Category Archives: Bitcoin

(NewsNation Now) In a growing trend, cities and even some states are offering incentives to get people to move in.

As an example Tulsa, Oklahoma, officials are offering $10,000 in an innovative program to bolster the citys economy.

The NorthwestArkansasCouncil is investing more than $1 million to attract top talent to the region through its Life Works Hereinitiative. In the northwest corner of Arkansas, the initiative is offering $10,000 to relocate to the region and that money can come as cash or in the original cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

Bitcoin has grown in both popularity and in value. It is currently valued at around $43,000 per coin. But five years ago, the price was less than $500 for one Bitcoin.

The Northwest Arkansas Council believes this crypto craze will help attract tech professionals and entrepreneurs to the region.

If you are chosen for the Arkansas initiative, not only do you get the Bitcoin, you also get a free bike. Perhaps just a coincidence, as The Ledger, a 230,000-square-foot entrepreneurialhub accessible only by a bicycle, is set to open in the area.

Its a trend that technologist Fred Brandon believes will continue to grow as more regions accept this new technology.

We see so much adoption, you know, in mainstream now. Whether were talking about NFTs, were talking about metaverse, were talking about blockchain technology as a whole, Brandon said.

Applicants for the programs will face tough competition though. In Tulsa, the exclusive initiative might be harder to get into than an Ivy League school, with applicants coming from all over the world. Only 2% of the 25,000 applicants get the cash for the program.

Regardless of those numbers, its a tactic Brandon says more cities will use in the future, just like Arkansas is trying to do.

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Arkansas lures tech workers with free Bitcoin and a bike - NewsNation Now

The below is from a recent edition of the Deep Dive, Bitcoin Magazine's premium markets newsletter. To be among the first to receive these insights and other on-chain bitcoin market analysis straight to your inbox, subscribe now.

In recent weeks, much of our analysis has been focused on the consolidation period currently occurring in the bitcoin market, with a particular focus on realized price as an indicator of lackluster capital flow. As shown by the chart below, the realized market capitalization of bitcoin, which can otherwise be thought of as an aggregate price paid for every coin on the network, has increased by $87 billion since the beginning of August.

While significant in absolute terms, given that the realized market capitalization of bitcoin was a mere $90 billion at its peak following the 2017 bull market, in relative terms realized cap has not meaningfully increased since early fall of 2021.

A look at the 30-day rate of change of realized price gives additional context to this dynamic.

To dig deeper into the dynamic of price and realized price, we can examine the Delta Gradient indicator. The metric gauges market momentum relative to capital inflows.

As per Glassnode,

The momentum of a market can be considered by assessing the rate of change of price, or the verticality over some period. The simplest example is a parabolic advance, whereby the rate of price appreciation increases in magnitude as a result of market momentum.

The Realized Price reflects the aggregate price at which each coin in the supply last moved. Steeper increases in the Realized Price indicates a true and organic capital inflow is occurring, as every coin that is spent on-chain and sold, has a buyer with fresh capital. The steepness of this curve therefore represents a rational baseline for sustainable value growth.

The Delta Gradient is calculated as the difference between the gradient of the spot Price, and the gradient of the Realized Price. This metric therefore measures the relative change in momentum between speculative value, and true organic capital inflows.

Statistical normalization is then applied to bring historical values, and log-scale price changes into a consistent scale.

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Aggregate Bitcoin Price Has Increased By $87 Billion In Last Five Months - Bitcoin Magazine

Its always a pleasure to hear from Dr. Craig Wright, and last week, Nigel Smith checked in with the Bitcoin inventor to cover everything from the recentKleiman v Wright trialto the current BSV ecosystem.

Kleiman vs. Wright & COPA

Dr. Wright said theoutcome of the trialwas very good and that Ira Kleimans claim to be the only shareholder of W&K Info Defense Research LLC is a form of fraud and is blatantly false.

