Play it like Xi Jinping – The mining farms of cryptocurrencies have already proven time and time again that they can be very beneficial for the regions in which they are located. But, nothing helps, the cliché of the Bitcoin “destroyer of the planet” persists because of the energy consumption necessary for its consensus by proof of work (PoW). The administration of Joe Biden now requires this cryptomining to be greenerotherwise… Banishment Chinese style!
Mining Bitcoin would kill baby seals and genocide polar bears?
Criticizing China for its authoritarian regime seems reasonable, though. imitate its censorship policy against Bitcoin, that immediately seems much less reasonable. Yet this is what emerges from a recent report from the Oval Office of Joe Biden.
Entitled “Climate and energy implications of crypto-assets in the United States”this report invokes the God Ecology to try to block the way to the very young, but dangerous, US dollar competitor what is bitcoin.
L’Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) of the White House thus believes that the mining of digital currencies in PoW contributes significantly to the energy consumption and to CO emissions2 and other greenhouse gases (GHGs).
“Cryptocurrency mining produces greenhouse gas emissions and worsens climate change. (…) Crypto-mining mainly uses electricity purchased on the network. Electricity produced in power plants to power the mining of crypto-assets (…) can harm the environment and human health. »
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Joe Biden only wants BTC mined with methane and renewable energies
Curiously, this White House service does not give no comparison of this supposed environmental nuisance of cryptos with that of shale oil extraction (very polluting, and yet very widespread in the USA). This comparison could have been interesting though, right?
But Bitcoin and its Proof-of-Work siblings have a small possible way out. Crypto-mining could be tolerated… Only if it used green energies 100% ! In particular by capturing and using emissions from methane (BTC miners didn’t wait the White House for this).
“The crypto-asset industry can potentially use methane (…) to generate electricity for mining. Methane is produced during the drilling and transportation of natural gas, as well as by oil wells, landfills, sewage treatment and agricultural processes. (…)”
And if not, what? If not, then it will be necessary “eliminate” Bitcoin :
“If these measures prove ineffective in reducing the impacts, the Administration [de Joe Biden] should consider executive actions, and Congress could consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of energy-intensive consensus mechanisms for cryptocurrency mining [ndlr : Bitcoin, principalement]. »
In this report, Joe Biden’s services even go as far as cite, as an example, China. Indeed, the country with a single party and a president for life has notably invoked ecological reasons for attempt to ban bitcoin of its soil between June and September 2021 (without real success). It seemed to us rather that it was to do clean slate of any competition for its digital yuan, issued by the Central Bank of China. But maybe it’s just because we don’t blindly believe in the pretexts invoked by states to do what suits them.
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