Should altcoin PoW mining be regulated/banned?

[tulpash]

POW is outdated technology and it should only exist on top of Bitcoin. Most POW-mined cryptocurrencies are at high risk of being hacked. History has shown that ETC has been hacked regularly.
I support the government mechanism to regulate these cryptocurrencies. The balance between mining pools to avoid 51% attacks on cryptos mined with POW. That avoids financial risks for investors when trading. It is necessary to remove them from derivatives such as margin, future.

[jaberwock]

there's a problem, this mining has created a huge demand for computer parts, the prices for them have skyrocketed to 2-4 times of the recommended price. Millions of people around the world can't get their hands on hardware for more than a year, and it's not only gamers but also professionals and researchers, while these altcoins don't create anything useful for society, only speculation as a zero sum game. Should the government step in and do something about it? The simplest thing would be do ban mining on PC parts, and order exchanges to delist all the PoW altcoins. If the US and EU would do this, PoW altcoins would be effectively dead.

Well, it is true that it is spending insane amount of electricity and energy consumption we should be careful about. I agree that regulation would be great, and something like "you need to have energy created as much as you consume" for people with 10 gh+ hashrates. However, I do not understand how others are allowed and for some reason miners are seen as terrible? Like oil companies have been ruining the whole world and dragging us to a level where there will be drought and tsunamis at the same time, that is as horrible as it gets and oil companies gets tax cuts instead of regulations.

So, do not tell me miners should be regulated or banned for green reasons, if mining world starts to bribe politicians tomorrow, not only will miners make more money but they will also be allowed to tax cuts on everything and will pay as little tax as possible, just because they bribed the right people.

[Coin-1]

Should the government step in and do something about it? The simplest thing would be do ban mining on PC parts, and order exchanges to delist all the PoW altcoins. If the US and EU would do this, PoW altcoins would be effectively dead.

In my opinion, Proof-of-Work is the most decentralized and fair mining algorithm because anyone can start expending electricity to support the network at any time without the need of upfront investments. Proof-of-Stake and Delegated PoS are intended rather for wealthy people who want to become even richer.

In 2009-2010, Bitcoin enthusiasts mined BTC coins using their own CPU processors that were available at reasonable prices. Nowadays, smart engineers have built ASICs that have an edge over general-purpose processors, so this computer part is no longer used in mining.

However, some well-known altcoins are mined using ASIC-resistant algorithms. For example, the anonymous cryptocurrency Monero currently uses the RandomX algorithm because its team values decentralization highly.

Thus, computer parts (CPUs, GPUs, SSDs) will remain in demand in the future. My guess is that these types of computing power will be concentrated in a small number of top-rated coins.

I understand the concerns of gamers, researchers and others who are unable to buy modern graphics cards due to the high prices, but I think that delisting all the PoW-based alternative currencies would be a harsh, tough and anti-democratic government decision.

[FinneysTrueVision]

There should not be any regulations. Once people buy a product it should be theirs to use however they want. Playing video games with your GPU is also harmful for the environment and nobody would agree that it is a good idea to ban people from playing video games. It is just as ridiculous to ban crypto mining. If you really want to help the environment then they need to go after the big polluters like the fossil fuel industry. They should also focus on increasing access to renewable energy.

[magnum1010]

The thing is that some video card manufacturers have already blocked the function of mining on their products. It means that such kinds of cards will surely be available for people who are not involved in mining. What comes to ban from authorities,I do not want to interfere with this government. But of course it will be better if only such currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum can be mined.

[Sithara007]

The thing is that some video card manufacturers have already blocked the function of mining on their products. It means that such kinds of cards will surely be available for people who are not involved in mining. What comes to ban from authorities,I do not want to interfere with this government. But of course it will be better if only such currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum can be mined.

If they block such features, then their sales would go down. And I don't think that the governments would be stupid enough to ban PoW mining. There is simply no justification. Miners are paying for their own equipment and are already under the burden of heavy taxes. If some country bans PoW mining, then they will simply migrate to some other country, where it is still legal. And we already have many examples, with the latest one coming from China. The miners there are moving to Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, due to relentless harassment by the authorities. 

