Thanks for the reply, it helped me understand where you are coming from.
For purposes of discussing bitcoin, it is a global good, and environmental concerns are a global concern. If there is a global market for bitcoin, then taxing bitcoin mining (or other such measures) in one country would just incentivize miners to move to another country. So any such action as you describe would need to be coordinated on a global level among several or all nations.
> There's an underground market on taking out hits on someone else, that doesn't mean that "society" has decided that murder is good.
Not sure if it is fair to compare bitcoin production to murder. I agree that we need some sort of action for climate change, but I am not sure regulating bitcoin is the answer. We'd have to apply the same subject "utility" measuring stick to _any_ activity that consumes electricity and regulate that. Like others have suggested, maybe taxing certain types of energy usage directly according to their climate change impact would be more effective and would apply evenly to all goods / services without deciding on behalf of individuals what is useful and what is not.
> So any such action as you describe would need to be coordinated on a global level among several or all nations.
I was not the original person you were discussing with, so I don't think a tax specifically on bitcoin mining would be the best idea, but yes global problems require global scale coordination often.
> Not sure if it is fair to compare bitcoin production to murder.
My point is merely that the fact that a market exists for something is not sufficient to show that "society" has decided it is useful IMO.
> Like others have suggested, maybe taxing certain types of energy usage directly according to their climate change impact
Yeah, I was the one who commented that, so I definitely agree
For purposes of discussing bitcoin, it is a global good, and environmental concerns are a global concern. If there is a global market for bitcoin, then taxing bitcoin mining (or other such measures) in one country would just incentivize miners to move to another country. So any such action as you describe would need to be coordinated on a global level among several or all nations.
> There's an underground market on taking out hits on someone else, that doesn't mean that "society" has decided that murder is good.
Not sure if it is fair to compare bitcoin production to murder. I agree that we need some sort of action for climate change, but I am not sure regulating bitcoin is the answer. We'd have to apply the same subject "utility" measuring stick to _any_ activity that consumes electricity and regulate that. Like others have suggested, maybe taxing certain types of energy usage directly according to their climate change impact would be more effective and would apply evenly to all goods / services without deciding on behalf of individuals what is useful and what is not.