Topic: Bitcoin mining ban in Europe - page 2. (Read 883 times)

The renewable energy solution is something for all the things that spend energy in the world and yet we are still not moving fast enough. Maybe not many people will agree with me here, but for the past 20 years we are going towards an unrecoverable climate change which is ruining the world, and two things are the main cause of it.

One of them is spending energy that we do not have, and then creating it from fossil fuel, and the second one is pollution which is of course directly related. If we could end up with something that is a bit cleaner then we would have been at least not go beyond unrecoverable levels, but we didn't and now its too late, humanity will face a huge crisis and everything will be worse.

bitcoin at 260exa is ~2m asics of 3kw= 6gw/hour world wide
quebecs 320mw is 106,000 asics

here is the thing.
electric cars use 1kw/4 miles so an average car doing 12 miles a day
(im using low numbers on purpose)
3kw a day.
which if say there was just 4 million car drivers in quebec
(im using low numbers on purpose)
is 12GW/day = 500mw/hour

so if quebec cannot cope with 320mw. then it definitely cant cope with 4million car drivers in coming years..

and thats even on reserved low numbers.. yep car industry would use more then bitcoin does in quebec

oh and by the way average car mileage per day is higher and there are more then 4m car drivers in quebec.

Any PoS coin network that has 5 people controlling over 51% of the stake is more decentralized than Bitcoin where only 4 people (mining pool operators) control over 51% of the hashrate.

The so-called bribe attack is pure nonsense. You basically created a calculations on future variables that eats up more CPU & Ram ,
in other words you created a PoW in PoS, that literally gains you nothing except more wasted energy.
You might want to actually read up on PoS.

PoS:
Staking coins compete to create the next block based on the code parameters , which different PoS coins use different code.
Staking coins go dormant, after stake decreasing % , so more than 51% is needed to attack.
Staking coins can earn rewards, transaction fees can be earned or burned depending on specific PoS code.
*Specfic to Ethereum PoS code, if you attempt a 51% attack all of your coins will self-destruct.*

PoW:
Wastes enough energy to make a Grid unstable, which sets it up to be banned by Governments
Only takes the Collusion of 4 people (mining pool operators) to 51% attack for the last few years.
As PoW rewards drop, the incentive to selfish mine and collude in BTC increases.
No Limits on how long a 51% attack can last.

Bitcoin lack of leadership , means their is no one to coordinate a successful conversion to PoS.
Which would take years, as their are multiple decisions to be made and no one to make them.

Any move will have an impact, switching Bitcoin POW to POS is stupid. Bitcoin can even switch to POS at any time, but is that the best way?
Please note, when Bitcoin is transferred to POS, bitcoin is no longer decentralized, POS only changes bitcoin to be centralized and that is not the purpose of bitcoin.

There's nothing wrong with using POW for bitcoin anyway, POW is even more powerful than POS even though it uses more energy. Each Technology has its own risks, PoW and PoS networks are equally vulnerable to Denia of Service (DoS) attacks.

A weakness in the PoW networks specifically is the Selfish Mining attack, a condition in which attackers broadcast picky blocks to waste the computing power of honest miners.

A weakness in the PoS networkis that it is vulnerable to Bribe Attack attacks. In this condition, the attacker makes transactions and then builds a secret alternative chain before the block contains the transaction. Furthermore, after the transaction is confirmed, the attacker's alternative chain becomes longer than the valid chain where the attacker will broadcast the alternative chain. As a result, the alternative chain will be accepted as a new chain and considered valid then the attacker's transaction is reversed.

If bitcoin wants to remain decentralized then PoW is the perfect network.
The use of a lot of energy can be overcome by using environmentally friendly and renewable energy, it will be a good solution instead of having to move to a PoS network which is certainly more centralized.

It's a bitcoin mining ban, although Europe has stored enough gas for this winter, if the climate changes abnormally, they will still be short of gas, so limiting energy use is extremely urgent now. Traditional manufacturing companies have also had to close due to lack of energy, so their ban on bitcoin mining is understandable. But what worries me is whether when the gas supply returns to normal, the energy stabilizes, will these mining bans be lifted or will they stay in place forever? because they always put the thing that bitcoin consumes energy and that is an excuse for them to find a way to get rid of bitcoin, they always wanted to do this before the crisis hit.

I'm not surprised. With rising energy costs worldwide, it's expected most countries will turn their stance against PoW mining. That means Bitcoin will have a smaller network hashrate in the future, resulting in lesser security against external attacks. Unless all of the miners switch to alternative energy sources, don't expect things to get better anytime soon. I just hope the US doesn't join Canada and the EU in banning PoW mining, since most of the network hashrate comes from there (as far as I know).

