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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

#91

Post by skohan »

FDSGSG wrote: post #61
skohan wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah fine, but then it's still completely consistent that if your goal is to decrease overall energy consumption, you would find ways to curtail energy intensive activities which provide little social value.

You don't have any credible argument against a real carbon tax, do you? Only an utter clown would waste time bikeshedding about cryptocurrencies when you could focus on real solutions. E: Can't reply below, but here's a very real argument for you. It's completely absurd to bikeshed about banning an activity that doesn't even exist in Sweden at any meaningful scale. Discussing whether or not Sweden should ban cryptomi…

No I would support a real carbon tax. I would also support regulating specific activities with perverse incentive structures, like cryptocurrency mining.

You don't have a real argument do you if you are are resorting to name calling and ad-hominem attacks?

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

#92

Post by f6v »

swman wrote: post #84
seu wrote: post #3

"If we were to allow extensive mining of crypto-assets in Sweden, there is a risk that the renewable energy available to us will be insufficient to cover the required climate transition that we need to make. This energy is urgently required for the development of fossil-free steel, large-scale battery manufacturing and the electrification of our transport sector. Based on estimates from Cambridge University, it is cu…

Honestly do we really need cryptocurrency? I don’t want my transactions public. I like exchanging cash for weed (legal in California) and nobody needs to know regardless. I also don’t understand what’s wrong with USD. I grew up in a third world country so maybe it could help people there but in USA? I’m happy with the dollar fluctuations vs four digit fluctuations daily. Can someone give me a good explain?

When you have a hammer everything looks like a nail.

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

#93

Post by Koffiepoeder »

tshaddox wrote: post #36
Glavnokoman wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

But you don’t justify a ban on robbery because of the energy usage of getaway cars, right?

This is kind of a false equivalence [0], the carbon footprint of the getaway cars would be much smaller.

Generally problems are only handled* when they come up. In this case the carbon footprint of crypto is already a problem, so therefore it is now being handled. Getaway car carbon footprint on the other hand is not a problem as of now, so therefore this is not a correct parallel to draw.

* you could argue that we should have foresight, but unfortunately this is very hard to pull of. Most policy making is thus reactive, not proactive.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence

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

#94

Post by ur-whale »

swman wrote: post #84
seu wrote: post #3

"If we were to allow extensive mining of crypto-assets in Sweden, there is a risk that the renewable energy available to us will be insufficient to cover the required climate transition that we need to make. This energy is urgently required for the development of fossil-free steel, large-scale battery manufacturing and the electrification of our transport sector. Based on estimates from Cambridge University, it is cu…

Honestly do we really need cryptocurrency? I don’t want my transactions public. I like exchanging cash for weed (legal in California) and nobody needs to know regardless. I also don’t understand what’s wrong with USD. I grew up in a third world country so maybe it could help people there but in USA? I’m happy with the dollar fluctuations vs four digit fluctuations daily. Can someone give me a good explain?

> I don’t want my transactions public.

First, not all cryptos share Bitcoin's open ledger characteristics.

Look up Monero, ZCash, Grin, Beam : they all implement untraceable transactions, not just pseudo-anonymous ones like Bitcoin.

Second, pseudonymous transactions is far from being the only interesting property of Bitcoin. Among others, no centralized control is a key aspect.

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

#96

Post by vadfa »

forgotmyoldname wrote: post #82
vadfa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is clean and sustainable and can allow people to mine bitcoin and even heat their homes, which seems to be a problem currently in some regions of Europe.

I’m fine with nuclear, but producing excess nuclear waste simply to produce random bits to do absolutely nothing isn’t something I’d support.

I agree with you, but how exactly do you check for that? Put a telescreen in every home?

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

#97

Post by ninepoints »

swman wrote: post #84
seu wrote: post #3

"If we were to allow extensive mining of crypto-assets in Sweden, there is a risk that the renewable energy available to us will be insufficient to cover the required climate transition that we need to make. This energy is urgently required for the development of fossil-free steel, large-scale battery manufacturing and the electrification of our transport sector. Based on estimates from Cambridge University, it is cu…

Honestly do we really need cryptocurrency? I don’t want my transactions public. I like exchanging cash for weed (legal in California) and nobody needs to know regardless. I also don’t understand what’s wrong with USD. I grew up in a third world country so maybe it could help people there but in USA? I’m happy with the dollar fluctuations vs four digit fluctuations daily. Can someone give me a good explain?

The explanation is simply that there are people that have bought in that want others to buy in also so they can liquidate for a profit. Meanwhile, others are susceptible to what amounts to FOMO-driven investment. The same sentiment that drove the beanie-baby craze, the dot-com boom, the subprime mortgage crisis, the current metaverse craze, and so on. Nothing new under the sun.

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

#98

Post by Mirioron »

isodev wrote: post #81
VMG wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is nonsensical. If you want to tax carbon, tax it regardless what it is used for. What you are describing penalizes somebody who uses clean energy for mining and ignores somebody who uses coal power for running his bot farm.

I think it makes sense and aligns with the article's point. Unless we are at a point where clean energy is ubiquitous (there is no other kind), using power for mining or other power intensive processes which do not help us achieve our climate goals should be off-limits.

Why stop there though? Why don't we ban everything that uses energy and is unnecessary for achieving our climate goals?

Video games? Banned. Alcohol? Banned. Driving? Banned. Exercise? Banned - it increases your daily caloric needs. Food? Why would you need food? Eat your government rations.

Why should we prefer some activities over others by government decree? Have we not learned from the past?

Oh, you're growing the wrong kind of plant? To jail! Oh, you're doing the wrong kinds of calculations? To jail!

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

#100

Post by ninepoints »

ur-whale wrote: post #94
swman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly do we really need cryptocurrency? I don’t want my transactions public. I like exchanging cash for weed (legal in California) and nobody needs to know regardless. I also don’t understand what’s wrong with USD. I grew up in a third world country so maybe it could help people there but in USA? I’m happy with the dollar fluctuations vs four digit fluctuations daily. Can someone give me a good explain?

> I don’t want my transactions public. First, not all cryptos share Bitcoin's open ledger characteristics. Look up Monero, ZCash, Grin, Beam : they all implement untraceable transactions, not just pseudo-anonymous ones like Bitcoin. Second, pseudonymous transactions is far from being the only interesting property of Bitcoin. Among others, no centralized control is a key aspect.

Complete transaction anonymity is not a feature. There are no protections against wash trading, and you have no way to gauge true market demand or pricing from transaction volume data alone.
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