Regulations on proof of work might be coming

[bbc.reporter]

It appears that everything that the bitcoin antagonizers have speculated is becoming a reality. We cannot ignore this anymore. Also, we have already witnessed that the government does not stop with regulations as a way to regulate. They might also use their positions of power in creating laws as a weapon to attack bitcoin. I speculate another policy that the American government can create is a ban on all Asic imports.



The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Energy (DOE), and other federal agencies should provide technical assistance and initiate a collaborative process with states, communities, the crypto-asset industry, and others to develop effective, evidence-based environmental performance standards for the responsible design, development, and use of environmentally responsible crypto-asset technologies. These should include standards for very low energy intensities, low water usage, low noise generation, clean energy usage by operators, and standards that strengthen over time for additional carbon-free generation to match or exceed the additional electricity load of these facilities. Should these measures prove ineffective at reducing impacts, the Administration should explore executive actions, and Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining. DOE and EPA should provide technical assistance to state public utility commissions, environmental protection agencies, and the crypto- asset industry to build capacity to minimize emissions, noise, water impacts, and negative economic impacts of crypto-asset mining; and to mitigate environmental injustices to overburdened communities.

Read in full https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/09-2022-Crypto-Assets-and-Climate-Report.pdf

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[franky1]

first of all if initial plans go through, miners will have to use renewables more(not that difficult) where a mining farm wont exceed XXmw per location(not that difficult)

if these easy tasks cant be met to a standard government want..
in short america becomes not a good place to mine...
.. much like 2009-2020

yep america only became a highly notable mining location after 2020
so things will just go back to a era where america is not the main location to mine, basically a couple years ago

as for exchanges, well they might get told to drop btc like they did with monero. solution.. exchanges operate outside of america
..and those that cant migrate, see less exchange fee's by only trading altcoins

[pooya87]

It's about time, a lot of other countries have already regulated bitcoin mining and they haven't done it yet over there. It's funny how they go at it from an energy standpoint at this point when they are also facing an energy "price" crisis.

[electronicash]

they know very well renewable could not last in power crunching mining devices. if they are doing this, its their country  that will just be affected. other countries will continue mining using fossil fuels. but i wouldn't be surprising this law will cause conflict again to countries where miners are free to mine BTC.

this could be one the reason for declining BTC dominance also  because ETH seem to be the most preferred by the macro investors.

[pooya87]

this could be one the reason for declining BTC dominance also  because ETH seem to be the most preferred by the macro investors.

You mean market cap ratio.
Shitcoins like ethereum have huge supplies that has created a bloated and fake market capitalization hence giving them a bigger ratio. Bitcoin has about 19 million circulating coins and 0 premine while ETH has 122 million circulating coins with 72 million premine.
In other words the shitcoin called ETH has 6.4 times more supply than bitcoin but 0.08 its price.

[DapanasFruit]

Once doing the Bitcoin mining business within the jurisdiction of USA can be so restrictive and nearly unprofitable, then miners will have no choice but to look elsewhere...yes for as long as mining can still be churning out money. There are many in the government right now who don't like the PoW aspect of Bitcoin and so they are using their power to kick Bitcoin mining away from the country. We should not be threatened with that because eventually as long as there is a demand, there can be a supply if not here then somewhere.

[Tytanowy Janusz]

Let's ban bitcoin mining ... meanwhile new graphic cards made for gamers are about to hit the roof with power consumption GeForce RTX 4000 “Lovelace“ power draw might exceed 800 W. Just to run AAA game with 4k in 60 fps. Why not ban gaming? why not allow minesweeper and solitaire only as the most eco-friendly games?

"Based on our very rough estimates, we found that the worldwide electricity consumption of people playing video games is 46% higher than the total consumption of Bitcoin mining as of November 2019."
https://braiins.com/blog/bitcoin-mining-vs-gaming

What about warm baths? We can all take cold baths. Its even healthier for us. I bet that warm baths worldwide consume more energy than bitcoin.

I'm just kidding with all this, but I want to show only how much hypocrisy we live in that elites can ban/limit everything they want only because it does not fit their narrative. I don't understand why bitcoin is treated differently from others. Its only a customer of companies producing and selling electricity. It's their fault that energy they produce is dirty. Just like gamers are customers only, just like every single one of us is. No one check what percentage of your gaming PC energy consumption is made from renewables. No one force to buy and run 1 solar panel unit for every GTX 1060 or stronger GPU you have.

[mk4]

It's going to be inevitable, despite it being total utter nonsense due to the fact that there are much bigger environmentally-deadly industries to regulate.

Always expect attacks from the regulators, and I'm going to bet that this will be next.

[ThemePen]

Was reading the PDF.
And found this pic which is showing that is totally against the POW. And they are just coming to POS. And you know the shit ETH Merge is coming too.