Imagine how disastrous would be for Bitcoin if a global superpower like the US decides to ban PoW mining to pursue its "green energy" agenda. That would influence more countries to do the same. ETH and other major cryptocurrencies have turned themselves to PoS, so we're going to have to see whenever Bitcoin will remain PoW for long or at least switch to a hybrid consensus algorithm (PoW + PoS). No one knows what's going to happen in the future, so we can only hope for the best.



To explain it simply, PoS is VERY bad for Bitcoin and shouldn't be adopted by the community in the first place. A hybrid approach (PoW + PoS) would be better as it would allow Bitcoin to remain decentralized while also being friendly to the environment. It would be just like how Peercoin (PPC) is today. You can see how destructive PoS or any of its variants can be (such as DPoS) when only a few control a large portion of the cryptocurrency's circulating supply. A PoS-only blockchain network would make big exchanges like Binance and Coinbase more powerful then what they are right now. These companies would use customer's holdings to make key decisions on the Blockchain. Instead of a person being the "shareholder" of the company (in this case, the Blockchain), the wealthy would be able to do as they wish with their money. It's a terrible concept that leads us back to the traditional world of banking.

Unfortunately, ETH has lost its luster by defecting to PoS. Most of the altcoins have abandoned PoW, so it seems that Bitcoin would remain as the sole PoW cryptocurrency in the world. I wouldn't mind about this as long as decentralization wins in the end. Just my thoughts

I don’t want to escalate my thoughts to this level because no one can really digest the fact that bitcoin getting turned into PoS mechanism. First of all big institutions whose holding millions of bitcoins can easily control the market if stake based system is imposed. Plus it will be very complicated to make it stake based considering Mr Satoshi is holding pretty good amount of bitcoins and thus it could put everything into jeopardy if someday they stepped in and started selling. I am not sure if that’s how staked will work but in as common user that’s terrifying thought.

Don't forget to add Canada to the list. 

https://cointelegraph.com/news/quebec-s-energy-manager-to-seek-government-approval-to-stop-powering-crypto-miners

That's ultimately their agenda. They want to force Bitcoin developers to defect towards PoS, in order to centralize the Blockchain for good. And what better excuse than saying Bitcoin's PoW model is "harmful to the environment"? You can see how ETH turned into a centralized "shitcoin" after it switched to PoS. Many have praised ETH's move towards "energy efficiency", but that has ultimately sacrificed the Blockchain's decentralization and censorship-resistance. ETH is now the governments' playground to do whatever they want with it. Imagine big validators (stakers) censoring transactions in order to comply with US sanctions. That would greatly undermine crypto/Blockchain tech's promise of "banking for the unbanked". Using a centralized PoS coin, would be no different that using banks.

I hope Bitcoin stays a PoW coin even if that means a full ban from the EU (and possibly the US). Decentralization needs to prevail in order to help bring people with true financial freedom. How would Bitcoin strive to be different from Fiat if it sacrifices decentralization in favor of performance and cost-efficiency? No one knows what will governments will come up with next, so we should be prepared for the worst. Just my opinion

It should be fossil fuel ban for sure, not bitcoin mining ban. There is a good chance that it will happen in the future when we are not dependant on it, but for now we are, look at the situation in europe with gas and oil not coming from russia for example, they literally went back to firewood which is like 100+ year old solution to heating. This is why its much smarter to invest tens of billions of dollars into renewable energy, so that every single nation would be able to survive without needing to kneel before any other nation just for some gas. Bitcoin is spending energy, we need some changes in making it.

10% is nothing that can't be fixed pretty fast. Even when China, which back then had more than half of mining, banned it, the market adjusted pretty fast and enough miners relocated to other countries. So the biggest amount of negative effect from it is to miners who live in the EU specifically. Now is an unfortunate timing for Bitcoin mining due to not only environmental concerns but also energy insecurity and increasing prices. But even in Ukraine, where even basic electricity is currently clearly a big issue, so there are rolling blackouts and everyone is asked to use less energy if they can, a mining ban isn't being discussed.
I hope it won't come to an outright ban, even under current circumstances.

I don't know why this new sustainability saga is going around the World. Almost every business these days have to showcase their contribution to environment. I don't think this is wrong but to be true most of it is just a sham and actuality is far away from truth. Companies often say false in these statements. Talking about bitcoin the only way it can be energy efficient is if it shifts to mining using only and only renewable energy methods which is very difficult considering most of the mining is still done in developing nations, other way out is to shift to pos which will defeat the very purpose of bitcoin so makes no sense to shift on that as well.

