[iabacu]

> This may be a radical take, but I think nations should introduce some unprecedented legislation: ban trade of proof of work cryptocurrencies.

That's not only radical, but a grotesque knee jerk reaction.

If you think about renewable energy, there's a problem of mismatched production with consumption and transmission. This causes wasted energy (or energy that is very low value), which makes renewable energy projects less viable.

Sure, one obvious way to address that is to add batteries to store such energy. Now, go mine (and refine) enough lithium to build utility-scale batteries. That's a huge environmental issue that no one wants to talk about, specially Tesla/Elon.

What's a competitor to energy batteries? Proof-of-work mining of bitcoin: it make renewable energy projects economically viable, because the energy of low-usage times can be used to mine bitcoin, which can pay for energy of high-usage times.

If there's an environmental/carbon cost to BTC mining, then attach a carbon tax to it (or something like that).

[iabacu]

By the way.

If one thinks about tracking the carbon cost of a mined BTC (based on the energy source used to mine it) such that a carbon tax can be accurately exacted, the usage of blockchain to track carbon offsets and cost is a pretty obvious thing that comes to mind.