What if crypto mining is outlawed ?

[Poker Player]

There is no stopping this, if we were in 2012 I could still believe it, but if countries start to ban Bitcoin mining, there will always be other countries willing to mine. Take El Salvador, for example, and others to come. There is a lot of money at stake, a lot of institutions involved and it has been regulated in most countries in the world.

Surely we will hear news of more countries banning Bitcoin mining and FUDs like that, but Bitcoin will continue to be strong, and getting stronger in the long run.

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[hatshepsut93]

It's not a problem when one country bans Bitcoin, even if it has a large share of miners, like China did, because miners can just relocate to other countries. But if this became a global trend and most of the countries with large power capacities banned mining, then hashrate would permanently drop. Countries with smaller power grid just can't host many miners, especially at times of an energy crisis. Recent example is Kosovo and other countries that had to ban mining because they don't have enough energy to sustain it. It's unclear by how much the hashrate would need to decrease before it starts seriously impacting the security of the network, but there's probably a lot of room for decrease. Bitcoin wasn't attacked years ago, when the hashrate was a fraction of what we have today.

[stompix]

There is no stopping this, if we were in 2012 I could still believe it, but if countries start to ban Bitcoin mining, there will always be other countries willing to mine. Take El Salvador, for example, and others to come.

Yeah right, how much of the hashrate can Salvador host?

OP, you've asked the question on the wrong forum, problems that might arise from a ban are simply incomprehensible here, people throw away reasons because there must be no weakness in bitcoin, so doesn't matter what happens, even if we have a nuclear war, even if the planet is wiped out bitcoin will note affected.

Just for fun, when we look at the topics about how secure the network is poeple immediately start crunching numbers, it takes 2 million brand new miners and a whole amount of power to attack the network, it's simply not possible to produce the miners or buy them.. but..The latest ban just solved those problems from an attacker point of view, not only did the hashrate drop to half, so you needed less than half of the miners needed but also there was an influx of used gear doesn't the market at cheaper prices, solving the problem of having a factory ready to assemble this for an attack.

USA banning mining? It would be terrible, just think who is going to host all that hash rate, and with what power? Salvador with its 6Twh of power and with 20% of that coming from imports? The reality is that at this point any outright ban will have terrible consequences. But you can't speak of that here or you're going to get pitchforked.

In any case, when China supposedly banned bitcoin mining a lot of people FUDed about a massive hashrate drop but we only saw a very small drop, most of which was because of the price dropped that had happened before that news!

Then I'm pretty sure you have a simple explanation why would the hashrate dropped after the China ban to ~ 97.87 EH/s with the prices still at ~30k while in the previous October we had 142.94 EH/s with an average price of ~10k.
How does this make sense to you?

[mia_houston]

if other countries also ban bitcoin mining, they can only issue regulations. but the state will not be able to block the mining software. mining operations will continue to run illegally. just like the presence of crypto, not all countries legalize crypto. but what happens they can still use crypto illegally.

It is difficult to carry out mining illegally, especially if it is carried out on a large scale, because many cases have occurred both in China, Malaysia and Russia where mining cases have been uncovered due to the large supply of electricity at the mining operation site, so the government can track them down easily and that's why we can see in the news that many miners are caught, now many countries have indeed made rules in the use of crypto as an investment asset and forbid using it as a tool for transactions, so that is why crypto can still exist even with strict rules from the government.

[coolcoinz]

China banned miners,

Because China is struggling with power shortages and is an authoritarian regime where you can be executed in public, while in most other countries capital punishment no longer exists.

the EU is thinking of doing the same

The EU is not thinking of doing the same.
It's just a an opinion of some guy from European Securities and Markets Authority, which can't enforce anything. It can only recommend and threaten with fines. To ban mining they'd have to propose a bill first.

Do you see this as a potential threat or did the fud get in my head?

The latter.

[yat97]

How is it even possible to enforce that?

How would gov know "hey... somone somewhere is mining"

I mean I get the big warehouses are easy to spot but people in their homes?

[Fortify]

China banned miners, the EU is thinking of doing the same and what if others will follow?

In a hypothetical scenario where China, US Canada, Russia, India and EU ban pow mining I doubt the smaller countries can sustain the current active miners. Hashrate would drop significantly and the network would be weaker.
Either there would be a massive investment in solar in many developing countries or we might see the first 51% on BTC (hope not).

Do you see this as a potential threat or did the fud get in my head?

It is definitely a potential threat, with an energy crisis going on in almost every country around the world it is possible that cryptocurrency could become the target of future laws to clamp down on waste. One of two things might happen and potentially both. It might reach the point where mining becomes prohibitively expensive and not worth the cost. Which might also tie into more media attention which attracts the ire of politicians and the general public, that large amounts of energy is being consumed by what some might see is unproductive "mining" that is purely benefiting the few at the cost of the many. Besides forcing tech companies to potentially optimize hardware, mining does not do much for most people.

