By Peter Howson*
Huge concrete data centres, permanently plugged into power plants and telephone exchanges, maintain much of online life. But the infrastructure behind internet-based cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, dogecoin and ethereum is more like a rusty travelling circus. And right now, that circus is on the road.
Bitcoin relies on a network of millions of specialist machines, known as miners, around 70% of which are currently based in China. Like a never-ending game of Hungry Hippos, each player hammers their mining machines 24/7 to try and scoop up as many bitcoins as possible. With only a few hippos, its easy for everyone to be a winner. But with around 2.5 million miners chasing an ever-shrinking number of prizes, the game is becoming increasingly difficult.
Bitcoin’s booming popularity has caused its electricity demand to swell. With no central planning, a perpetual arms race for equipment continues, creating 15,000 tonnes of burned out electronic waste annually.
To maximise profits, mining machines are often crammed into shipping containers, with operators ready to up sticks at a moment’s notice to find the cheapest sources of energy. During China’s summer rain season, hydro power plants in the south-western provinces generate so much energy that miners can mop up the leftovers. But in the winter dry season, many miners unplug and hit the road, heading for the coal-fired power plants scattered across China’s vast northern territories.
Recent crypto price increases have encouraged some Chinese bitcoiners to mine coal and restart idle power plants without permission, endangering lives and threatening President Xi Jinping’s climate goals.
Bitcoin’s energy demand has more than doubled in a year from 55 terawatt-hours (TWh) to 125 TWh. The network now has a carbon footprint similar to the whole of Poland. Chinese regulators closed down all the country’s crypto exchanges in 2017. Even so, rocketing demand for bitcoin elsewhere means the network’s energy use in China is predicted to peak by 2024 at around 300 TWh. That’s equivalent to the total energy demand of the UK. With a crypto circus in tow, Beijing’s commitments to cut carbon emissions by 65% before 2030 would be near impossible to meet.
Bitcoin is not just China’s problem
In an attempt to reduce bitcoin’s environmental impacts in China, the coal-dependent province of Inner Mongolia recently banned bitcoin mining and set up a hotline to report suspected transgressors. But on average, mining just one bitcoin per day requires a US$1.8 million (NZ$2.5 mln) investment in specialist equipment. Expulsions from the province could force some highly invested bitcoiners underground, while forcing others to find new places to park up in neighbouring countries which don’t have China’s seasonal glut of renewable energy.
To prevent an influx of Chinese miners chasing cheaper electricity, Iran’s President recently clamped down on new oil-fuelled mining, which authorities blame for increasing urban smog. The Black Sea territory of Abkhazia is trying to hold back foreign miners as officials there are forced to introduce rolling blackouts due to energy shortages. Bitcoin mining has been blamed for overloaded electricity lines and power station fires, leaving some areas without power for days.
UK authorities have also paid the price for bitcoin’s boom. In May 2021, officers from West Midlands Police in the UK, believing they were raiding an illegal cannabis farm in Sandwell, instead discovered around 100 bitcoin mining machines running off an improvised connection to the electricity supply. The outdated machines were so inefficient that they could only turn a profit with stolen energy. These thefts raise energy prices for everyone else, causing fuel poverty and risking public safety.
Demand for mining machines has caused computer chip shortages, hurting more useful industries struggling back to work post-COVID. UK carmakers have cut production while smartphone companies have delayed future launches. The price of specialist chips used by the likes of Intel and Apple have increased by around 70% so far in 2021, with knock-on effects for UK consumers.
Even universities and hospitals are affected by bitcoin’s second-order effects. According to the insurer, Hiscox, around 4,500 organisations fell victim to cyber attacks every day in the UK in 2018. Many of these involve ransomware payments, 98% of which are paid in bitcoin.
Some argue that to slow the increase in ransomware attacks, authorities need to crack down on cryptocurrency exchanges that enable bitcoin ransoms to be paid. Others claim that cryptocurrencies and ransomware are now so entwined that the only way to fight the latter is to ban cryptocurrencies altogether.
