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Bitcoin Mining Needs Regulatory Legislation

posted by janrinok on Saturday November 29, @09:16PM   
from the electric-tulips dept.

canopic jug writes:

The excellent student run newspaper, The Michigan Daily, has an article about the necessity of regulating Bitcoin. "Mining" even a single Bitcoin now burns as much electricity as a family would use during about 50 days.

Local grids physically cannot withstand this outrageous consumption of electricity. In foreign countries — where mining farm clustering is more severe — local governments suspect Bitcoin mining farms as the cause of power outages and complete blackouts. Entire neighborhoods are facing power shortages or complete outages as a result of energy grid strain. So far, the reliance on domestic energy has not had adverse effects, but it is only a matter of time before these blackouts begin to take place in the United States, too. 

Despite the fatal externality flaws in Bitcoin mining, the industry is left unchecked in the absence of federal or international regulation on its use. Unfortunately, without restrictions on the amount of mining that can occur, there is no clear plateau to the electricity consumption of these constantly updating hardware systems. 

Previously:
(2025) Bitcoin Mining is Making People Sick
(2025) The Guy Who Accidentally Threw Away $700 Million in Bitcoin Wants to Buy the Landfill to Find It
(2024) How A 27-Year-Old Busted The Myth Of Bitcoin's Anonymity

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Original Submission

• Re:Or a wealth tax(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 01, @01:58PM

  by khallow (3766) on Monday December 01, @01:58PM (#1425502) Journal

  But, it does solve a whole bunch of problems.

  What problems? gnuman handwaved about "conflict". That's it so far. Elsewhere, the only semiserious argument has been that high wealth inequality would drive up the cost of real estate and electricity (as well as some other resources of lesser importance) - both are key drivers for cost of living. But that argument ignores that there are large obstructions to growing the supply of both real estate, and electricity generation and distribution.
  
  It's an argument by the ignorant for the ignorant.

  The material conditions for every day Americans has never been as high as when there were massive taxes on the top income tax earners and with the way things have shifted away from ordinary income as the payment for executives and towards things like shares of stock with the proceeds mostly being used to pay for things that aren't taxable, you need something to fill in the gap or you get the situation that's developed where a bunch of robber-barons can hold the country hostage and use those ill-begotten gains to corrupt the system.

  Then why weren't the wealthy paying massive taxes during those times? You forgot the loopholes (particularly the creation of trusts in the US) that made that tax scheme far less destructive to US (and developed world society as a whole)! The real victims were the newly wealthy who hadn't yet discovered the little tricks for protecting their wealth from the taxman: for example, the Beatles or Astrid Lindgren (the author behind Pippi Longstockings). They lost a few years of income to the state before they figured out how to stop it.
  
  High taxes are a great idea - until you have to pay.

  Most of the problems that currently exist in the US are either caused by the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few or are being stymied by those few because they don't want to pay for it to be fixed or are profiting off of it. This isn't a matter of jealousy, this is a matter of seeing what's going on and not liking it one bit.

  Look at the federal budget including "mandatory" spending. More than half the budget is entitlements to large numbers of people. And it grows faster than the US economy does. That last bit means that no matter how much we increase taxes (assuming that the economy doesn't dive in response to those increased taxes, which it will do in reality), we will run out of tax revenue to fund those programs in a few decades. It is a wealth inequality increase since the great majority of it is a transfer from working age people who tend to be poorer to the elderly and medical industry which tend to be wealthier. But it doesn't fit your "hands of a few" narrative.

  Companies having more than $100m is often times a legitimate necessity, especially in industries where you have large factories or fleets of aircraft involved, but there is no legitimate reason for a private citizen to ever have that much wealth. There just isn't, and allowing more just encourages what's going on in terms of various idiots trying to run up an all time high score at the expense of the workers and the people of the world in general.

  I just cited a legitimate reason in my grandparent post - opening up space to humanity.
  
  Consider that you only talk about living well. We spend money on other things than just our living expenses.

  Parent