Moving on to the COPA case, Dr. Wright said that it wont happen for probably another year or more. He defended taking people to court to settle issues, mentioning that Plato and Aristotle both promoted the idea as a means to understand the power of democracy and the Western legal system.

Dr. Wright described Twitter (and Facebook), one of the litigants on the COPA side, as the greatest threat to Western democracy outside of Russia and China getting together with weapons. He described recent tactics by COPA as nothing more than scammers delaying the end of their scams.

BTC as a Ponzi scheme and proof of stake

Describing BTC as a classic Ponzi scheme, Dr. Wright again pointed out that it makes no sense to buy and hold something because you think other people will buy and hold it. This is profit-seeking without work and operates in a very similar way to classic pyramid orPonzi schemes.

Getting into proof-of-stake, Dr. Wright overlooked it as a way to stop competition. Whereasproof-of-workalways allows for new entrants to innovate and come in and compete, proof of stake does not. Eventually, this leads to an oligarchy where the holders of the coins control the system with no way for new entrants to compete.

Elon Musk & Nick SzaboDr. Wright is not a fan

Dr. Wright isnt one to shy away from slaughtering sacred cows, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk did not escape unscathed. Dr. Wright said he felt he was a con artist who is playing with us when he claims he wants to terraform Mars and put humans there.

DismissingElons claimthat Nick Szabo contributed the most to the ideas behind Bitcoin, Dr. Wright claims that Szabo is incapable of coding and has a history of espousing amateur or debunked ideas such as digital gold.

The Lightning Network & BTC Core

Laying into the Lightning network, Dr. Wright describes how the U.K., European, and American legislation dictates that you need to keep records when processing transactions. However, Lightning is designed to lose records and make transactions anonymous. Therefore, by default, Lightning will violate the legislation which is due to be enforced this year.

Dr. Wright then reiterated what he said in 2008. He told Bitcoin would end up in data centers and that home users wouldnt be able to run nodes. He emphasized the competitive nature of Bitcoin, the need to trust the market, and classical liberalism. He likened the BTC centralized planners to communists desiring to build a system they control while claiming to be libertarians who love freedom.

Smith agreed, calling the BTC core camp faux libertarians. Dr. Wright called them anarcho-collectivists behaving like cult members, pointing out the red laser eyes and groupthink in the BTC camp.

Students of Dr. Wright will be familiar with his disdain for the idea thatcode is law. He once again pointed out the need for the actual law, mentioning that if you were to operate a node in an anarchic system without law, a warlord could simply take your node and make it his.

Student Questions

Neil Smith then opened the podcast to students to ask questions. The following is a summary of them.

If you program shares for smart contracts, do you still need intermediaries for things like credit checks?

There will still be controls in place. Removing controls in the name of democratizing finance leads to crashes, after which we put the controls back.

What do you want to do with your money?

Dr. Wright wants to bring billions of people into the digital economy. He wants to do so not for altruistic reasons but because he is doing so for a profit. By getting these people online and using Bitcoin, Dr. Wright expects to make money while helping these people.

What do you see with Web 3.0 and metaverse?

Several patents on this concept have now been granted to Dr. Wright. He emphasized that the ownership of all of this needs to be sorted out properly. Using NFTs as an example, he mentioned that they have lots of potentials but that the current market is full of useless JPGs and other collectibles.

What do you think of BTC evolving into a hedge against inflation?

Dr. Wright said its not a hedge against inflation. Its a risk asset, and as the interest rate increases, BTC goes down in value as people flock to bonds.

Ryan X. Charles new project

Ryan X. Charles joined the stream to talk about his new projects. The main theme of these projects is theSocial Bitcoin Web(SBW). This is an attempt to fight back against the Silicon Valley censorship that is rife in todays world.

Ryan noticed that this had gotten worse during the pandemic. He noticed the coordination of the social media companies in their censorship and decided to form a solution.

Ryans projects intend to implement an SPV wallet into the web. For example, one of the projects will allow you to copy videos rather than links to web pages, making them extremely difficult to censor. This will also have the ability to charge for the videos unless the user wants to make them free. This can get even more complex, with users licensing the video with the right to resell the video, etc.

