Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thorium reactors are a castle in the air
Everything is until it isn't right? Do you think there's a fundamental problem there, or is it just taking too long?
taking too long is a fundamental problem here
Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
151–160 of 296 posts
Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
#152Ah, the electricity police strike again. You're allowed to use the electricity you paid for for some computations, but not for others. Seems logical and enforceable.
Power network neutrality is inequitable.
Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
#153Good for them. The situation we’re in at the moment would be rejected as a sci-fi plot. We’re at a critical point in human history that will largely be defined by whether we as a species can save the environment, but a section of society are obsessed with speculating on a digital currency that corresponds to how much carbon you’ve released into the atmosphere for no reason other than to prove you own it.
It is funny how survival mode unleashes humanity's ingenuity. In the end the environment problem will be solved, but only after a great deal of suffering (and likely death) caused by the current irrational situation. Natural selection has a way of restoring rational thinking.
Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
#154"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…
The thing is it doesn't matter whether there are a few miners or a lot. Bitcoin will continue to mine a block every 10 minutes. It's like an energy sink, you can drip in tiny amounts and get the same, or you can pour in all future fusion power plants, you get the same. So actually it won't affect bitcoin, but it will release the energy to other uses.
This is just wrong.
The hashrate is proportional to the network security, eg 51% attack.
The sentiment on HN against crypto strikes me as odd… it’s like saying cars are the devils tool in the 1900s …
Give it some time to evolve and embrace the future!
Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
#155Nice, what other software I'm not allowed to run on my machine? Can I play high end games? Make scientific computations? Experiment with machine learning?
This is purposefully reductio ad absurdum.
Reductio ad absurdum is a perfectly valid rhetorical device, it is even used in mathematical proofs.
What I want to say is that regulating what kind of computations I can run on my machine is pretty bad.
It would make more sense to regulate maximum power consumption of computers like it is done with lightbulbs
Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
#156The more crypto mining is banned, the better it is for Bitcoin. The more it is banned, less money is spent on mining which means transactions are cheaper and less CO2 is emitted per transaction.
Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
#157"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…
This merely pushes Bitcoin mining to countries that do not have this kind of regulation (and probably have less renewable energy).
Then those countries can solve the problem in their local environment.
Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
#158Earlier 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.
Great, let's get rid of the military industrial complex then
Yes I would support this as well. Let's get rid of all the non-contributive activities.
Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
#159Better to just to slap a carbon tax on cryptocurrencies. The incentives are too big for miners but their end-users are just expecting it will go up in value forever.
Re: Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto mining should be banned
#160meanwhile crypto people, in less than a month, have coordinated around klima and bought 10 million tonnes of carbon offsets, about 2.5% of the entire worlds voluntary climate offset supplies.