Only discourse and still in the stage of making rules, they only try to make the energy produced by crypto miners more efficient. But actually the energy efficiency needs by miners are not too large. I have read some news about the needs of electrical energy for miners, even the need for electrical energy is much lower compared to the needs of large companies that are widened in several regions of the European Union.
More precisely this is just an idea to find a special formula for the problems faced, so this principle in my opinion is not too efficient.

True, but does not have a strong reference that Europe represents 10% appropriately.

Not fully bitcoin influenced by things like this, China has made a strong ban on Bitcoin and Crypto mining in general, but Bitcoin is not influenced by the country, the decline in Bitcoin prices is caused by several more dominant things, rather than measured by Prohibitions caused by certain countries, because Bitcoin is not bound by state rules and is influenced by just a few people.
The price reduction process for Bitcoin has no connection with this kind of prohibition case, because several other countries also impose previous restrictions, but Bitcoin is still fine today.

From your suggestion, I suspect they are doing all this to force bitcoin to move POS so it's easier for them to control bitcoin. Their goal is not to ban or kill bitcoin but to control and the only way to control bitcoin is to find a way to force it to move to POS like ETH. If bitcoin goes to Pos it will be the end of us, we will be controlled by the government again, I would rather accept the ban than have to use bitcoin Pos. Bitcoin would be like fiat today.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the last time I looked, only Germany had a little more than 3% of the total hashrate, all other countries were far below 1%, so it didn't seem to me that such a ban would seriously affect the overall picture. Besides, who has any motivation to mine Bitcoin in the EU where electricity has always been expensive, and now that price is even higher?

I know that there are some projects in Italy (if I'm not mistaken) that use hydro energy from several small sources, and there are probably some more specific cases - but this whole POW ban thing will end up costing more than the effect it will have. When we know that the EU, under the pressure of expensive energy sources, began to turn away from its green initiative and put all the polluting industries into operation, we can rightly ask where all these bureaucrats find meaning in what they do...

This would be terrible for the crypto community and I hope it's not going to happen. The number of crypto investors is much higher than the 10% share Europeans have on mining. If mining would be banned now in Europe this would create a lot of uncertainty about the future of cryptos all together. At the beginning of the year there was already a campaign in the EU parliament to regulate cryptos more heavily. All theae anti crypto movements is making investors more cautious and will lead to some of them selling their holdings. After the ban we will see a drop in prices for sure. The last few attempts by European politicians to regulate crypto currencies could be prevented by the majority. And right now it seems that nuclear energy is becoming the main focus again to provide energy in the future, it's one of the cheapest energy sources. This will hopefully take away some of the pressure crypto mining gets in Europe.

EU can completely ban mining - which I doubt they can do it 1oo% like China did - and this will not create any long-term effect on Bitcoin at all. For as long as money can still be made in mining crypto, there will always be places that can take the opportunity. As far as mining is concerned, we are talking here of a global potential of doing business...when we lost some places there will always be replacements...again as long profits can still be made. I am more concerned if mining will already be a loss proposition because that can be the time when there will be less mining operators.

it's true as you said only 10% of them banned bitcoin mining in the EU, because there are indeed some investors and even government officials voted against the ban on bitcoin mining in the EU, because according to investors and some people in the government they are very confident that the crypto industry can score big wins in Europe, despite the government banning crypto mining in Europe but crypto-based companies, such as exchange platforms and storage services are not affected at all.

It seems to me that the EU has rushed its "anti-crypto mining agenda", because of rising energy prices within the bloc. None of this would've happened if Russia didn't invade Ukraine in the first place. Besides, the EU only consists of a small portion of mining hashrate compared to the rest of the world. If Bitcoin can no longer be mined within the EU's member states, miners would simply move their operations to another country with crypto-friendly laws. It would be just like China's Bitcoin mining ban which forced miners to move to another country.

This shows us the resiliency and strength of Bitcoin as a decentralized cryptocurrency no one can stop. If it were centralized, Bitcoin would've died the moment the Chinese government decided to make mining "illegal". Many crypto coins are switching to PoS, so it's likely Bitcoin will remain the only PoW cryptocurrency in the world. Just my opinion

There won't be ban, and just 10% of global mining of Proof-of-works is actually not much of a factor, European union shouldn't speak for member states in the aspect of energy for mining bitcoin. Each member states generates their energy.