Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin has avoided a de facto ban in Europe after a controversial proposal was voted down in parliament.

The EU's Markets in Cryptoassets Regulation — known as MiCA for short — would have forced Proof-of-Work blockchains, like the one used by Bitcoin, to meet "minimum environmental sustainability standards."

But according to Unstoppable Finance's head of strategy Patrick Hansen, 32 politicians on the Economic and Monetary Affairs Commitee voted against this proposal — with just 24 in favor.

Read more about it on Coinmarketcap (https://coinmarketcap.com/alexandria/article/breaking-bitcoin-avoids-de-facto-ban-in-europe)



I wasn't expecting a ban in the first place(as they can't) but its nice that someone always isnt rallying against Crypto.

Looking at the official press release they say only 4 members voted for the ban, and 31 voted against the ban:

source: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20220309IPR25162/cryptocurrencies-in-the-eu-new-rules-to-boost-benefits-and-curb-threats

These kinds of people now its value and it's obvious that they don't put some strict measures against it especially banning it. Now, what's next for those who want it to get banned?

instead of that, they can just put some regulations where they protect their citizens from frauds and scams. taking advantage of the opportunity will give them a nice result. banning it will give them nothing in return.

I'm almost certain these are separate bills as the ones you mentioned are to with ensuring crypto mining stability by 2025 which OP's article also mentioned got voted in.

Afaik a high majority is needed for a lot of bills in the EU parliament as it's meant to effect all EU members.

It's interesting to see that more members actually voted in the pow vote than in the 2025 bill which might be a sign that it won't actually be implemented (European countries come up with a lot of good and big plans for themselves they just lack the incentive to put them in place when they can instead just be listed on the manifesto again).

This is a slap on the face or a wake up call to everybody who is now shifting their attack on Bitcoin from the point of view of environmental concerns. They are clearly hypocrites. Although this doesn't close the issue altogether, at least it is now made a little bit clearer that the EU has the "aim to boost users’ confidence and support the development of digital services and alternative payment instruments."

And to those who have singled out Bitcoin in their fake environmental advocacy, Members of the European Parliament "stress that other industries (e.g. the video games and entertainment industry, data centres) also consume energy resources that are not climate-friendly." So if these critics are truly concerned about the environment, perhaps they should also call for a ban on video games, entertainment, data centers, etc.

Those who vote against it have their reasons and are at liberty to do so since everyone has a right to their opinion, they will probably continue on that part but since they are minority, their opinion won't carry much weight.


The whole idea to ban PoW is not against scam projects or protect citizens from scam projects, they are concerned about mining and the disadvantage of it to the overall environment. With the result from the vote, the next step is for them to look for a better approach address the issue, banning is off the table for now hopefully.

That's unexpected, isn't it? Europeans are known for their environmental conciousness so I had expected them to vote in favor for it and not against it. It would have forced the EU miners to look for alternative source of energy rather than using conventional ones. But anyway, since now they have voted against it, the current form of operation stays in business. The POS ban wouldn't be a nice news for the community for sure!

"Bitcoin" didn't avoid anything.
A teeny tiny number of people who by some miracle found cheap electricity in EU and may have been mining there avoided this ban.

Such silly organizations can only force other silly centralized organization to bend to their demands. They can't demand anything a decentralized currency like bitcoin to do anything.
This statement on its own is not just laughable but also shows how little people understand the world.

Source: https://twitter.com/paddi_hansen/status/1503401992215044097

So the anti bitcoin parliamentary groups are: S&D, Greens, & GUE.

For the European voters of this forum: remember them. Is the party you vote in your country part of one of these Eurogroups?

That's a good news. Hopefully this will kick start some price movements soon. Sitting on approx 20 on the Greed and Fear Index for weeks is not uncommon for bitcoin but previously perfectly working indicators like positive/negative news do not have this impact anymore as they did 5 years ago.

Never understood what they mean when they say minimum environmental sustainability standard?