And they are talking about the Electricity Crisis and approximately they are showing that whole fault is only (Crypto) oh no no no... Its Bitcoin...

But if we go through the world many are using Gas for mining and legalized Bitcoin mining.
Here is an example.

1. OIL COMPANIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST TO USE EXCESS GAS FOR BITCOIN MINING
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/middle-eastern-oil-companies-to-use-excess-gas-for-mining-bitcoin

Solar Energy systems also can be used to mine Bitcoin.

Here found one more table antiPoW.

[2stout]

Well this could be interesting.  However, filter all those pages and layers of shit and IMHO seems like a backdoor to once again try to regulate Bitcoin by knee capping it.

[NotATether]

Look carefully. The post says to facillitate clean energy, noise reduction, environmently sustainable miners and only if this fails they will slam Thor's hammer on them.

In other words, we are not actually in a dystopia yet, sorry naysayers.

this could be one the reason for declining BTC dominance also  because ETH seem to be the most preferred by the macro investors.

You mean market cap ratio.
Shitcoins like ethereum have huge supplies that has created a bloated and fake market capitalization hence giving them a bigger ratio. Bitcoin has about 19 million circulating coins and 0 premine while ETH has 122 million circulating coins with 72 million premine.
In other words the shitcoin called ETH has 6.4 times more supply than bitcoin but 0.08 its price.

The Queen Elizabeth tokens prove this as well as basically every other useless token that was made on the ETH, BSC, Doge blockchains. Tokens can be printed out of thin air, which creates an inflated volume. The price you have to pay for this (pun intended), is sinking prices with respect to the US dollar.

[tranthidung]

Look carefully. The post says to facillitate clean energy, noise reduction, environmently sustainable miners and only if this fails they will slam Thor's hammer on them.

Just a stricter regulation, not seriously and last solution as a ban. You have a good finding. 
In addition, I don't think they have solid reasons to ban Proof of Work mining industry or in particular Bitcoin mining industry, because the percent of sustainable energy used in the industry is just a mildly smaller than other industries or at national or global scale. So if they go with a ban, that is simply not based on any valid evidence. People will look at it and say, it is biased by government's benefit, a kind of emotional decision.

[batang_bitcoin]

We may just see another "bitcoin ban" front pages but there's little to no impact at all. Well, those cities or states that are conservative with their energy consumption will be the ones to be implementing on this.
But other than that, this might just be the same news about bitcoin being banned and then yet it had became less popular after a couple of months up to becoming none of a real concern from these regulators.

[un_rank]

I tried to read some of the article and it was not as bad as I had envisaged it to be. It sure leaned more into how much energy Bitcoin mining consumes and comparing it disproportionately to familiar things would pass a wrong message to some readers who do no research.
Bitcoin mining is already going green to an extent and can do so more in the coming years. I feel this should be highlighted more and also the need for PoW, which is far more secure than other means of validating blocks.

I was drawn to the part about a consensus on mining algorithm by the crypto-asset community:

The crypto-asset community has not reached an agreement on what constitutes “best practices” for consensus mechanisms, and other consensus mechanisms with different strengths and weaknesses may emerge.

There is an obvious consensus mechanism which is superior to others in PoW. But there is no crypto asset community to decide on which is best and altcoin devs experiment with different simulations.

- Jay -

[o_e_l_e_o]

There are some interesting snippets in the report which show that the government does at least recognize that bitcoin can help in the transition to 100% renewable energy. For example:

Crypto-asset mining operations can quickly decrease the amount of electricity used by scaling back or switching off mining rigs. Bitcoin miners can participate in utility and grid operator programs that pay major electricity users to decrease consumptions during times of peak grid stress, or to balance supply and demand — a process called demand response.

This is vital to a 100% renewable energy infrastructure. You can choose how much coal or gas to burn to meet response, but you can't choose how much sunlight there is how much wind there is. When there is an excess of energy being produced, bitcoin miners can utilize this and therefore the energy company makes money on electricity which would otherwise be completely wasted, and when there is an excess in demand bitcoin miners can temporarily scale back to allow supply and demand to balance. This mining usage will also subsidize the development of new renewable infrastructure which would otherwise be unprofitable due to a significant proportion of its production being wasted.

While the EPA and the Department of the Interior have proposed new rules to reduce methane for oil and natural gas operations, crypto-asset mining operations that capture vented methane to produce electricity can yield positive results for the climate, by converting the potent methane to CO₂ during combustion.

Methane is often vented to the atmosphere because the cost of doing something useful with it, such as building a huge pipeline to transport it, is too high. Methane is 80 times as potent as carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. Bitcoin miners, by virtue of being completely mobile, can utilize this methane at source and reduce its emission in to the atmosphere.