To clean up the crypto industry, a UN-backed Crypto Climate Accord and the Bitcoin Miners Council were established. These groups urge bitcoin miners in the US to only use leftover renewable energy. But it’s not possible to give a higher price to bitcoins produced using only renewables, because bitcoins are designed to be fully interchangable. Research shows that new miners joining the competition in North America have encouraged miners where there are no renewables to use more machines and work harder, increasing the network’s overall carbon footprint.
A global response
For regulatory purposes, bitcoin should be considered similar to the global trade in Chinese tiger parts. Banning tiger hunting in the UK is pointless, but banning the sale of tiger parts is useful. Likewise, when UK-based investors are allowed to speculate on bitcoin, they encourage an environmentally disastrous global industry that has so far failed to benefit anyone except criminals and some early speculators.
Cracking down on crypto exchanges or banning the import and use of mining equipment could be a relatively easy win for the UK as it prepares to host the 2021 UN climate summit. Doing nothing about the problem would negate the UK’s progress in other areas. Thanks to tax relief schemes and infrastructure investment, electric car registrations increased by 41% in 2020, preventing the release of around 50 million tonnes of CO₂ a year. Meanwhile, bitcoin mining causes nearly 60 million tonnes of CO₂ annually.
China appears committed to putting its own house in order, but bitcoin’s social and environmental impacts urgently need a global response.
Peter Howson is a Senior Lecturer in International Development, Northumbria University, Newcastle, in England. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
127 Comments
The writing is on the wall, Bitcoin will get banned in the not to distant future and will either just fizzle or remain a currency for drug dealers. When the top 10 holders decide to simultaneously bail out of the market its going to be carnage. What a waste of global resources if it ends up worthless. Still it was the ultimate Ponzi and greed overrides logic every time.
China will be the first to ban Bitcoin it will be easy for them to do. if you don't follow the rules over there you end up dead, they don't pussy foot around over there. The reason is obvious they are releasing their own digital currency. If China bans it then it will have a domino effect worldwide. Any Bitcoin recovery now will be a dead cat bounce.
Yes it does seen so absurd that so much of the worlds energy is wasted on crypto. Its almost seems like a story line taken from a Douglas Adams novel. But fact is often stranger then fiction, and this is a sad reality. Really there should be a race to see which of the crypto currencies can be the most environmentally sustainable. So far Ethereum 2.0 is set to slash its energy consumption by 99.95% within months, as they transition to a new infrastructure model. Only until that happens will I invest in crypto!
Hi Peter, you didn't mention "proof of work" vs "proof of stake". Ethereum, the second biggest crypto by market cap is moving to "proof of stake" which will have a huge difference on energy use.
https://www.morningbrew.com/emerging-tech/stories/2021/05/19/proofofsta…
Why not encourage Bticoin developers to move in the same direction. Surely easier than banning it?
Bitcoin doesn't have the same fore sight as Ethereum developers, which will cause their downfall. Since Bitcoins main business model sits around the concept of the mining of Bitcoin, as a cheap way for them to decentralize their processing power for computational transactions to maintain the ledger of transactions upon which Bitcoin is based. This probably still makes perfect business sense to them and Bitcoin simply don't care if it causes the demise of our planet.
The Fed could hypothetically shut down the whole Ethereum ecosystem, with the thousands of projects that use it as a sandbox, with two phone calls; one to Infura and the other to Amazon Web services. Or they could just apply pressure to Vitalik Butarin. Doesn’t matter how good you think proof of stake is, it’s all centralised garbage. Anything decent, will eventually be built on the bitcoin layer 2 network.