I am not sure why these are still running: Cars, Factories, Satellites, Rockets and everything basically that use fuels to run?

We have nuclear and green energy sources to replace the fuel consumption, why dont they replace it entirely on the planet earth so that we can have so called, "minimum environmental sustainability standards."

Tails of politics and nothing else. I am not sure and dont wanna compare how much energy mining takes against all those things running on gas. But surely its way less and still they think its harmful for the environment. Lolz.

I am happy that there are politicians and clerks in Europe,who are still capable of using their brains and disapproving such mindless regulations.Cryptocurrency mining in the EU is a pretty insignificant percentage and even if this BS regulation was imposed,the cryptocurrency prices would not have been affected.
These "minimum environmental sustainability standards" are a complete nonsense.It seems that the "green lobby" inside the European Union keeps pushing it's agenda.They have failed now,but they might try again later,with another mindless environmentalist regulation or law.

I do not believe that this kind of news could have a positive effect on the price, because most of the EU is not exactly a place where BTC can be profitably mined. Although some crypto miners have their own mining farms in the area, the biggest impact is still on some other parts of the world where such operations are carried out on a much larger scale. People misunderstand that this was a real threat at all, because the procedures for passing laws in the EU are not so simple, and any member state may refuse to implement such a law.

Political games about some things related to cryptocurrencies in general in all parts of the world are not exactly in the focus of investors who have turned their attention to the war and everything that will result from the sanctions imposed on the aggressor country. Bitcoin is holding up well no matter what, but in these circumstances, I don't expect a bull run - the bigger challenge will be to defend the position it currently holds.

This was a very close call and only few votes (32 against, 24 in favor) decided against banning proof-of work, but I think this story is not finished yet and they will try to do something similar in near future.
If situation in world continues to get more crazy they could push any regulation change they want and people wont even know what him them.
Can you imagine IBM is making special microchips dedicated for Bitcoin mining, and some politicians in Europe are still voting for ban  ::)

EU is going to experience a major energy crisis due to Russia's war, so it would make sense for them to limit their energy use, including limiting non-essential large scale energy use. And since most of the population doesn't use Bitcoin, and banning mining in EU won't even stop Bitcoin, I can totally imagine some restrictions on mining in the future. But maybe they will ignore it if it's not a big issue for them.

If anyone wants to see who voted what (32 in favour, 24 against, 3 abstentions), the following pdf contains the summary of the results:

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/245813/RCV_Voting%20session%20ECON_14.03.2022.pdf

I presume they voted for multiple elements, which I cannot decode, but the entry that corresponds to the votes talked about in the context of the OP seems to correspond "Roll-call: Markets in Crypto-assets (MiCA) – CA A" on pages 3 and 4.

These are the members of the ECON (Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs):
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/econ/home/members
Note sure if all get a vote, since there are I believe 116 listed members. (*)

At least, with the above, EU members of the forum can see where their country representatives are leaning towards …

Additional info:
https://emeeting.europarl.europa.eu/emeeting/committee/en/agenda/202203/ECON

(*) Edit:There are 55 substitutes, which I figure do not vote unless they need to step in.

In addition baning mining and extending it to Bitcoin for this crisis that is happening within European region will makes things tougher to them, but i know actually that eradicating mining over there won't really affect Bitcoin adoption and existence of Bitcoin in other continent and sub countries, but it only increase the rate of hardship over there base on limitations of fast transaction or importation from other countries, using Ukraine as reference, today people donates Bitcoin in respect of charity and they received, so without bitcoin existing other people who is from long distance won't have render support of fundraising.

Everyone knew that they had to transition the whole mining industry into greener alternatives to use green sustainable energy, the small miners are already excluded from the whole thing causing great distress Because of new policies and laws which involves expensive legal rules. The big companies would have a problem already if they would not listen to these demands since even if right now some people said no to this proposal in the future we might not have such option, the environmental probelms might be too much of a trouble and other greener currencies can take over the dominance of Bitcoins as well. Therefore I do think this summit gives us a chance to change it and switch to renewable sources of energy since mining would forever be necessary.