I don't see this report as bad for bitcoin. They are simply saying that it is going to have to play by the same rules as every other industry in the country and start moving towards net zero emissions, and even pointing out areas where bitcoin mining will accelerate that movement.

[so98nn]

So what? Mining industries can easily provide the data associated with environmental effects from their facilities. If required they can control these measures by periodic load shadings, maintenance day off, spreading the facilities across different regions of localities and what not. This will have re-distributed consumptions of energy, heat production (bi-product), and carbon emissions(?) if any.

I don't think such law is very big deal. In fact this is applicable to all industries irrespective of their field of work.

If they are that much worries, then can have following schemes for the mining industries;

If you install 1 miner then plant and grow 10 trees
If you have 100 miners then plant 1000 plants and grow.

This will also bring up some social work and reduction of carbon emission (?) if any from the mining industry.

[pooya87]

If they are that much worries, then can have following schemes for the mining industries;

If you install 1 miner then plant and grow 10 trees
If you have 100 miners then plant 1000 plants and grow.

If they were worried about the environment and trees they would start by countries that are currently cutting down trees to make firewood for the winter to be burnt in millions of houses around EU.

We already know their problem has nothing to do with energy or the environment. They just hate bitcoin and want to slow down its adoption using any means they have. One day it is FUD about security, another day it is FUD about criminal usage, another day it is energy, etc.

[rby]

Whenever I hear regulation of anything concerning bitcoin, ranging from regulating bitcoin it's to now regulating the PoW, I don't have serious panic. To regulate is different from to ban or to take over. Regulations could be setting up the modalities to ensure that all miners go green or set up regulations that will encourage replishment of depleted energies. So, Let's not be negative minded when we hear regulations. I know some states in the US who would be affected and would revolte if the game is seriously going against PoW and bitcoin.
Sometime ago China put a ban on bitcoin, according to the hype we all thought bitcoin will die, yet btc is still strong.

[o_e_l_e_o]

Mining industries can easily provide the data associated with environmental effects from their facilities.

If they are using the grid then they have no special access to such data, but equally are no more responsible for the environmental effects than anyone else is, and any legislation should be targeted at all electricity users, and not singling out a specific electricity user which uses less than 1% of electricity. If they have their own solar or other renewable source in addition to using the grid, then sure they can provide such data, but then they are already better than the majority of other users so there is still no point targeting miners specifically.

If they were worried about the environment and trees they would start by countries that are currently cutting down trees to make firewood for the winter to be burnt in millions of houses around EU.

Why haven't we banned dryers yet? They achieve literally nothing which can't be achieved by just hanging up your laundry, and use far more electricity than bitcoin does. Ban dryers!

[franky1]

bitcoin mining is not a yo-yo thing, where they will happily just switch off half the day or certain days of the week.

you will simply see asic farms just not set up in regions of solar/wind

they will instead set up in regions of hydro/nuclear that are more stable.
asic farms already do buy electric not by the day. but instead by the GW per quarter/year
where by you will simply see that governments will limit power companies to impliment a limit for certain industries whereby for instance each asic farm location has a max XGW per quarter quota upper limit (if governments wanted to go to those extremes)

..the electricity grid doesnt just do pay as you go responding by the minute to cater to demand telling industry to shut down via a phone call/email
they actually know their top capacity and know how much they can lock off as 24/7 utility of stable rate use. and sell off portions of that as a quarterly/yearly contract to have guaranteed income of stable use they can plan for(baseload contracts/PPA's)


                  night day night
                              
                 |      /\__/\_                 |      /\__/\_      |
residential  |/\_/ _____ \/\_           |/\_/           \/\_|
                 |___/         \___           |                       |
office/retail|_____________     not |   everything     |
industry     |_____________          |_____________|

they can plan for things like office/retail which usually operate in blocks of 12 hour stable use and then 12 hour low use
and then negotiate the pay as you go(residential) variable which peaks and dips hourly with other power stations that buy and sell surplus energy to share out different regions peaks and dips.
where by the stable 24/7 industry has been pre paid, pre organised, pre allocated amount months/year earlier

they actually prefer industries that have stable constant 24/7 use that will pay up in allotments of yearly contracts for XGW

its the random power of residential which national grids dont like as they have to ramp up and power down some plants which if not timed well causes brown outs

i do not think they will be phoning/emailing asic farms to switch off. at certain hours..(stupid idea of conspiracy to think they would call farms to shut down  certain times of the day)
instead they will just not offer yearly contracts if the previous years demand was close to capacity.
where as other regions with alot of excess capacity wil sell yearly electric contracts

as for residential..
well they will limit households to X kwh per day at low rate. and then X KWH at higher rate.