Topic: Do You Think Bitcoin Mining Will Be Banned Due to Fears of Climate Change? - page 2. (Read 1036 times)

That's going to be an embarrassing point for them to look back to by the time the whole world uses Bitcoin in 2147...

Bitcoin has energy consumption, that's true. But it is very small, insignificant compared to other mining industries as you say. Those industries are created by them and they have control, but bitcoin is not. Even if bitcoin later goes completely to renewable energy, they will still find a way to blame.



That's what the government has always done, they never admit they're wrong, they'll always find a replacement to blame it all, unfortunately this time it's bitcoin. Governments are human too, just like us, once we don't like something and it hurts us, we find a way to get rid of it or destroy it. Bitcoin is decentralized what they hate most, their power comes from centralizing and controlling us. They don't want their power to be scattered or weakened by anything. If we let us become free, their power will collapse.

First of all, there is more to worry about when it comes to destroying nature than just Bitcoin. They always blame it on Bitcoin because it cannot defend itself.
How about the real mining companies, the physical ones. In Germany coal mining, a big one. In other countries, their waste, they don't want their trash to be in their vicinity so what they do is put it in a big box then send it away to other countries who will accept trash and recycle it. But included in that are other waste that cannot be used anymore or it's just too many to handle.
They should focus on that first before we play the blame game and using Bitcoin as scapegoat to avoid being investigated.
4. It will not calm down, they will keep on pointing all their fingers in Bitcoin so that no one will look at them.

I see some Bitcoin Miner now has moved to the green energy.
So about climate change is not real reason to banned Bitcoin Mining.

In some country energy electricity is surplus, that country have chance to legalized Bitcoin Mining.
So the electricity can be used and not wasted, also give them some money.

If we compare with PoS mining model, yes PoW have big issue about energy they wasted.
But that is price we pay for decentralization.
From time to time, i believe many miner will think how to use energy more cheap but green energy.

That is still a lot of work for government than headache about Bitcoin Mining reason Climate Change.
The fact Bitcoin Mining is only give 0.1% gas emission for the world.
https://finbold.com/bitcoin-accounted-for-0-1-of-global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-in-2022-data-finds/

I don't think your concerns are pessimistic. In fact, very few countries in the world can achieve true independence. Governments in many countries listen to Big Brother.

I would love to see it. Maybe I am just too big of a pessimist but I don't see the EU going against Big Brother when it comes to big major decisions. That is, if we get to a point that bitcoin mining becomes such a huge affair for some reason. I have to mention the situation we have now with what is going on in Ukraine. If for some reason the US was pro-war and in support of Putin, I don't think the EU would be supplying Ukraine with weapons, munition, military vehicles, etc. to go against American interests.     

E-banking works fine in China, the e-CNY (China's digital currency) is still undergoing trial and development for over one year, and other forms of virtual or internet stuffs that the government can supervise and control are accepted in China, but it has to be the mining of the virtual currency that they don't control that gets banned. China themselves never said anything along the lines of what you are saying when they banned BTC mining, they made mention of 'enviromental safety' and 'money laundering' issues, both of which are lies too.
But the Yuan in itself is affected by inflation . Financial openess and freedom should be supported by any government that is not hungry to control the lives of her people. Nobody is forced to speculate with Bitcoin, it is an individual choice a person takes knowing the risks involved, BTC isn't only a speculative asset too but has more things it can be used for, it is also a source of income for miners.
Bitcoin has always been resistant to control right from its early stages. China or any other country can ban BTC mining, regulate miners, ban local banks from supporting BTC transaction, but they can't ban BTC or control the network or its hash rate, it is decentralized and collectively run.

That's not entirely correct. It depends on what kind of hashrate is "small scale mining" in total. If it is significantly less than the current level (eg. 20% of it) then bitcoin is in a big trouble because 51% attacks start becoming easy.
Besides the governments don't have to crack down on everyone, they only have to make it illegal for regular people to stop on their own out of fear.

Because Bitcoin mining is in no way related to this energy crisis(result of failed policies), a ban against it will in no way reduce any amount of consumption/ increase energy supply where it matters. On a surface level people just connect 2 dots Mining energy intensive + energy crisis(result of failed policies) = ban, but in reality no one can afford to invest heavily into ASICs while using some of the most expensive energy on the planet without going bankrupt already.

