It was BFM Business that revealed it. Last September a meeting in Bercy with the actors of “crypto currencies” was held to prepare the development of an official report on the subject which is beginning to irritate the monetary authorities of large and small countries… Bruno Le Maire would he like to make France the European “hub” of the crypto ecosystem? In any case, the Minister of the Economy wants to come back to the negotiations about the European MiCa regulation (market in crypto-assets), on the arrival of giants like Binance and Crypto.com in France or on decentralized finance (DeFi).
Bercy worried about the environmental footprint
According L’Agefi this time, this meeting with the office of the Association for the Development of Digital Assets should therefore lead to the drafting of a document “on the development of crypto-currencies, on its challenges and on its current and future environmental impacts, as indicated in article 27 of the Law of November 15, 2021 aimed at “reducing the environmental footprint of digital technology in France”.
Professionals are confident
“The meeting was very positive. The challenges facing the sector and the reality of the environmental impact are better understood. We have gone well beyond the usual clichés”, welcomes Faustine Fleure, the president of this association, quoted by the daily newspaper of finance professionals. Bercy would seek to establish a map of the environmental impact, in particular, of the mining of bitcoins, the existing data on the subject being imprecise or considered partisan…
Heated debate in the European Parliament
Already last March, within the framework of the MiCa negotiations, an amendment proposing the prohibition of the “proof of work” system (PoW, for ” proof of work “), on which bitcoin is based, had caused an uproar in the crypto world. He had finally been revoked. Representatives of the ecosystem close to the file had denounced “inaccuracy” sources to which some MEPs referred. They largely targeted the highly contested Digiconomist site, founded by Alex de Vries, who notably worked for the Dutch Central Bank.
Conflicting sources
In addition to Digiconomist, two other sources are regularly cited when seeking information on crypto-currencies. The Bitcoin Mining Council (BMC) first. An entity founded at the instigation of one of bitcoin’s most fervent advocates, Michael Saylor, which was created to “promote transparency, share best practices and educate the public about the benefits of bitcoin and its mining”. The data that this BMC has compiled allows it to claim that more than 60% of the electricity used to mine the queen of cryptocurrencies would be produced from “green” energies.
Consumption equivalent to that of Sweden
The other source is Cambridge University, which has built a tool to assess Bitcoin market consumption at 94 terawatt hours per year. A figure that allows its detractors to compare its consumption to that of a country like Sweden or Ireland… quite simply. This is the reason why the huge data center used to “mine” the new bitcoins that arrive on their market heat up to such an extent that they are sent back to the icy steppes near the pole, even if it means further increasing the melting of icebergs. French and European miners defend themselves by recalling that no bitcoin mining site is physically installed on European territory because of the cost of electricity being too high, while miners must capture electricity at less than around 10 euro cents per kilowatt hour. We imagine “the mouth of the gap”, as Coluche would say, after the Russian-Ukrainian war…
Computer recycling poses a problem
The other sensitive subject regularly brought to the fore is the recycling of mining equipment and, above all, ASICs, computers specifically dedicated to bitcoin mining. According to data from Digiconomist, the lifespan of this equipment would not exceed eighteen months. While the French miners questioned by Agefi claim that this data is “inaccurate”, with some ASICs able to operate for at least four to six years after being put into service.
Neither a currency nor a motto
Would bitcoin still have a certain future, after all these environmental accusations? And after the explosion of the cost of energy to produce and maintain it? On the market, prices were a little shaken, but more because of the risk of global recession than the direct consequences of inflation, including and especially concerning the price of electricity. And even less because of the accusations of the defenders of the planets. It is the comings and goings of big speculators like Elon Musk or BNY Mellon Investment or a multitude of small players who are actually agitating this which is not a real currency, since no central bank can regulate it, if not cover it. It is not even a currency, because no authority in the world of international trade can monitor it…
Which direction for bitcoin price?
The total bitcoin market would have reached in February 2021 according to Citigroup one thousand billion dollars. But it is above all the evolution of BTC / USD (bitcoin against US dollar) which is simply spectacular: gone, it must be remembered, from 1 dollar at the end like a vulgar action on the stock market before the auction, it rose in the spring last up to 47,445.30 dollars, causing a division by 10, like the late tenths of the National Lottery, by 100 or even by 1000 so that small speculators can still afford a small piece of it that could win a lot… Then it fell back to 18,468.10 last summer, obviously causing the savings of those who had gone all-in to win as much as possible to melt away, especially the poor students who gambled their scholarships recklessly! The graphical analysis shows the future ranges of its evolution in dollars and it is still very wide, especially in the long term with, despite a downtrend, the possibility of going to “hit” 35,681 dollars.
The case of Paraguay is to be taken seriously
Still, the crux of the problem is the arbitration, in particular of certain speculators and investors who came out of real estate on the verge of a crash to focus on bitcoin or other crypto-currencies. Already a quarter of commercial transactions, “clean and black”, would be done with this thing taken so seriously that some want to make their own currency, or currency. It had seduced a part of Latin America disgusted with the US dollar and even had been elevated to the rank of official quasi-currency of Paraguay for a moment before on July 18 its president, who had become president, announced a bill framing its status. . With good news for bitcoin miners voted by the local Senate: an official regulator would be responsible “to establish the mechanisms for regulating and supervising the trading, custody and issuance of tokens in the country. “. The text also lays the foundations for a future national crypto baptized with the acronym MNBC. It is true that hydraulic electricity from dams in the Andes is not expensive in Paraguay; enough to attract new miners. The initiative is not to be taken lightly. It is more serious in any case than that of El Salvador which embarked on the adventure last year without much success.