I totally agree with you on this , that's why the bill failed because I believe they might have gone through it and see the negative and positive impact it's going to have on people within the EU countries. Just that most Government are very reluctant in solving their major problems they have, they keep focus on banning crypto and other related activities as if it's the major problem facing their respective countries .. this keeps me wondering a lot.

This is definitely a great deal. Even the fact that it was proposed was enough to scare me but somehow the markets did not really reacted the way I assumed it would. I thought that this even being a proposal would have dropped the prices significantly and by the time it was rejected the prices would have recovered a lot.

However, I believe that it did not happen because it wasn't really meant to be. In any case I believe that if people ignored it this much, it must be something that nobody gave a chance. Proof of Work should definitely be replaced, but not by law, that would be like saying you want to turn bitcoin centralized if laws were effective that way.

I agree that it is not really that easy to turn greener in a single day. So, what you said could happen but it will take some time. Those big companies could relocate to some warehouses (or already in one) and they could put solar panels on the roof and make enough income from that to pay it off. However, the problem here is not the miners, it is the electric companies, if they do not produce that energy from polluting the world, it is their fault, let them get wind turbines and solar panels and all that. This way miners could use energy at high levels but they would be getting it from every companies that get it from solars and winds.

I wasn't expecting such a law to be discussed at this time. Many people arround the world (including the european union) are supporting Ukraine using cryptocurrencies and many exchanges as well. Knowig that the ashrate in all european countries isn't that significant, i wonder for whom serves this kind of Ban .
Ukraine has opened the door for cryptocurrency donations to support the military : https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/137552/ukraine-turns-crypto-donations-into-5550-bulletproof-vests-500-helmets-and-more
Official link to donate to Ukraine using cryptocurrencies : https://donate.thedigital.gov.ua/

Because this bill has been in proposal even before the war, the ban was mostly run by people who think that bitcoin and bitcoin mining hurts the environment, so that is the motive.

But at least they have voted against this proposal because it seems to be just a nuisance as they have to deal more important matter in their country and not focus on attacking bitcoin and mining business per se.

They conjure up a definition depending on what they're talking about in terms of environmental sustainability. I have yet to see any consistency with these sort of people. Europe generally is pro-green energy but the unfair targeting of Bitcoin seems deliberate. Nuclear energy would solve a lot of the energy needs for most developed countries yet that isn't seen as any solution to energy demands.

At times i feel, Governments still feel there is someone sitting and operating the BITCOIN protocol.  ;D
They issued the bill to ban proof of work expecting Bitcoin’s protocol to change to proof of stake as I read in some article some time back.
Glad the vote went in the opposite direction of the EU’s expectation.

The war against cryptocurrency activities can be explained from different aspects like protecting the environment. In this field, they can apply sanctions at any time over countries outside the european union, just like they did with nuclear activities against Iran and few other countries.
I am afraid that they just ignore the ban for mining activities only because it's not a priority in a period of war. So expect that the law can be return to parliament negotiation/voting once the war ends ; We must not forget that it is not in the interest of governments to adopt cryptocurrencies, and that their need for them may be circumstantial and will end with no need for them. Personally, I do not trust the recent decisions because they are improvisational to the reality of the ongoing war.

The head of the commission that was overseeing the process even pointed this out that the bill was misleading and not formulated well enough. There are smart people there who know it's impossible to make a decentralized currency change its code and that many countries like the US have already accepted mining as it is. If the EU bans mining it's going to be left behind while the rest of the world moves forward with digital asset development. No mining ban means there will be progress instead of going back to living in huts because some green lobbyists think we should be close to nature.