Mining goes where a lot of cheap excess energy is available, it isn’t taking energy from where it’s needed, because it would be too expensive to do so. The only places where mining is more profitable than providing energy to an undersupplied grid, are places where the market is completely distorted trough artificial government policies that make no sense in practice.

Just spending time talking about Bitcoin mining during an energy crisis(result of failed policies) should be a scandal in itself, because it’s time that’s taken away from implementing/discussing measures to actually solve this mess. But like pooya already said, it’s easier to find a scapegoat to blame everything on, than to explain to the public that this mess was the result of years of failed government policies and that they’re still unwilling to fix them. So distraction it is. Maybe the term crisis shouldn’t even be applied here, because it’s distracting from the actual cause.

But they’re not doing anything to fix it, all they’re doing is:

1. Printing more money during times of inflation and shortages to combat inflation and shortages - Makes the issues worse.

2. Implementing price and consumption controls - Price controls could bankrupt energy suppliers, or make the supply issues worse, depending on how it’s implemented; Consumption controls will probably lead to an over complicated legal framework that wastes months on implementation and has little effect in practice. Consumption controls for companies would lead to an increase in production costs and reduced output again - terrible for inflation, supply issues and the job market.

So we have a mix of measures that increase inflation, make supply issues worse or threaten energy suppliers and months wasted of finding complicated ways to micromanage people that already can’t afford to pay their energy bills and already started to reduce their consumption where possible, because they had too. When the only solution can be to find ways to increase the supply of energy, everything else is utopia. You can’t print or ration your problems away on a big scale. Yet we’re still seeing countries only talking about saving on energy, shutting down reactors and refusing to use politically unwanted technologies to increase their energy production, while at the same time messing up regulations for renewables like me and oleo already highlighted above. There is no fix in sight, i would prepare for inflation and high energy prices to be here for a while. On an individual level the only way out is to get as independent from centrally planned infrastructure as possible.

Bitcoin has nothing to do with how central authorities planned and messed up their infrastructure. Produce your own energy and use Bitcoin so you don’t have to be completely dependent on mismanaged infrastructure - that’ll probably bankrupt large parts of the population and puts their fate completely in the hand of government, if nothing changes soon.

Theft is already outlawed, a general ban of mining wouldn't be justified and doesn’t make any sense.

My understanding was the equipment was destroyed based on a court order, so it could very well have just been the opinion of a single judge. Given the (super effective ) Chinese ban on mining, if the Malaysian government had wanted to ban mining outright then I'm sure they would have done so.

Who's to say it doesn't go the other way? The US bans mining, and some European countries see an opportunity. They incentivize miners to move there on the provision that they set up near new and developing renewable projects, subsidizing the development of such projects by buying excess energy which would otherwise be wasted during periods of low demand, acting as a demand response system, and paying taxes on the bitcoin they mine.

Comparing the energy consumption of bitcoin mining to other innovation, it is lower than the others such as Aviation Industry, Marine Transport Sector, and Air Conditioners & Electric Fan (Source: CoinShares). Bitcoin mining industry consumes less total energy than other industries and it has more renewable energy. Bitcoin miners are starting to use geothermal and solar energy when mining.

I think that not much is changing in the near future when it comes to mining and clean energy sources. There are only a few countries who banned crypto mining and right now the world is focusing on other things than climate change. When it comes to climate change politicians are only willing to invest money and time when the economy is in a boom. And right now we are facing recessions and rising inflation rates. Fossil energy sources are cheaper than alternative energy, so a country can only afford to a certain extend to go green. Maybe at the end of next year things will go back to normal again and the world will focus more on climate change. But right now the focus is to reduce gas as much as possible and increase nuclear energy. Also crypto mining became very popular in the last 2 years, I don't think politicians want to anger voters even more.

bitcoin is mining.  without the miners there is no functional bitcoin.   and china has been stomping on the miners for awhile.   hasn't stopped them.  only stopped large scale mining.   bitcoin functions just fine with small scale mining.