Were going to redo the 1990s but with Bitcoin this time, Ryan said.

Learn more about Bitcoin investments with this new ebook, Investing in Blockchain: Better data for a better world.

Watch: CoinGeek New York panel, Blockchain: The Future of Technology Building on Achievements of the Past

New to Bitcoin? Check out CoinGeeksBitcoin for Beginnerssection, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about Bitcoinas originally envisioned by Satoshi Nakamotoand blockchain.

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A catch up with the inventor of BitcoinDr. Craig Wright - CoinGeek

In the world of cryptocurrency, bitcoin is still the Big Kahuna, but things are looking are little shaky.

The currency, which began use in 2009, is the largestcryptocurrency by market capitalization, weighing in at $790.8 billion, according to CoinMarketCap.

However,its market share has dwindled to 37.8% compared with 61% a year ago.

Ethereum, whichwas conceived in 2013 by programmer Vitalik Buterin,came in second with a market cap of$372.3 billion.

Next up is BNB. Launched in 2017 as an ERC-20 token on the ethereum blockchain, BNB has a market cap of$76.4 billon.

Cardana, which wasfounded in 2015 by ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson,was the fourth largest by market cap, coming in with$47.9 billion.

Solana was fifth in the crypto market cap hit parade with a$43 billion tally.

Ethereum, solana and cardana and others crypto like polkadot that are catching up with bitcoin because their platforms are used for non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralised finance (DeFi) and other use cases.

XRP,a real-time gross settlement system, currency exchange and remittance network created by Ripple Labs, came in sixth with a market cap of$35.7 billion.

Terra ,a public blockchain protocol, was the seventh largest cryptocurrency, with a$27.9 billion total.

Polkadot, an open source, blockchain platform and cryptocurrency that allows for distributed computing, was the eighth largest. The market cap came to $1.4 billion.

Coming up next in ninth place was the meme coin Dogecoin with a market cap of $1.1 billion.

Dogecoin was created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer, who decided to create a payment system as a "joke", making fun of the wild speculation in cryptocurrencies at the time.

And, finally, avalanche came in with the tenth largest crypto by market cap, with $537.2 million.

Avalanche is a high throughput smart contract blockchain platform.It is said to be fast, low cost, and environmental friendly.

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Bitcoin Is Still The King of Crypto, But For How Long ? - TheStreet

Shark Tank investor and chairman of O'Shares and Beanstox Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful has shared his plans to invest in mining company stocks, but with a specific focus on companies that use sustainable energy. During a recent interview, O'Leary shared a few interesting snippets of stories from his recent travels to the Middle East, where he looked for ways to invest in Bitcoin mining and also floated the idea of starting his own mining operation sometime later this year.

The Canadian businessman shared his plans in an interview with Anthony Pompliano, noting that Bitcoin mining will see huge capital inflows over the next two, three years. O'Leary says he's been able to talk to investors across various jurisdictions, especially in the Middle East and the lesson learned from these travels is that a host of investors are looking at investments in Bitcoin mining through their sovereign funds.

While he predicts a majority of countries will eventually begin mining Bitcoin, O'Leary believes investors will want to look at ways in which mining activity supports environmental sustainability. He reasons that this is because funds will want to steer off recent controversy relating to Bitcoin mining and its adverse impact on the environment.

Once a sovereign fund decides it is going to invest in Bitcoin, it's going to want to mine it sustainably and ethically, he said. He notes that ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) demands and other compliance issues are top of the list for these investors. Other than that, these non-financial factors are a part of his own considerations before investing.

It's also the approach O'Leary will look to apply when deciding how he's going to invest in the sector, he noted. The celebrity investor also revealed that he has for a long time envisioned running a crypto mining operation, noting that he would probably do it in this calendar year.

On what mining companies need to do to attract investors, O'Leary says regulatory compliance is a must. The companies also need to ensure they involve the local communities, with a proper and clear understanding of how some of the returns go back to the community.

