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China issues central planning guidance, to eliminate the PoW miner industry completely, and to favor other uses for the same energy.
scmp.com/tech/policy/ar…
scmp.com/tech/policy/ar…
This is big news, if the guidance goes into effect as planned on May 7th.
It follows the previous incident in the US Pacific Northwest where the energy commission decided to charge higher prices for PoW miners.
It follows the previous incident in the US Pacific Northwest where the energy commission decided to charge higher prices for PoW miners.
At a societal level, it's quite sensible to charge by use case: energy is absolutely a critical resource. Societies sink or die based on how effectively they use their energy for advancement.
It's high time some adult looked at what was happening with PoW mining, namely, racks of machines performing useless calculations whose sole purpose is to hold back other racks of machines, and said "this is a waste of electricity."
The coming year will be the year of Proof of Stake systems. They are green, sustainable and quiescent. They do not leak any value from the store of value to the power company. There's no dependency on a state energy commission for their security.
We didn't know how to build secure, open PoS blockchains 10 years ago when Bitcoin came out. We do now. And the recently discovered Avalanche protocol just dominates the field.
It provides massive decentralization, avoids leaders, and achieves much higher performance than PoW protocols. So, I'm very bullish on PoS systems like Avalanche as a result.
Of course, China fears bring out the trolls. Let's be clear: China banning PoW mining doesn't mean they are banning rig manufacture. It doesn't mean the end of Bitcoin. You'd think that maximalist trolls would have higher confidence and thicker skin.
It just means that most of the hashpower will move across a border, some will go "underground" in China, tucked into backrooms of old factories. Cost of coin production might go up, but that doesn't affect coin price at all.
I should also add, this is quite significant for miners and for the industry. But it doesn't really affect end users much. Its main affect on end users is loss of prestige, where ppl are saying that the mining industry is unwanted at the national level.