[Leviathan.007]

The answer to this question you asked is pretty simple there can be many governments that start to ban bitcoin and bitcoin mining or they can even suspend all the cryptocurrency-related transactions for their people but the main question is why should people obey this rule, there are many illegal activities such as drug dealing and drinking alcohol while driving but many people don't really care about these rules but the rules are created not be broken by people, in the other if this happens we will see fewer people mining bitcoin and in my own ide the price will grow due to decrease of the supply.

[stompix]

I mean I get the big warehouses are easy to spot but people in their homes?

Smallest miner that actually makes sense to run if you have under 10 cents power is an S9, let's assume you have only one of them.
1400W burning 33kwh a day, 900kwh a month.
Everyone who is not from the US or Canada go and look at your electrical bill and check how much you have used in one month.  

Second, miners run 24/7 it's so easy to track individual miners as no normal household would have such a huge and flat consumption all night,  even heaters or air conditioning systems do go through speeds and power left on automatic, they are not continuously using the same power.
And that's for an s9, doing the numbers for an s19 you would consume more energy in one month than the average household in France in 6.

So, pretty easy to spot individual home miners.
And the second is the noise, imagine living in one of those commie blocks of flats where you can hear farts at night and your neighbor runs a miner that makes more noise than a standard vacuum cleaner, again, 24/7.

[ven7net]

China banned miners, the EU is thinking of doing the same and what if others will follow?

In a hypothetical scenario where China, US Canada, Russia, India and EU ban pow mining I doubt the smaller countries can sustain the current active miners. Hashrate would drop significantly and the network would be weaker.
Either there would be a massive investment in solar in many developing countries or we might see the first 51% on BTC (hope not).

Do you see this as a potential threat or did the fud get in my head?

As for the ban on cryptocurrency mining, one must proceed from the fact that mining consumes a lot of energy, and energy is currently expensive and prices continue to rise. So I think that those countries that have an excellent resource base for the production of inexpensive energy will become those countries where mining will be allowed. Take Russia for example. Contrary to all the fake news about the ban on mining and cryptocurrencies in Russia, all of a sudden, the President of Russia made a statement that no one was going to ban anything. On the other hand, you are talking about green energy. So, everything is bad here, since this energy comes out even more expensive, which can make cryptocurrency mining not profitable at all. What do we have left? Either the transition to POS and then mining and maintaining the network does not require the expenditure of a large amount of energy, or those whom I wrote about above will become monopolists in this industry.

[boyptc]

If mining would be banned in those countries then for sure another great country will rise and miners will flock to that country. But the reality is just, whatever happens, ban here and there.

Hashrates might drop but eventually, they will increase again. That's been happening before when they keep on putting on the news about mining in ban, about the consumption of energy, etc.

[yat97]

I mean I get the big warehouses are easy to spot but people in their homes?

Smallest miner that actually makes sense to run if you have under 10 cents power is an S9, let's assume you have only one of them.
1400W burning 33kwh a day, 900kwh a month.
Everyone who is not from the US or Canada go and look at your electrical bill and check how much you have used in one month.  

Second, miners run 24/7 it's so easy to track individual miners as no normal household would have such a huge and flat consumption all night,  even heaters or air conditioning systems do go through speeds and power left on automatic, they are not continuously using the same power.
And that's for an s9, doing the numbers for an s19 you would consume more energy in one month than the average household in France in 6.

So, pretty easy to spot individual home miners.
And the second is the noise, imagine living in one of those commie blocks of flats where you can hear farts at night and your neighbor runs a miner that makes more noise than a standard vacuum cleaner, again, 24/7.

Well you could just say you like running your electric heating and portable AC at the same and have tons of fans on because doing so keeps ghosts away. I guess you're screwed if you live in a thin walled apartment, but if you have your own house out in the farm lands wham there ya go.

Or also, offsetting electric costs with buying bunch of solar panels maybe?

[stompix]

Well you could just say you like running your electric heating and portable AC at the same and have tons of fans on because doing so keeps ghosts away. I guess you're screwed if you live in a thin walled apartment, but if you have your own house out in the farm lands wham there ya go.

That won't hold water, besides, as a miner, I'm going to tell you that anything like an apartment is a no-go for mining, even in a duplex house you're going to drive your neighbors nuts, but on top of that, you're going to drive yourself insane if you live in anything other than a house with a garage or basement to put those airplane engines on.

And as you present more and more options that could void these inconveniences, this is exactly what a ban will do, exclude categories after categories till you have a tiny speck of dust. You first cut out people who can't afford gear, poeple who won't run those things for 10$ a day, poeple who live in apartments packed houses, poeple who don't have cheap energy, and so on and on.
How many poeple do own a house far away in the farm lands?

Or also, offsetting electric costs with buying bunch of solar panels maybe?

Completely off-grid with no feed-in tariff that would allow you to pull energy during the night is a no from my point of view, you have to either purchase batteries and supersize your solar panels or shut miners during low sun hours and night. On the other side, a feed-in tariff would make anyone curious why you have that ridiculous linear consumption at night, and everybody on that plan has smart meters, one click and they see all your power draw so we're back to square one.