He also noted that a lot of institutional capital will be flowing into crypto mining over the next couple of years, following the likes top existing mining companies like Marathon Digital Holdings, and Riot Blockchain.

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Kevin O'Leary Believes Bitcoin Mining Will See Boom in Institutional Investment in Coming Years - Gadgets 360

Craig Kirsner isn't your typical retirement planner.

The president of Stuart Estate Planning Wealth Advisors in Florida has an affinity for cryptocurrencies even though he can't recommend them to his mostly septuagenarian and octogenarian clients. While Kirsner's clients could, in theory, multiply their money with a bit of luck, they could also see their hard-earned nest eggs disappear if cryptos come crashing down.

"There's a lot of speculation," Kirsner told Insider in a recent interview. "I mean, frankly, people are buying to make money, and there's people making a ton of money in this stuff. It's also speculation, just like any higher-risk assets, with higher upside and higher downside."

Crypto may be taboo at Kirsner's job, but that doesn't keep him from investing in it on his own. The wealth adviser said he kept 5% of his net worth in cryptocurrencies, even though he knows it could go to zero.

Despite the risks, Kirsner is proud to HODL "hold on for dear life" to bitcoin, which he says he's owned "for the past four or five years," through every twist, turn, and bear market the world's largest cryptocurrency has recently experienced.

Like other bitcoin bulls, Kirsner was convinced the token would approach $100,000 in 2021, in part because of concerns about a weaker dollar as the Federal Reserve rapidly printed money. He told Insider in September that he believed bitcoin would hit $90,000 in the year's final four months, but that prediction never came true. Bitcoin topped out at $68,990 in early November.

Kirsner said his bitcoin price target fell flat because of the Fed's response to rapidly rising inflation. The US central bank began to hint that it would need to hike interest rates sooner than expected; those hit risky assets like high-flying stocks and cryptos hardest.

"Now more and more, crypto has been following the ups and downs of the stock market, and the stock market has been following for years the ups and downs of the Federal Reserve's policies," Kirsner said.

Kirsner continued: "Just like the market has taken a hit over the last couple of weeks as it digests news of a non-accommodative Fed and rising interest rates, bitcoin is reacting as well, along with all highly appreciated assets. Everything's taken a pullback."

In theory, digital assets like bitcoin should be a hedge against inflation in reality, that appears not to be the case. Bitcoin is down 36% since October inflation data came out on November 10. But that's because bitcoin is less of a hedge against inflation and more like a hedge against the US dollar, Kirsner said, adding that the nation is approaching $30 trillion in debt.

"Obviously there's a growing amount of people that are not happy with what's happening in politics and everything," Kirsner said. "So maybe they're reaching for something that's out of that control."

Kirsner is confident that investors will increasingly turn to bitcoin as adoption rates climb, leading to higher highs for the cryptocurrency. As investing stalwarts like MassMutual enter the crypto market, Kirsner believes it's only a matter of time before a wider variety of investors warm to digital coins, he said.

The multibillion-dollar question: If crypto really is the future, which tokens will fare best?

Predicting which altcoins commonly defined as non-bitcoin cryptocurrencies will be around in a decade is like guessing in 2000 which technology firms would survive the tech bubble. Though prognosticating with a high degree of certainty is impossible, Kirsner is willing to try.

Below are seven altcoins Kirsner said he was bullish on in 2022, along with their symbols, their market capitalizations, their use cases, and his thesis for each. Kirsner said he owned three of them ethereum, cardano, and litecoin and may soon build positions in the other four.

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7 Altcoins to Watch in 2022 As Bitcoin, Crypto Rebound - Business Insider

Bitcoin price is slowing down as it sticks close to a crucial support level with no volatility in sight. Ethereum and Ripple are following the big cryptos lead and consolidating, showing no directional bias whatsoever.

Bitcoin price has been hovering around the $41,672 barrier for nearly two weeks and shows no signs of moving away. There is a possibility BTC will swing below Mondays low at $39,628 before it kick-starts an uptrend.

