The US state of New York is getting strong headwinds on social media for the planned Bitcoin mining ban, which is now nearing final adoption.
For example, crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky, the chief justice of the Blockchain Association, initially thinks that such a ban will not reduce “CO2 consumption”, because ultimately mining companies would only be encouraged to look for another state in which they can operate their business. Accordingly, Chervinsky sees in the project only performance policy, with which the New York parliamentarians want to pat themselves on the shoulder.
For this reason, the lawyer hopes that Governor Kathy Hochul will use her veto instead of the final adoption “in the sense of New York”. Otherwise, the ban could send the signal that crypto is “not welcome” in the influential state. According to Chervinsky, this would be a “catastrophic mistake” for the financial mecca of the world.
US Senator Bruce Fenton also opposes the planned ban. In his view, the government should not determine what kind of software is operated. True to the motto “Code is Speech”, Fenton even sees a possible attack on freedom of expression here.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin agrees with this reading. For example, the figurehead of the leading smart contract platform believes that politicians should not judge in which cases electricity consumption is “okay” and in which it is not. Instead, the affected blockchain networks – the ban generally refers to the so-called proof–of-work (POW) consensus procedure, on which market leaders Bitcoin and some other projects are based – should rather be encouraged to introduce CO2 fees and price high environmental impact in this way.
Ultimately I agree with this (that is, I oppose banning PoW). The government is picking and choosing which specific applications are an okay use of electricity or not is a bad idea. Better to just implement carbon pricing, and use some of the revenues to compensate low-income users. https://t.co/NnBzmv5mYz
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 4, 2022
On June 3, the controversial ban on PoW was passed by a majority vote of the Senate of the state of New York. In the next instance, the law must now be signed by Senator Hochul in order to enter into force. The ban would impose massive restrictions on mining companies in the region, for example, no new mining permits would be issued for a certain period of time.
New York is also blowing up on other fronts at the same time as the attack on crypto, so Attorney General Letitia James recently warned against investing in the asset class, because these could result in massive losses for investors.
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