As far as I can tell, bit coins ain't that.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#17

Post by drawqrtz »

roenxi wrote: post #10

The basic idea of the economy is people can earn the right to energy, and then direct it to a goal of their choosing. The government making a value judgement about what type of commercial activity is worthwhile is extremely risky. Countries with innovative financial and credit systems have historically steamrolled those that don't have such innovations. We still don't understand the nature of crypto.

How do we not understand the nature of it? It is a mathematically interesting problem, but the nature of Bitcoin et.al. just makes it useful for speculation and scamming people who think it would become a digital currency.

I have yet to meet someone who bought something real with crypto.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#18

Post by zxcb1 »

It may be better to tax activities considered harmful for society, and subsidize those considered beneficial.

For example, Microsoft, Facebook and Google data centers are deemed appropriate use of renewable energy in Sweden and are thus subsidized.

However, will there be sufficient renewable energy available for Swedish citizens in the long run, with continued data center build outs?

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#19

Post by skohan »

WanderPanda wrote: post #12
thewakalix wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think externalities should be priced into the cost of resources (e.g. with a Pigouvian tax), but otherwise I entirely agree. Edit: I suppose, if you want to subsidize all uses of electricity except for cryptocurrency (and a few other areas of your choice), you could simplify this process by only applying the externality tax to miners (etc). But this should be limited to the externality, not arbitrarily high.

But in this case the negative externalities do not come from the mining but from the energy generation. So that is the level where the externalities should be priced in.

In the current environment, you can't separate energy usage from energy generation in terms of externalities. Electrical power is something like a fungible asset, so even if you are using 100% green power (which doesn't really exist), you're still increasing demand for electricity overall, which will result in more carbon-intensive power generation in general.

In other words, decreasing power consumption is as important if not more important than increasing clean energy as a share of production.

Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned

#20

Post by Jensson »

roenxi wrote: post #10

The basic idea of the economy is people can earn the right to energy, and then direct it to a goal of their choosing. The government making a value judgement about what type of commercial activity is worthwhile is extremely risky. Countries with innovative financial and credit systems have historically steamrolled those that don't have such innovations. We still don't understand the nature of crypto.

No capitalist country lets you buy whatever you want for no reason. You aren't allowed to hoard all the food for example, all basic utilities are regulated. So when the global crypto scam starts to hurt unrelated people by raising energy prices those people will start to complain and create regulations like this to protect themselves. I used the word "scam" since that is how most people see the crypto industry, from their perspective this is a scam that drives up energy prices, there is no point in keeping it legal.
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