Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head

Re:Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head by elzbardico on Friday June 11, 2021 @10:10AM (#27473568)

It makes a lot of sense for a country that has significant portions of its territory below sea level. But, I wonder. For years I was absolutely baffled by how the world decided to ignore crypto environmental footprint. Then, out of the blue, a few months ago, it looks like EVERYBODY is talking about it. Then, the G-7 wants to impose the beginning of a global tax regime upon the developed nations (that's what it is basically). Doesn't it smell funny?

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Re:Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head by koheripbal on Friday June 11, 2021 @10:14AM (#27473635)

He cites: "citing fraud, criminal use, and financial instability" - not environmentalism.

Also, that argument only applies to PoW coins, not PoS coins.

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Re:Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head by thih9 on Friday June 11, 2021 @10:41AM (#27474021)

PoW - proof of work (computationally intensive), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_work

PoS - proof of stake, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_of_stake

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Re:Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head by gifwithaj on Friday June 11, 2021 @10:22AM (#27473753)

The "nobody visibly cared, then some people cared more loudly, then everyone cared" pattern exists in essentially everything.

Climate change, opioid addiction, police murders, genocide in China, microplastics, childhood obesity, #metoo, whatever other thing.

That's just how society works. There are a billion different things happening every day, at any given moment some are gaining attention and some are losing attention. Everybody will care about the most popular one for a while, some laws might get passed or someone might go to jail or get elected or give a speech, and then it'll fade from the mainstream news and daily conversation will move on to the next issue.

This isn't some coordinated conspiracy, this is the pattern of how literally every issue ebbs and flows in attention.

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Re:Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head by roenxi on Friday June 11, 2021 @10:39AM (#27474006)

The reason this pattern is so common is that most people take their cues for what to care about from the media, and the media take their cues from a presumably small and difficult-to-identify group of thought leaders (some combination of editors, PR firms and people with extremely respectable positions).

It is basically a self organising system around a very small pool of original thoughts. It is pretty remarkable how stuff can completely slip the general discourse because it never catches on in the in-group.

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Re:Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head by amitlzkpa on Friday June 11, 2021 @03:30PM (#27477472)

That describes what I think about current public discourse exactly. I wonder if that's how it's always been with human societies?

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Re:Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head by ArkanExplorer on Friday June 11, 2021 @10:23AM (#27473772)

The misallocation of resources into crypto mining also now has real-world implications. GPUs and other chips being unavailable, for example.

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Re:Netherlands must ban cryptocurrencies immediately: CPB head by arcadeparade on Friday June 11, 2021 @10:22AM (#27473746)

apparently ripple (xrp) is behind the fud campaign against POW, which is why we've seen such an uptick in negative news against it recently

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