[hatshepsut93]

The thing is that some video card manufacturers have already blocked the function of mining on their products. It means that such kinds of cards will surely be available for people who are not involved in mining. What comes to ban from authorities,I do not want to interfere with this government. But of course it will be better if only such currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum can be mined.

The mining restriction was immediately bypassed, and even when it was enabled, it only slowed down mining and it was still economically profitable to mine. It's very hard for GPU manufacturers to block mining, it would very likely cause unpredictable behavior in their devices that will harm other uses.

I understand the concerns of gamers, researchers and others who are unable to buy modern graphics cards due to the high prices, but I think that delisting all the PoW-based alternative currencies would be a harsh, tough and anti-democratic government decision.

Governments regulate many things. In many countries you can't drive without seatbelt, even though it's not harming other people. Alcohol or tobacco advertisement is prohibited, even though it's just advertising. There's no country on Earth that lives by libertarian ideology that allows anything that isn't aggression.

[Galley]

As it is very doubtful that governments will be able to go to such regulatory measures due to problems with a shortage of computer components. Is there anything illegal in this?  In ordinary market relations, demand gives rise to supply. Wouldn't it be better to increase the production of the necessary equipment, extra jobs have always been welcomed.

[Theones]

When it comes to PoW and altcoins, very few of them decide to use SHA256 because of the enormous hashing power amassed by Bitcoin, so even a fraction of it could easily 51% attack an altcoin. For this reason alts have turned to GPU, CPU mining, and now even things like SSD mining.

But there's a problem, this mining has created a huge demand for computer parts, the prices for them have skyrocketed to 2-4 times of the recommended price. Millions of people around the world can't get their hands on hardware for more than a year, and it's not only gamers but also professionals and researchers, while these altcoins don't create anything useful for society, only speculation as a zero sum game. Should the government step in and do something about it? The simplest thing would be do ban mining on PC parts, and order exchanges to delist all the PoW altcoins. If the US and EU would do this, PoW altcoins would be effectively dead.

While I agree that the vast majority of altcoins are not generating anything useful at all and are either scams, bad projects and a waste of resources at the same time we need to wonder if this is actually illegal? And the answer is no, a greater demand for computer parts is without a doubt going to inconvenience a lot of people but since this is not illegal in itself I do not see the point to try to regulate this.

Also government intervention is not my preferred method to solve anything as governments have the tendency to completely distort markets by giving preference to their friends and other powerful actors, so I think it is better to let the market fix itself, whether this comes from a decrease in the demand as people realize they are investing in hardware that will not give them the profits they are looking for, or because the supply increases or both since this will not last forever.

In my opinion when it comes to PoW, then BTC is the only one using it to level where it creates scarcity of electricity for other usage. PoW based Alt coins that are of no use are not consuming too much power. Two noticeable case of BTC mining ban are in Chine and Iran. While Iran ban was to overcome power shortage, I dont know the exact reason of China ban on BTC mining.


China's ban forces some bitcoin miners to flee overseas, others sell out (source)
Iran has announced a four-month ban on the energy-consuming mining of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin after cities suffered unplanned blackouts (source).

[20kevin20]

I think that the moment we start accepting bans and stuff is the same moment crypto decentralization/freedom dies. You can't have decentralization and freedom in a world where an authority has a certain control over you. If you aren't allowed to mine, you aren't allowed to sustain most of the coins out there that are truly decentralized and open-source. I'm against authority in general, and I think banning mining algos, components or just mining itself is a very bad idea that opens up the space for new regulations that are anything but freedom-supportive.

[wxa7115]

I have read somewhere that nvidea started to enginner their GPUs to output less hashrate making them less efficient in mining. so thats a good step towards decreasing the huge demand on  graphic cards right now.

This is kind of odd, it is their product and their brand so they can do whatever they want to do with it, however I would suppose that the purpose of a company which sells graphic cards is to want to sell more of them and not less.

Also I do not understand why they care about what people end up using their graphic cards, as long as they pay for it then they should be happy to sell them to whoever wants to buy them, so if this is true then there is something else at play we are not seeing.