In such a case, investors can expect Bitcoin price to make a run-up to the weekly open at $43,096. Clearing this hurdle will put BTC on the path to retest the yearly open at $46,224. In a bullish case, the big crypto will move higher and retest the 200-day Simple Moving Average (SMA) at $48,663.

BTC/USD 4-hour chart

While things are looking undecided for Bitcoin price, a four-hour candlestick close below $39,487 will indicate that things could head lower. In this case, BTC will likely revisit the $36,684 support level before it kick-starts another uptrend.

Ethereum price managed to produce four daily candlestick closes above the weekly support level at $3,061, leading to a 12% ascent. This uptrend fell short of retesting the 200-day SMA and retraced lower.

The pullback is currently retesting the same weekly support level, anticipating a move higher. A quick bounce off this barrier will send ETH to retest the 200-day SMA at $3,484. Clearing this barrier would open the path for the smart contract token to tag the 2-day supply zone, extending from $3,675 to $3,862.

ETH/USD 1-day chart

Regardless of the potential bullish outlook, if the big crypto crashes, Ethereum price will follow. A breakdown of the $3,601 support level will send ETH to retest the subsequent barrier at $2,712, where buyers can attempt an upswing again.

A daily close below this barrier, however, will end the bullish thesis and explore the possibility of a crash to $2,440.

Ripple price has retested the daily demand zone, extending from $0.694 to $0.753 roughly four times over the past month. XRP price needs to see bullish momentum off this barrier since multiple retests have weakened the structure, threatening a breakdown.

An uptick in buying pressure could see Ripple retest the $0.817 hurdle or the 50-day SMA at $0.834. Any move beyond this barrier could allow XRP price to retest the 200-day and 100-day SMA confluence at $0.96.

XRP/USD 1-day chart

If Ripple price breaks down below the said demand zone, there is a good chance it will revisit the $0.604 support level. Here, buyers can band together and make a comeback. However, a daily candlestick close below this platform will invalidate the bullish thesis by creating a lower low.

In this situation, the Ripple price will likely tag the $0.518 barrier and collect the sell-side liquidity resting below it.

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Top 3 Price Prediction Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple: Crypto markets cling to the idea of a bullish breakout - FXStreet

Investment bank Cowen is known for its focus on disruption, with deep dives into themes that are transforming sectors from retail, to transportation and payments.

In 2021, the cryptocurrency space truly established itself as a disruptor, capturing the attention of investors and analysts with the remarkable returns from the assets and the buzz created around decentralized topics like central bank digital currencies, decentralized finance, NFTs and the metaverse.

Cowen's already been at the forefront of the cryptocurrency space in many ways, helping bitcoin mining companies go public, leading financing for crypto startups and covering crypto within their Washington research group.

This year, they've upped the ante with the launch of their own coverage of the bitcoin mining sector.

"It's a new space, nascent industry," Stephen Glagola said. Glagola is Cowen's equity research analyst for cryptocurrencies and digital assets. "A lot of education and work still needs to be done in terms of just getting everyone on the institutional side up to speed on bitcoin mining and cryptocurrency in general," he said.

"I would say bitcoin mining is the start of broader coverage for Cowen," he added.

Glagola spent over eight years covering the media and entertainment sectors and providing stocks recommendations on the likes of DraftKings and LiveNation. He was also featured in Insider's 2021 list of rising stars in equity research.

Bitcoin is a completely different business model, Glagola said. He's spent almost every waking hour of the last few months getting up to speed on the business model.

"I would say I characterize the bitcoin mining industry as a commodity business at the end of the day, with a new technology wrapped around a new technology," Glagola said.

But Glagola doesn't want to be making a broad call on the commodity itself. Instead he's focused on the micro company-specific factors that will drive those businesses over the next 12 to 24 months.

"I really wanted to focus on really enlightening investors on the economics of these businesses, and just really hone in on the mining economics," Glagola said.