The World produces about 160k TWh of energy per year. Of that, approx 50k or roughly 30 percent is wasted. Only 120 TWh is required to run the whole Bitcoin network. 7.5 basis points of the total energy produced, or 25 basis points of all the wasted energy. So for one quarter of one percent, of all the wasted energy, the Bitcoin network provides a bank in cyberspace for billions of the worlds unbanked population, to have a chance of having property rights, and a savings account on their mobile phones...a chance at economic self-preservation. Something we all take for granted.
It's pretty easy to criticise energy wastage, as long as it doesn't affect your ability to browse worthless websites or videos all day, or run your heat pump all day, when you could just put on a jumper, or take the car to the local shop when you could just walk.
> the Bitcoin network provides a bank in cyberspace for billions of the worlds unbanked population
Nope. It provides nothing of the sort at the moment. And if it ever does serve billions, it will either consume vastly more energy, or rely on coins/technology which either currently do not exist or have not taken hold.
El Salvador may become the first country to accept bitcoin as legal tender.
The country’s president said the move will generate jobs and provide financial inclusion.
His plan aims to assist Salvadorans living abroad in transferring funds home. “In the short term, this will generate jobs and help provide financial inclusion to thousands outside the formal economy,” Bukele said.
Remittances are a key issue for a country where 70% of the population does not have a bank account, according to Bukele. “By using bitcoin, the amount received by more than a million low-income families will increase in the equivalent of billions of dollars every year,” he said
Typical comment from someone who enjoys all the fruits of a first world country..does not help those struggling to get a foot up..at least BTC does rather than your smug put down of El Salvador. Western Union charges over 1 billion in world wide transfer fees, now some of this money is going into businesses, education, homes, real day to day improvements for huge population around the world.
Frazz - if central banks decide that it is illegal to trade in bitcoin within their borders, how do you buy your goods and services?
Sure you can do some fancy online transactions and buy some socks from El Salvador and get them shipped here, but if you need to pay your rates, pay your insurance, buy fuel for your car, pay your mortgage, buy the groceries and all of those transactions have to be in fiat because the government and central bank outlaw any other form of payment - what value does crypto really have?
And as i say, i think crypto is a fantastic idea...but it must be supported by central banks and at the moment it opposes their monetary policy aims to keep the economy functioning. So they will not support it. They may come out with their own form of digital currency, but then where does that leave your bitcoin? In many respects it could become completely worthless. It will be like rocking up to buy something with cowry shells and providers of goods and services will say 'wtf is that? That isn't legal tender...I don't want it.'
Boomer dribble. Who did the actual work? The farmer. Who did nothing but press buttons and make numbers appear on the screen, stripping wealth from the productive worker? The financier. The current financial system is full of ticket clippers. That’s why they’re so scared of decentralised finance. It makes them irrelevant.
"Who did the actual work? " - fossil fuel (acquired by DEBT) ... on which EVERYONE clips the ticket in largely irrelevant pointless jobs.
But as far as the farmer becoming "irrelevant" ... hmmm, I imagine your Uber driver is going to dig the potatoes before he delivers them?
And boomer?? Not me sir
Ah I wondered how people become bitcoin fanatics...you need to take some pills!
No and I've said this to you in posts before that I think bitcoin is a great idea....
But will it be successful? (which is the more important question...). I don't think it will in its current form which is why I don't buy into the hype.
Bitcoin itself is not a great idea, its a Ponzi plain and simple. The good idea is the technology behind it that will lead to a worldwide adopted digital currency but that currency will never be Bitcoin. I fully expect Bitcoin to eventually return to the same value as when it started. When the cost of the energy and hardware required to mine the remaining Bitcoin exceeds the value of the Bitcoin its dead in the water. The value of Bitcoin has to keep increasing rapidly to feed the Ponzi.
Sorry I didn’t state that clearly, I didn’t mean now. I meant the opportunity to.
Also, what’s your reference? Or do you just guess? Are you an energy/tech oracle that can predict the future energy demands? If you actually read what I said, it was 1/4, of 1 percent of the WASTED energy. So even if there was no Bitcoin network, it would still be wasted.