I'm glad they were reasonable about it. After all, the debate about the environmental impact has been around for a while, and there seems to be a lot of evidence that crypto mining's impact on climate change is overrated, and that it's not a viable argument against cryptocurrencies because there are other industries with very significant impact as well, and because the problem is with sources of electricity, not with the usage of electricity itself. Overall, voting is a good thing about democracy: radical changes usually don't get accepted by the majority of decision-makers, and in countries with strong democracies it's hard to choose against the will of the people.

Since they are able to explain the phenomenon that mining machines contribute to a certain percentage of environmental pollution by consuming energy, I do not imagine that they are really that stupid. The law was incomplete and may have been pulled off the shelf without being reviewed in depth for sufficient time. The main purpose of bringing this law back for discussion is to try to find an end to the spread of the use of cryptocurrencies before the matter gets out of their hands. I expect similar bills to appear in the near future.

The upliftment of ban against it is positive approach by the EU and all those who supported the POW have some idea that it's not that much worse for environment as it's portrayed.All those people who have these love for nature forget how easily they have exploits the natural resources for making some immaterial things but btc consuming electricity make them concern about these issues.So these things were past matters and now we might also shift to renewable energy resources for mining which will be even better.

Its surreal that the attack on crypto could take this form too. First it was terrorism financing, Money Laundering, Darknet etc. Now that spot seems to have been taken by Monero.

This one about the environmental impact of PoW is baffling because those in the opposition just assume that the utility of a decentralized currency justifies no expense on energy. This is probably more due to the effect of pre-PoS lobbying by all these VCs who stand to benefit from adoption of DPos structures like EOS, Solana etc.

So technically they are only concerned with the environment and how it affects the current way it is being generated? Like how much power they are using and if they are using renewable sources of energy for their generation of BTC?

Having these kind of people is healthy because we see the other part or another view of how bitcoin affects the whole world. I hope that upgrades in makes it better in terms of energy consumption and hazardous waste of energy.

Maybe the case is not that fully backed with facts. Like how much generation are in use of energy. No one would really oppose it if It isn't good ultimately. There is just room for improvement.

I am glad that the majority of the politicians voted against it. The proposal came from the green and leftist parties together, luckily they have no majority in the European Parliament. The conservatives and liberals voted against. But still 24 politicians support the ban is alarming. I didn't expected such a big resistance against bitcoins. The bitcoin came a very far way in the last years, to me it's mainstream now. Almost anybody has atleast heard once about bitcoins before. Also it's hard to imagine what would have happened to the bitcoin price if it got banned in Europe. Losing the European market overnight probably would have sent the price down 20%.

Apparently, there was still an open door for the report’s commission & council to challenge Berger’s mandate and stand, Fortunately, it did not happen, so therefore it remains as it was:

(GT)
https://twitter.com/DrStefanBerger/status/1507305090088067078

https://twitter.com/DrStefanBerger/status/1507305092378157065

https://twitter.com/DrStefanBerger/status/1507305094462726163

The above shows that there are still further steps in the process, although the horizon seems now to be much clearer. The article below points to the expectation of reducing PoW activity to the consideration of being an "environmentally (un)sustainable economic [activity]", according to the EU Taxonomy. This would push any consideration of prohibition away, and rather more vouch for some implications for those, for example, investing in mining PoW in the EU (i.e. demanding that mining be subject to using ustainable sources of energy.)

More episodes are therefore scheduled for this the near future, although the plot seems to be heading clearly in a favourable direction for this quasi soap opera …

See also: https://cryptoslate.com/finally-a-proof-of-work-ban-is-off-the-table-in-europe/

I think that one of the reasons why bitcoin is so feared by politicians is because they will never be part of BTC, the fundamental principle is based on btc being incorruptible and still not being managed by third parties, the only way to that BTC can be moved to some side of the market is through supply and demand, whales and emotions, emotions if they can move the market where they want, that is why fundamentals such as the current war in Russia and Ukraine can make it drop tremendously in price just as when the conflict is resolved BTC will take to the skies, I think that for these reasons politicians see BTC as a threat because it is unattainable in control for them.