Slashdot Mirror
China Wants To Ban Bitcoin Mining
China's state planner wants to eliminate bitcoin mining in the country, according to a draft list of industrial activities the agency is seeking to stop in a sign of growing government pressure on the cryptocurrency sector. From a report: China is the world's largest market for computer hardware designed to mine bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, even though such activities previously fell under a regulatory grey area. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Monday it was seeking public opinions on a revised list of industries it wants to encourage, restrict or eliminate. The list was first published in 2011. The draft for a revised list added cryptocurrency mining, including that of bitcoin, to more than 450 activities the NDRC said should be phased out as they did not adhere to relevant laws and regulations, were unsafe, wasted resources or polluted the environment. It did not stipulate a target date or plan for how to eliminate bitcoin mining, meaning that such activities should be phased out immediately, the document said. The public has until May 7 to comment on the draft.
Bitcoin mining has pushed the development of hardware in china to smaller and smaller feature sizes, even more than GPUs and CPUs. They are shooting themselves in the feet and allowing the next generation of hardware to be run (and eventually designed) elsewhere. This is China giving up the lead in high tech for a few years - we better take this chance and run with it, we probably won't get another chance like this.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
"China Wants To Ban Bitcoin Mining, Launch Its Own Fiat-backed Token Currency"
If China bans bitcoin mining, how will they then prop up North Korea?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Lovely to see you have educated yourself with basic economics and some libertarian BS sprinkled over that. You might want to continue your education with some insights into “market failure” and “negative externalities”. Later you could go into differences between “regulation” and “centrally planned economy”.
The entire purpose of cryptocurrency is to undermine the state. There is literally no other value add to the blockchainist (pseudo) decentralization model of electronic currency.
the most impressive feat of Bitcoin is that it's managed to use a misdirection story about 'technology' (plus some good old fashioned corruption) to prevent china - of all nations - from recognizing its true and intended purpose for so long.
Decentralization: the brief interval between the decline of one centralized regime and rise of another.
Wait... You know EVERYONE who made money mining bitcoin? Wow! You are a social animal!
Well... anybody making money mining Bitcoin NOW is probably stealing electricity.
Some people earlier on were either smart enough or lucky enough to get in early and ride the price increase from less than a buck to over $10,000. I doubt that we'll see that happen again any time soon, though.
Not the people who mined a few months after Bitcoin was created.
I remember reading a comment on Slashdot, something along the lines of "...after I could only mine half a bitcoin per day on my laptop, I stopped doing it because I thought it was pointless."
#DeleteFacebook
its wasteful with little to no merit of any kind
There are many things in life that various people consider to be wasteful and with little or no merit.
Authoritarian governments have a poor track record of picking winners and losers.
This might actually be good for crypto in general, since it will finally convince developers that they need to move away from "Proof Of Work" verification algorithms and less processor intensive verification methods like "Proof Of Stake". It's been on their "To Do" lists for awhile, since environmentalists have been hounding them about how much electricity crypto mining wastes for years now. Like many things in IT, being forced to do something because of government regulation can force change here.
The entire purpose of cryptocurrency is to undermine the state. There is literally no other value add to the blockchainist (pseudo) decentralization model of electronic currency.
Actually, bitcoin has undermine itself.
Bitcoin is not decentralized and has not been for years. The underlying theory of bitcoin is that a diverse and decentralized population of users maintain the blockchain. Bitcoin has neither diversity nor decentralization. Bitcoin is not diverse as it is dominated by the manufacturers and owners of expensive and specialized mining hardware, ASICs. Bitcoin is not decentralized as 70%+ of the ASIC miners are in a single country, China, dependent upon inexpensive government control power. Bitcoin has deviated from its core design that was supposed to ensure security.
yes, that's what the (pseudo) is there to indicate
Decentralization: the brief interval between the decline of one centralized regime and rise of another.
This is good for Bitcoin
It might be. It could force bitcoin to move from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake or some other scheme that distributes maintenance of the blockchain (and does not waste energy). Right now mining is not decentralizing.
Bitcoin is not decentralized and has not been for years. The underlying theory of bitcoin is that a diverse and decentralized population of users maintain the blockchain via their ordinary computers. Bitcoin has neither diversity nor decentralization. Bitcoin is not diverse as it is dominated by the manufacturers and owners of expensive and specialized mining hardware, ASICs. Bitcoin is not decentralized as 70%+ of the miners are in a single country, China, and low cost government controlled power. Bitcoin has deviated from its core design that was supposed to ensure security. Bitcoin is vulnerable to government manipulation as it exists at the moment.
If China follow through with a mining ban and bitcoin evolves, moves back towards its design, they yeah, that would be good. If not and it dies and some other blockchain based non-proof-of-work coin becomes dominant that too is good.
I wouldn't use craigslist for anything, especially not guaging interest or use of anything. They have a history of censorship - ask switter
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
It's rare to see, but in this case the Chinese government is doing something right.
At this stage the only difference these mining rigs are making to the world is making it warmer.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
The USA in particular & all countries in general have banned a lot of things. All countries have central planning - That's what makes them countries. The market's not very good at deciding what's right & wrong.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
Ok then, who should own the seas and the atmosphere?
FTFY.
The theory of Bitcoin is much narrower:
* if you achieve diverse and decentralized in the real world, you're in a good place
* mechanisms exist within Bitcoin to encourage (but not guarantee) this outcome
Unpacking Suitcase Words — 2009
"Diversity" is just such a word: there's a potentially unlimited number of columns in the spreadsheet where diversity could collapse. (If there's a thing, there's diversity of the thing—or not.)
Diversity and performance culture rarely go hand in hand. Have you looked at F1 lately? Apart from the decals and colouration, only an aficionado can even tell the cars apart.
Diversity culture, as practiced in 1001 Arabian Nights.
If you didn't see the ASIC overlords looming on the horizon right out of the starting gate: wake up Little Susie, your recognizance is shot.
Nice to see the Huawei apologies are still running wild /sigh
"Huawei caught spying on Pakistan's CCTV network"
An exposure by the BBC's flagship current affair documentary, but hey, let the idiocracy run rampant.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/...