I know that for example, there are 20,000+ sign ups per day in El Savador to the Strike app, which uses the Bitcoin layer two lightning network to send remittances from the US. Would you rather they use Western Union and lose up to 50% of their transfers in fees? 24% of their GDP comes from remittances by the way.
https://twitter.com/bitcoin/status/1396693322664595460?s=21
OK, this one didn't get any answer. Let's try another. How is that '30% of generated energy is wasted' calculated? Does it include thermal losses etc. from transmission? If so, bitcoin stepping into the chain somewhere doesn't actually make a difference - that energy still must be lost in getting the power where it is needed.
https://twitter.com/asianhodl1/status/1392678699531575302?s=19
Because Bitcoin miners are relocatable, they seek out and harvest the cheapest sources of power. More often than not, these are renewable or wasted energy sources such as an excess of power production in china or natural gas flares that can not be brought to the market because of isolation.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20210516-flared-natural-gas-lates…
So they cut out all the transmission by going to the power supply, unlocking additional wasted energy and reducing transmission waste.
Mining can also work hand in hand with renewable power generators, so when situations like Germany arise that they are producing so much solar power that they were literally paying people to use electricity, they can just crank up their miners and soak up the over supply, encouraging the installation of more renewable energy sources.
https://assets.ctfassets.net/2d5q1td6cyxq/5mRjc9X5LTXFFihIlTt7QK/e7bcba…
https://twitter.com/michael_saylor/status/1398250037273055232
Image of the relative energy amounts
Please direct any further questions to Nic Carter, the energy guy: https://twitter.com/nic__carter
Bitcoin is a protocol, how like the internet runs on TCP IP the Bitcoin base network layer will be used to run other protocols on top of it. Hence it is always upgrading, always scaling and the Network effect means that projects will flow towards it. Just like you could develop a new internet protocol, but why would anyone use it when there is already an agreed upon system?
Time will tell but my bet it on Bitcoin.
You’re assuming the current broken financial system will continue in the future, despite it being on life support? What comes next? Maybe the base layer has already been built under your nose, you just don’t know it yet? Could be wrong, but that’s how network effects take hold. The current system is not fit for the future digital economy.
Nope, that's not my argument. My point is the current banking system supports our entire economy - funding households, business, the State, facilitating virtually all transactions. Bitcoin currently has a strong use case for ransomware attacks, remittance to countries with poorly functioning banking systems, and not a lot else.
I'm not particularly wedded to the current system, but it clearly does a hell of a lot more than bitcoin does and any comparison of their energy footprints should take that into account.
Fair call. I understand what you’re saying. My point is, do you think the same could be said for the postal service when email was being adopted in the early stages? There appears to be is a massive shift happening in the background that will change the way everything is transacted via the internet, with instant final settlement at the institutional and sovereign level, and international synchronisation of mobile payment apps. What better way than a decentralised, open-source, permission-less payment network. I’m not talking about Bitcoin the asset, I’m talking about the Bitcoin network, and the layer two solutions that are being built. Don’t judge it on what it is now, but what it has the potential to become. There doesn’t seem to be anything better as It seems to have already won the network race over the past decade with thousands of challengers.
You might be right. The thing is, I use email right now despite not paying much attention to it's origins or competitors. I never staked money on email becoming a dominant technology. I'm fine with doing the same with crypto - I'm doing just fine without trying to pick winners in that market. If something enters regular use and becomes worth my time I'll use it. There is no need to buy in at this stage, and to do so would be pure speculation. Happy to let others do the hard work and take the risks, and if it comes to something useful I can benefit from it later on.
Thanks, I get where you’re at. The problem is there isn’t much else to invest in in this ‘everything-bubble’ where everything is either rinsed out, or manipulated to favour the earlier generations. Esp for younger people looking to do something/anything that doesn’t involve becoming debt slaves for over-priced crappy houses. What have they got to lose?
