White House Suggests Outlawing Bitcoin Proof-of-Work Mining
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In response to President Joe Biden's executive order on crypto, the office provided specifics on how it will address the issue of the environmental effects of crypto mining, including the scope of the damage and how different cryptocurrencies vary in their energy requirements.
The research calls for federal authorities, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, to collaborate with local and state governments to set rules for the industry's effect on the environment. It includes intensity and source of energy that goes into it, noise pollution, water usage, and how to develop carbon-free energy to balance out crypto mining's use.
According to the study, cryptocurrency mining, especially Bitcoin (BTC) mining, consumes power and completely undermines American sustainability goals.
Safeguarding The Grid
Additionally, the Biden administration wants grid operators and energy regulators to prevent cryptocurrency mining from endangering the reliability of electrical systems and raising consumer electricity costs. Bitcoin miners, in contrast, contend that they may improve the stability of electrical grids by acting as a base load consumer that can shut down during periods of high demand, as was the case last summer during heatwaves that affected much of the United States, especially Texas.
The White House responded to this allegation,
"While reducing this peak during a grid emergency is valuable, the increased peak is often why demand response is necessary, establishing misaligned incentives between crypto-asset miners and grid operators. Full transparency of demand response participation and payments by crypto-asset miners and other demand response participants are essential."
Ethereum Merge - More Energy Efficient
According to the Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum will switch to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) next week, making it 99% more energy efficient and the second-largest cryptocurrency by market size.
The organization said there was a need for less power-intensive consensus procedures to be included in Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchains. The most notable response was Ethereum's anticipated release of "Ethereum 2.0," which incorporates a PoS consensus mechanism.
According to experts, attention will be drawn to Bitcoin's excessive energy usage after Ethereum's upgrade is finished. These experts include well-known bitcoiner and head of growth marketing at Kraken Dan Held.