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by hangaard 1609 days ago
Hiking electricity prices have put a spotlight on crypto mining. Kosovo banned mining recently and Russia is discussing the same. These latest real world developments can also be affecting expectations. I think proof of work crypto will inevitably be killed by legislation, when it grows enough to become sufficiently painful for society.
1 comments

Mining's a tricky one. There's cheap electricity in poor and unstable countries with bad electrical grids - they like selling power, but then miners go nuts and overstress it. (This happened in Kazakhstan, for example.)

So large miners are tending to the US and Canada - there's pockets of cheap electricity, there's a decent grid, there's good rule of law, and there's a lot more political stability.

I really want Ethereum to finally get off proof-of-work - not because I have any love for ETH, but because, as well as ETH then not using a country's worth of electricity, that will put tremendous political pressure on BTC.

Even if ETH paves the way I have a feeling the BTC devs and community won’t have the stomach for that kind of change.
oh, almost certainly not - they'll be under political pressure, yet be utterly unable to change in the face of it. They will go down on principle.