"When investors are allowed to speculate on bitcoin, they encourage an environmentally disastrous global industry that has so far failed to benefit anyone except criminals and some early speculators, says Peter Howson"
Who are we to say, what is right and wrong.
When investors are allowed to speculate on houses, they encourage killling the dreams of many to own a home - basic fundamental right - that has so far failed to benefit anyone except speculators, says stuart786786
Just because RBNZ has no control in manipulation, it is bad. If Mr Orr's of the world encourage speculation is fine as is for economy and .......
Who is anyone to decide, what is right and what is wrong lol.
Pretty sure most crypto in china is hooked up to the dams they have built. All built with printed money so yawn.
Ultimately crypto wouldn't exist if Central banks were not screwing the world over. The world with global Currency separated from those that pull the strings would be a better place. No reserve currency, no debt debasement, no bailing out speculators, no exchange rates, no banks clipping the ticket everywhere, and potentially no more banks. Just a stable system globally for those that actually produce goods to use to trade goods and services.
Not sure how you think the banks are screwing everyone over. I got a mortgage so essentially it allowed me to leverage off the bank and pay it off now life is sweet. I knew how much I borrowed and had to pay off and the term all up front before signing up. Those with bigger balls have now gone all in with the low interest rates now and have leveraged to the max and bought up houses. If history is anything to go on they are all going to be multimillionaires in 10 years time. Can you predict where your $1000 worth of Crypto is going to be in 10 years time ? no chance.
How did we get to overshoot? Maybe the brakes were taken off when they shouldn’t have? Or should have been reapplied sooner? Or maybe the world needed a good old natural reset of the long term debt cycle, to teach people and governments how to live within their means. We’ve been sucking on the debt pipe for too long now, and no one wants the comedown on the other side of the party. At the moment, it’s the asset holders that have the most to lose. Most of the World’s population is already living from day to day, week to week.
You could say the last lot of brakes were indeed taken off with the gold standard removal ... a 40 year gamble we could nut our way out of the cul de sac ... growth and limits ultimately don't co exist
But it ain't debt holders who have most to lose, its every one who uses a bank account ....
Unless you are a hunter gatherer, you're dependent on the system holding
A peaceful organized collapse? Like a never ending lockdown !.. dwindling living standards ...hmmm, sounds familiar
Reality is you can't solve a resources per capita problem with a hard monetary fix... wealth claims disappear or too many losers and loss of scale... basically we will likely see the faith in fiat pushed to it breaks ... which it will if the trucks stop turning up
Then the rules are quickly out the window
So many interlinked problems ...
The Debt is the grease which pulls stuff through a supply chain ... but the Easy resources gone or deteriorated , we have many hard limits..mineral, land , water., .ocean
Complexity of supply reach is global ... cross dependency,
ham 'n eggs,
Ihave spent quite a lot of time trying to get my head around resource limits-oil and minerals. There is a clearly a serious issue as they are all non-renewable and will at some point, become uneconomic to extract. pdk believes that this will be soon, possibly by 2050. What is your view?
Id say pdk is 20 to 25 years too optimistic! .... but i sure hope hes right
the "uneconomic to extract" is the key part ...
Prices need to be higher for producers ... BUT low enough for (the mass) consumers
there is no goldilocks zone now
We have too few jobs that can pay enough people well enough so govts are propping up everything ... which is debasing currency
And the supply chain is starting to fracture
Anyone remember the GFC? A big part of the panic was lack of transparency around OTC derivatives - preventing any sensible assessment of counter-party exposure during the emergency. Bitcoin's built-in opacity means any major deflation of price, for whatever reason, would bring some fun surprises. Of course, this may make Bitcoin TBTF and thus a government-guaranteed investment like NZ real estate. Possibly!
"built-in opacity"
You do know how the blockchain works right???
https://insights.glassnode.com/the-week-on-chain-week-23/
Exchanges are regulated entities that report by all local jurisdictional rules.