The obvious question nobody bothers to ask is why would the same poeple who don't mine now at home switch to mining at home when a ban is set in place? Does it make sense? Nope, it doesn't!

[pooya87]

Then I'm pretty sure you have a simple explanation why would the hashrate dropped after the China ban to ~ 97.87 EH/s with the prices still at ~30k while in the previous October we had 142.94 EH/s with an average price of ~10k.
How does this make sense to you?

So you are claiming that miners didn't care about the 55% drop in price and were all leaving because China banned bitcoin for the 1000th time?
Maybe China banned bitcoin mining for 1001st time in January too when hashrate dropped from 217 EHS to 159 EHS which totally had nothing to do with another 50% price drop?

[stompix]

So you are claiming that miners didn't care about the 55% drop in price and were all leaving because China banned bitcoin for the 1000th time?

How about you answer the question ? Let me repeat it again in case you missed:

Why did miners abandon mining in March dropping the hash rate to ~ 97.87 EH/s when the mining revenue from one TH/s was 20 cents and they didn't do that in October when we reached 142.94 EH/s and the revenue per TH/s was 7 cents?

If it wasn't because of a ban in China can you explain from the pure economical way why would anyone chooses to shut down their operation when they were 3 times as profitable?

Maybe China banned bitcoin mining for 1001st time in January too when hashrate dropped from 217 EHS to 159 EHS which totally had nothing to do with another 50% price drop?

I'm confused, what the *** are you talking about?

[Zilon]

or did the fud get in my head?

That's my assumption right at this moment, just take a break and avoid reading unreliable news and update.

Maybe you forget that Bitcoin doesn't need any country's authority or government's approval for mining, trading, selling, and buying.  We don't need any central government for all of these and crypto has been existed without them, in fact, we mostly hear that there are some countries involved in cryptoeconomics.  Everyone can mine Bitcoin at home and no one will compensate for it because everyone can use any hardware to mine.

But if bitcoin eventually get banned in all countries would miners still surface to mine on earth? The answer is definitely no in as much as bitcoin is decentralized it still shares its own limitations and one of it is power consumption assuming bitcoin was built on pos we would have outnumbered regulatory authorities but i feel this aspect of mining limitations is the strongest weak point that could possibly hinder hashrate if peradventure mining gets outright ban across nations

what if alcohol was prohibited...........
     moonshine, bathtub gin, letting grape juice sit for 60 days to ferment (naturally made wine)
     medical liquor
     bootlegging

what if drugs was prohibited...........
     need i explain. just watch the news.

Even if all of these are prohibited and while people keep using and doing these, the governments were left out of it.  How much more in Bitcoin mining.

If all this were prohibited we know there would be severe punishment for defaulters and people who use those products would slways do them in a completely secret environment and it would't be available in our everyday malls

[kryptqnick]

Some countries do ban mining, and a few big ones can follow, but I find it extremely unrealistic for all countries to do that. Also, even when mining's banned, it doesn't mean it's literally not done in the countries that introduced the bans. It highly depends on how much the laws are being enforced, and some or a lot of underground mining can take place. Moreover, thanks to the adjustments of the difficulty rate, even if a lot of miners suddenly stopped, it would only be a problem for around two weeks, and then it would get back to normal. Of all things that can threaten the future of cryptos, I don't think mining restriction is a big issue.

[teosanru]

China banned miners, the EU is thinking of doing the same and what if others will follow?

In a hypothetical scenario where China, US Canada, Russia, India and EU ban pow mining I doubt the smaller countries can sustain the current active miners. Hashrate would drop significantly and the network would be weaker.
Either there would be a massive investment in solar in many developing countries or we might see the first 51% on BTC (hope not).

Do you see this as a potential threat or did the fud get in my head?

Let's for a second assume bitcoin consumes around 90 Terrawats of electricity every year which is roughly around the electricity consumed by Norway. Now imagining of a situation where around top 50 countries would come together to ban crypto mining. If I just go by electricity production by country there would still be 1500 Terawatts of produced electricity left on earth to support mining. And let me tell you that it's not the lack of space why the remaining countries don't produce electricity, it's the lack of demand and if the large bitcoin companies come together they can easily manufacture their own electricity in a safe heaven and trust me that would be much more profitable for them than to rely on government provided electricity.

[glendall]

Do you see this as a potential threat or did the fud get in my head?

threat is going to be expensive huh i guess ,
like franky1 said, alcohol and illegal drugs are prohibited, there are still many who carry out their transactions, and obviously alcohol and illegal drugs are more dangerous if misused
different from bitcoin just mining by using electricity
I think mining will still exist and will be safe unless the internet and electricity are turned off back to the stone age

[marilynmanson21]

always think positively about the progress of bitcoin, if you believe in bitcoin, avoid FUD about bitcoin because it will make you always think that you are not comfortable investing.
because FUD aims to drop the value of BTC at its base, so close your ears and eyes for a moment for peace