Bitcoin's value is determined by supply and demand, Glagola said. It's impossible to value it using a classic discounted cash flow model, because there is no cash flow.

"We know the supply curve is fixed, we know the production schedule of bitcoin," Glagola said. "The value is really going to come from the demand curve, which is variable."

The lack of understanding about the microeconomics of miners and the importance of the supply and demand curve means investors are underappreciating miners as an investment opportunity, according to Glagola.

Miners that have cost leadership and production scale can provide asymmetric upside to volatile bitcoin prices, he said.

If bitcoin prices fall, the least efficient products on the network fall off, absorbing the decline.

The miners that continue to operate will benefit from a decreasing cost of production, which creates some downside protection, Glagola said. This decreasing cost of production could come from a fall in hash rate, or downward difficulty adjustments.

"The most efficient producers actually can maintain fairly healthy margins, even on a decline in the bitcoin price," Glagola.

Many of the most efficient producers are the listed US public companies, Glagola said.

"The least efficient producers will take that hit initially if the price were to see any type of significant drawdown," Glagola said.

Alternatively, if bitcoin is rising, miners experience leveraged upside. This is because bitcoins are being produced at a much lower cost than the spot rate, Glagola said.

There's an upside benefit from already operating at scale, he added.

Bitcoin miners appear well positioned for this current market environment and can offer investors the opportunity to weather some of bitcoin's volatility .

Since hitting an all-time high of $68,789 in November, bitcoin has fallen by 39% and is currently trading around $41,800 - its lowest in several months.

Bitcoin mining stocks can operate with very healthy margins even if bitcoin trades in the range of $30,000 to $40,000 due to the current cost of production, Glagola said.

The challenge currently is that mining company stock prices still remain heavily correlated to the value of bitcoin itself, he added.

"What I've seen in my correlation analysis is that the more bitcoin held on the balance sheet, a higher percentage of your market cap , the higher correlation there tends to be with the stock," Glagola said.

However, this correlation doesn't take away from the businesses with strong fundamentals.

Glagola sees these strong fundamentals in companies, such as Stronghold Digital Mining and Iris Energy. These are also two companies that Cowen helped take public.

They are both execution stories, Glagola said.

"We have confidence in both management teams at both companies," Glagola said. "But it really is that both are being [discounted] because of higher perceived execution risk and I think it's really just a matter of both the management teams executing on their plans that they've laid out to investors over the next 12 months."

Link:
Bitcoin Mining Stocks With Over 80% Upside & Sell-Off Protection, Cowen - Business Insider

A man who claims he's the creator of Bitcoin says his private keys to 14m of Bitcoin SV were deleted by hackers in 2020 and now he's suing developers to forcibly give him access to internet coins he "owns but cannot access."

Craig Wright (yes, him again) is suing 15 people and one Swiss company in the hope of forcing them to "re-write or amend the underlying software code" so Wright can get his hands on a large amount of Bitcoin SV.*

The High Court of England and Wales recently ordered Wright to pay the court security for costs in case he loses, with the resulting judgment shedding light on yet more English litigation involving Wright and Bitcoin.

Master Clark, the procedural judge, summarised the main case as follows:

Wright claims the defendants "owe fiduciary and tortious duties" to "re-write or amend the underlying software code to enable [Tulip Trading] to access the Bitcoin." It appears the judge may have confused Bitcoin (as in BTC, the original) with Bitcoin SV ("Bitcoin Satoshi Vision", a fork of a fork from the original Bitcoin.

Continuing his run of bad luck, Wright's Tulip Trading** Ltd lost its bid to avoid having to pay security for costs. This is a legal procedure where if a judge believes a claimant might not have assets inside the jurisdiction that can be used to pay the other side's legal costs if they win, the claimant has to pay a substantial sum to the court, which passes it to the defendants at the end of the case or returns it accordingly. If the claimant doesn't pay, the case is halted.