Or are you meaning because its still a relatively small market that larger players can swing their weight around more easily to a larger effect?
This article = Great advertisement to buy crypto
shows we can all be ahead of the curve to show more interest in BTC and cryptocurrencies in general
Bitcoin is traceable, so it is no good to criminals, and every transaction can be traced and or tainted, and observed, which is why governments will all eventually introduce CBDC - central bank digital currencies. CBDC can be issued, time locked/best befored, must be spent here or thered, watched traced and frozen. By the way, your bank account now is a digital bank account, it doesn't really exist, if everyone went to take their unsecured savings from the bank tomorrow, it would be quickly obvious...
As for the price of bitcoins energy, it is to mine a bitcoin once, where the significance of energy equals effort is locked into it forever. The cost to run any bank energy wise from power for buildings, banks, servers, staff fuel and transportation, to work conferences or junkets, oh the list goes on... the cost to run bitcoin is a fraction of the costs of the financial market, and once a bitcoin is mined it can be moved/transacted fast and free on pre-mined therefore ecofriendly networks like tixl
Cash is the currency of crooks and the drug trade, it was that just about every US dollar had traces of drugs on it but being the printer goes Brrrrrrrrrrr the notes are now produced faster than they can snort (not the ones at the trough)
If the government had any insight or read their emails, they would be mining BTC at Tiwai Pt, smelter and cleanup sorted, Bitcoin the treasure currency of the future for NZ reserves, and a power delivery location with extra power surpluses that can be banked on back up power supplies plus transportable battery banks for civil defense or even normal power delivery services to other NZ cities and townships.
clean green free
President of Property
It’s a promising cross border payment platform but it is ultimately an interface to (and reliant on) fiat currency systems.
Even the cutting edge proposals on programmable / digital money rely on the guarantee & stability of a fiat currency. The dream of a functional money system outside of govt control is exactly that - a dream.
Yawn, still waiting for it to die...
https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoin-obituaries/
https://cryptheory.org/square-throws-millions-into-solar-powered-btc-mi…
Square Inc. has pledged a $5 million investment into building a solar-powered BTC (BTC) mining facility. A new partnership with global blockchain technology leader Blockstream.
According to reports, the new facility will be situated at a Blockstream mining site in the United States.
For an idea of scale - a newcomer is spending $300 million (NZD, so more like $200 million to compare to your number) in building solar power in Northland. $5 million represents some cheap PR for a company valued at ~$100 billion.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/442354/solar-power-planned-network-…
Why does gold mining not have this level of attention around its energy use. I’ll tell you why, it’s all FUD.
You want to play cheap shock stats: gold mining uses as much as two Poland’s in energy each year and the process is far more environmentally destructive than Bitcoin mining.
This whole article is poorly researched and presented with a anti-crypto agenda. How much of that energy is obtained from renewable sources according to estimates? How much criminal activity uses the USD?
I expected better from interest.
As a bewilder bystander in the war of words re crypto V fiat, can someone answer me how to pay for the grandchildren's ice creams treats with bitcoin (or any other crypto)?
I dont like what our transaction fiat money has become but from the couch I'm sitting on (or fence if you like) fail to digest how a crypto currency enables fluidity (I can carry a small amount in my "wallet"?) to break down to small enough denominations to buy grandies their ice cream?
Easy. You've been scanning in everywhere, right? A POS terminal generates a QR code read by your phone, your phone wallet asks you to authorise a transfer and finality can be acheived in seconds with some cryptos. They also let you break them down into sub-units easily. Hard with something like BTC where there's only 21m of them, but much easier with something with a higher circulating supply.
Scanning everywhere? Not this one and I would say neither is 85% of the population (At least here in deepest darkest South Auckland)
So when I send the grandies on an expedition to buy ice creams at the local dairy they need my "wallet"? No longer able to slip them a 10 dollar note to buy ice creams?
And each child will need a said "wallet' as well?
