Can governments not step in and put an end to the cryptocurrency madness?

diamount said:
I guess it can be argued the hardware soley purchased & used for cryptocurrency mining will contribut heavily to the landfill problem in developing countries.
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That would be a fairly weak argument though.
Not in that electronics don't end up in landfill, but rather since the OP seems to arguing that due to miners buying up all the cards they cannot buy their own new baubles which presumable were going to end up in landfill eventually.
A lot of complaints about high computer prices are like people arguing about petrol prices - they are used a certain level of consumption and aren't happy that higher prices are forcing their consumption down.
However, while mining is a factor I don't the current GPU shortage is solely due to it. Whattomine says the best anyone can get currently is around $4-$5 for a 5700. That can contribute to getting something back from an owned card but even the current £90 pm is too risky to be buying new cards at over the odds.

A far larger contributor to GPU shortage is that both vendors have stopped 12/14/16nm production, Samsung is giving Nvidia problems and AMD seems to forced to use all the TSMC wafers they can get to make console chips (which is of course, AMD's least profitable way to use those scare wafers).
 
touch said:
It's only useless because it's so valuable and costs too much to use.
It's a good conductor of electricity, it doesn't corrode, it doesn't react with many other things, it doesn't need much processing (it's mined in raw form, not an ore or something).
If it lost all the value we attach to it, it'd probably have thousands of other uses.
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diamonds are worse than gold and almost useless

OP sounds jealous of everyone who got rich from bitcoins, bet he had a few when they were worth almost nothing, like a lot of people did.
my old wallet has transactions of 30+ coins at a time but the total value then was like 50....

like 99% didn't think to hold long term.
Its the same with anything though like old toys etc that become worth a fortune, many people actually had them at one time.

you can't look back and think "if I mined bitcoin in 2012 or whatever I would be rich"

odds are you would have been selling them at what was considered a good profit at the time


Bluecube said:
In what way does it cause misery for millions? That's complete crap.
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it did spike the price of GPUs for years and that's probably one of the reasons GPUs are soo expensive today.

companies realised people would pay more than they thought so prices never came down, even when second hand GPUs were flooding the market from miners.

probably also adds to everyones electric bill by a fraction, hardly misery for millions, if anything it gives companies a kick up the backside to get more renewables.


bit coin farms go where energy is cheapest anyway though, so they must be areas with an "over supply"
 
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After going through the bear markets of 2018-2019 and now that it is in a bull market again, it is funny how the same whingers come out saying it is a bubble.

Pretty sure it has secured the fact that it is here to stay now, whether you like it or not.
 
Well then. I seemed to have ruffled a few feathers here. Once the pandemic is over, can I come to your home and use your gold toilet?
 
4k4uNuNu said:
Well then. I seemed to have ruffled a few feathers here. Once the pandemic is over, can I come to your home and use your gold toilet?
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I was going to get a gold toilet but I decided to invest the money in bitcoin instead.
 
esmozz said:
The complete answer to this question would be very complex and I'm not going to pretend I could do it justice, but ultimately Sterling is based upon the economic output of the U.K. and the percieved ability of the U.K. to pay it's debts. I can see no such support for Bitcoin and to me at least, it gives every appearance of being a bubble. A lot of people are going to make a lot of money off it in the coming months but a lot more are going to burned (In my opinion)
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If that was true then the government couldn't magic money out of thin air such as the billions of pounds they have created over the pandemic. The economy is in dire straits yet more money has been created, not less.
 
4k4uNuNu said:
Heavy fines for anyone caught using a cryptocurrency, that should sort it.
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I agree. But only because I'm jealous and when it appeared in around 2009 I thought it was likely to be a scam and didn't get involved. Those were the days of sub dollar prices for bitcoin etc.

Now at £30,000 per bitcoin, if I had bought even £200 worth I could be retired :(
 
Hades said:
If that was true then the government couldn't magic money out of thin air such as the billions of pounds they have created over the pandemic. The economy is in dire straits yet more money has been created, not less.
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It does'nt appear out of thin air - it's either borrowed or printed (through quantative easing or other mechanisms). It's the goverments/BoE's ability to keep things like inflation (among many things) under control which defines what our currency is worth in comparison to others. My point is that Bitcoin has no such underlying support - thats not to say it doesn't have value, to a certain degree thats a matter of opinion, I just don't see what supports it's current price of approx. $35000 (apart from mania)

However, I would agree that our economy is in dire straits, the likes of which we probably have'nt seen in a generation.
 
Rids said:
Can see the environmental impact of mining becoming a factor soon, doesn't mining already account for more electricity use than some small countries?

I have no issue with cryptocurrency in principle and it has proved useful for me many times.
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You could argue that electricity and fuel usage to create shows like love island are also a complete waste of resources.

So should they also be banned?

As for crypto it would help if op had a clue. Nobody mines bitcoin on a gpu any more. In fact gpu mining isn't even profitable. Unless you are getting the GPU and electricity for free then all the other parts on top.
 
Hades said:
If that was true then the government couldn't magic money out of thin air such as the billions of pounds they have created over the pandemic. The economy is in dire straits yet more money has been created, not less.
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There's no extra value created though. If the economy doesn't grow in line with the amount of money printed then you end up with inflation because of the dilution of the money supply.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
You could argue that electricity and fuel usage to create shows like love island are also a complete waste of resources.

So should they also be banned?

As for crypto it would help if op had a clue. Nobody mines bitcoin on a gpu any more. In fact gpu mining isn't even profitable. Unless you are getting the GPU and electricity for free then all the other parts on top.
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I haven't suggested that anything should be banned !

I am just predicting a time when we may seem some form of legislation designed (poorly probably) to regulate high power consumption that comes from running large mining farms.
 
So those of you that dig bitcoin, do you just like it because you've made a few thousand quid or you think it's a sustainable currency?

If we crack fusion power or 100% renewable then surely bit coin is going to become worthless? Because other than power use I don't see what else you can base it on in reality,

If it was working then people wouldn't be desperate to sell it for tangible currency everytime that some people manipulate it to a high point to sell.

Economics is mind-blowingly stupid if you step back and examine it.
 
Rids said:
I haven't suggested that anything should be banned !

I am just predicting a time when we may seem some form of legislation designed (poorly probably) to regulate high power consumption that comes from running large mining farms.
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Nobody is running them in the UK.

It's a non issue in this country
 
Efour said:
If it was working then people wouldn't be desperate to sell it for tangible currency everytime that some people manipulate it to a high point to sell.
Economics is mind-blowingly stupid if you step back and examine it.
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I would say the economics is actually mind-blowingly simple.
You buy them when the price is low and sell them when the price is high.
There's nothing special or unique about bitcoin in this regard, the same applies to pretty much anything which can be traded.
 
Hades said:
What do you think "real" currency is based on? Britain left the Gold Standard in 1931. Since then what do you think sterling is based on?

EDIT: In fact take a look at an actual sterling note (e.g. a £5). It is a promissory note rather than actual currency. It states "I promise to pay the bearer on demand". If you went to the Bank of England and asked to cash in that note for actual currency what do you think they would give you in exchange?
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Another £5 note.
 
One option to conserve energy and stop these greedy miners from making money from our resources could be to give every household/building a certain amount of electricity at a fixed rate, and anything over that goes to really high rates. All properly regulated of course.

Let's see the miners make their silly currency worthwhile when their electricity rate is £5 per kwh. It's probably all heading this way anyway given the population increases and supplies running out.

Love Island should be banned, true. But not because it's a waste of electricity/oil.
 
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