The 15 defendants include Bitcoin vlogger Roger Ver, Swiss company Bitcoin Association for BSV, and a list of other cryptocurrency enthusiasts, all of whom Wright says are developers involved in Bitcoin Core and Bitcoin Cash ABC, whatever that is.

They've all refused Wright's demands, though a firm called nChain Ltd is "said to be working on a modification to the existing BSV client software, which would enable someone who owns but cannot access the BSV to regain control of them."

Wright claims he is the pseudonymous founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, and has spawned a global litigation-themed pantomime in his wake as various people say, "oh no you're not," Wright says, "oh yes I am," and lawyers around the world bank fat fees from all the arguing. Last month, he had to pay 70m in Intellectual Property rights after technically winning a court case against the estate of a deceased business partner. Wright had told a Miami jury that he and David Kleiman co-created Bitcoin (BTC) through a professional partnership called W&K Info Defense Research.

Back in 2016 Wright made posts on his blog that were roundly ridiculed by people after his "proofs" at the time turned out to be nonsense.

*1 Bitcoin SV is currently worth 81 according to a graph generated by Coinmarketcap, a website owned by UK-banned cryptocurrency speculation business Binance.

**Keen students of history will note that one of the earliest stock market crashes was when the Dutch tulip bubble occurred in the 1630s. An investment website explains the link: "The Bitcoin market is frequently compared with tulipmania, in that both prompted highly speculative prices for a product with little clear utility.

"Bitcoin prices tend to crash after significant gains, exhibiting many signs of a classic bubble."

We have no information on whether Wright knowingly called his Seychellois company Tulip Trading as a nod to this, though maybe the man just likes colourful flowers.

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I own that $4.5bn of digi-dosh so rewrite your blockchain and give it to me, Craig Wright tells Bitcoin SV devs - The Register

The European Union should ban the energy-intensive system used to mine Bitcoin, one of the bloc's leading financial regulators has said.

In an interview with the Financial Times, vice-chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) Erik Theden called for a bloc-wide ban on "proof of work" crypto mining, saying the industry's energy usage was becoming a "national issue" in his native Sweden.

"Bitcoin is now a national issue for Sweden because of the amount of renewable energy devoted to mining," Theden told the FT.

"It would be an irony if the wind power generated on Swedens long coastline would be devoted to Bitcoin mining," he added.

Bitcoin now consumes 0.6 per cent of the world's electricity, according to figures from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.

Bitcoin and Ether, the two largest cryptocurrencies, are minted via the proof of work system, which financially incentivises miners to use ever more computing power - and therefore electricity - to validate blockchain transactions and earn the tokens.

Theden previously called for a ban on proof of work crypto mining in November last year, in his capacity as director of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority.

From April to August 2021, the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining operations in Sweden rose by "several hundred percent," Theden said at the time.

In the interview published on Wednesday, the Swedish regulator emphasised that he was not calling for a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies, but rather that he was trying to promote a "discussion about shifting the industry to a more efficient technology".

"The solution is to ban proof of work," he said.

One potential avenue to explore could be a move to "proof of stake" mining, Theden told the newspaper.

While proof of work encourages competition between miners to keep the network secure, proof of stake mining is a less energy-intensive process where miners put their tokens up as collateral against errors in the validation process.

Ether, the second largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, is due to move to proof of stake mining in the second half of this year.

Rising concerns over the growing energy consumption of the crypto mining industry have already prompted governments to take action. Earlier this month, Kosovo banned crypto currency mining in an effort to tackle the country's worst energy shortage in a decade.

In November, Norwegian authorities told Euronews Next that they would consider backing a ban on proof of work and said the Nordic country was "considering potential policy measures" to address the challenges crypto mining posed.

"Although crypto mining and its underlying technology might represent some possible benefits in the long run, it is difficult to justify the extensive use of renewable energy today," Norway's local government and regional development minister Bjrn Arild Gram told Euronews Next.

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EU regulator calls for a ban on proof of work Bitcoin mining to save renewable energy - Euronews