Basically what you are saying is that Bitcoin will be a waste of time in regards transactional currency but pretty good to buy with my 0.25% bearing term deposit funds. In the hope off course that in the future some other purchaser of Bitcoin will pay a premium for my coins and I make more than leaving my funds in term deposit.
I agree. They cannot adopt it. It is the antithesis of central banking.
As another commenter mentioned (using ice-cream for kids as an example), the challenge these crypto currencies have is becoming feasible for day-to-day transactions. If they can crack that, fiat currencies will have a fight for survival. They'll use their control of the political system to kick up a hell of a stink.
It may follow the digital media adoption pattern into the mainstream. Music companies were eventually forced to capitulate as "piracy" became more convenient than legitimate media purchase. Crypto is already attacking Western Union and to a smaller extent, traditional lenders. Visa and Mastercard could be next.
well just a heads up for our other viewers, yes you can scan your wallet just like an cashflow card (OMG boomer alert) at EFTPOS machines, or transfer them peer to peer, like topping up someones pocketmoney, easily with each bitcoin being dividable into 100 million Satoshi units. So where a dollar has 100 cents, BTC has 100,000,000 Satoshi, small enough units for an ice-cream. The secret to bitcoin is it is a fixed supply, unlike fiat which has an infinite supply... therefore maths says bitcoins future value will always be one bitcoin, but could be worth up to endless dollars (hyperinflation it's coming)
I don't understand the whole 1 Bitcoin = 1 Bitcoin meme. Doesn't 1 dollar always equal 1 dollar? I know over time the underlying value people give currency fluctuates, and fiat currency has generally gone down in value over time. But if Bitcoin goes out of fashion, it's underlying value will also decrease to zero. It will still be 1 Bitcoin = 1 Bitcoin however, but who will care? There is no foolproof math's equation for predicting the future value of a particular currency. Fixed supply or not.
Let me correct you, there are 21,000,000,000,000,000 satoshies, so it is more than easily devisable enough to use for transactions. Lightning network has us sorted :)
And the beauty of being digital is that if the value of sat gets too high, we can just divide it further.
If they didn't print money, would there be any more underlying wealth in the world for everyone? With inflation comes winners and losers no doubt, but limiting the amount of currency in circulation is not going to magically make everyone materially better off is it?
But if they didn't do that, there would be no desire for Bitcoin at all.
The problem with crypto's is that people are creating new pizzas everywhere that can be sliced and nobody knows which pizza is on the menu. And it might be that that state decides to create its own pizza and outlaw any other pizzas.
The best way to defuse the problems created by cryptocurrencies would be for the main Central banks to stop thrashing their fiat currencies and start adopting a sane monetary stance, by stopping all forms of QE and increasing rates to a normal and sustainable level.
The current situation will inevitably continue in one form or another, regardless of proclamations and edicts by Governments, until such Central Banks restore common sense and stop their financial repression madness.
These central banks' clowns, with their short-sighted and ideologically motivated actions, are progressively destroying financial markets' confidence in fiat currencies: this is the ultimate reasons why crypto, and other more or less orthodox forms of alternative storage of value, are booming all over the world.
In a central American country like El Salvador , The USD is the de facto currency for the rich , and anyone who can get their hands on it . Counterfeiting is rife, money exchangers on every corner . The government is probably reacting to what is already happening . Without the loss of face of admitting the USD rules , and the local currency is not reliable. mind you , my experience is from travels 25 years ago, but i doubt much has changed.
Imagine thinking it's a good idea to post an article onto a network used mostly for selfies, cat pics, and porn that belches out 1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year (about 2% of total emissions), how bad another network is that enables the remaining 30% of un-banked people worldwide to transact? SMH
Just going to leave this here:
UK net emissions - 351.5 million tonnes CO2/yr
UK private jet travel - 1 million tonnes CO2/yr
One single super-yacht - 4,571 tonnes of CO2/yr
Number of super-yachts in the world - 8228
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