Such measures don't happen over night, you are right. They are spread out over time and take years if done systematically. Let's say that's the direction the US takes, who could follow them? The UK is the obvious culprit. Maybe they get France on board and Germany. The last three are not that important in mining circles, but they are in global politics. Once you do that, politicians do what they do best. Intimidation, demands, blackmail...   

Oh, you want a loan to fix your economy? Well that is going to be difficult when bitcoin is being mined in your country. Maybe there is something you can do for us first...

Though that the government has been looking for various ways to stop or ban Bitcoin and its mining activities ,but I don't think at this stage of awareness and adoption of Bitcoin, that this is gonna be that easy for them to completely ban mining. Why?, This is because it's not gonna be easy to have a global ban on Bitcoin mining happen at same time. reason, this country may find reason to ban Bitcoin mining while the other country may see reason to adopt or see an opportunity to continue mining. Taking for instance,  China banned mining while US took the opportunity and Increase their mining firms.

It's not really the same thing, and it's not about banning your ability to send Bitcoin from one address to the other or from one person/country/continent to a different one. When thepiratebay.org goes down and if all their mirror sites go down, they are gone until someone brings them online again. You can't bring down Bitcoin in that way because there is no reliance on a single site/service/wallet etc. The way to take out Bitcoin is by attacking the technology and infrastructure that secures it, confirms your transactions, and generates new blocks. They might not go to those lengths, but it's the best way to achieve your sinister plans.

A coordinated confiscation of hundreds of thousands of ASICs is not something you can easily replace just like that. They are not jars of water that you simply fill up and put in place of the old ones. Even that would take some time. Those ASICs need to be manufactured first to replace the old ones.

Still, they wanted to send a strong signal by doing that. Seized goods can be auctioned off unless it's something illegal like drugs. The Malaysian government used the steamrollers as symbolism of what they think of the industry. Personal opinion, of course.   

many countries are still doubting or even rejecting bitcoin.
because there are many fears, to make bitcoin a currency.

Bitcoin miners are actually in my country sometimes their profits are monitored, maybe because they are afraid of that person's progress.

I hope that in the future governments will open their minds and hearts to look at or appreciate bitcoin.

It's unforgivable really that there will be excess electricity being generated while simultaneously there are planned outages and power cuts. Government incompetence at its finest.

This does tie back in to bitcoin mining being used as a demand response system for a 100% renewable grid as I mentioned earlier. If there is a surge in energy demand, you can burn more coal or gas, but you can't make anymore sunlight or wind for your renewable generators. So in times of excess, you have bitcoin miners working away, using up all the excess power being produced and paying the energy company for it. Bitcoin miners get cheap energy, energy companies don't have to dump excess energy and earn nothing for it, win-win. Then in times of high demand, the energy companies can pay the bitcoin miners to turn off their ASICs, allowing the grid to divert that energy usage to elsewhere so there are no outages or power cuts. Again, win-win. This is already happening successfully in Texas and elsewhere.

It was Malaysia, but the equipment was seized due to being run on stolen electricity, not because they banned mining: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/19/malaysian-police-steamroll-1point25-million-worth-of-bitcoin-mining-rigs.html

However, how can it be just virtue signalling? The problem of the costs and low supply is very real and it might destroy their economy. This is not a problem where the government can say it will fix without really fixing it. This is not a problem that they can ignore. They really need to fix it. Will bitcoin fix this?

Also, I agree that decision to mine and not to mine will be handled economically, however, for some miners, this problem might be a decision of to steal electricity and not to steal electrcity.

You are confusing "banning bitcoin" with "banning bitcoin mining". Nobody can ban bitcoin because it is decentralized and based on peer to peer network that can never be banned. But a mining farm that is extremely hard to move or hide which has a fixed location and relies on a bigger than regular household electrical source is easy to find and shut down.

They want to do the later. And they can easily do that in their own jurisdiction (not globally). For example a couple of years ago one of these Asian countries (I forgot which one) banned mining and then seized hundreds of ASICs. Then they used heavy machines (trucks, etc.) to destroy them in the middle of the street. That action didn't do anything to bitcoin mining as a whole, just in that country.