‘European regulator wants to ban bitcoin mining’ | Financial

Last week, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) stated on the basis of a study that a transaction in bitcoin causes the same amount of CO2 emissions as an average Dutch household in about three weeks. Bitcoin works on the basis of blockchain technology, a kind of collective log in which all participants together keep track of all transactions.

That register is updated every ten minutes with a new ‘page’ with the latest changes. To safely handle each addition, a complex mathematical formula must be solved. There are special computer systems around the world puzzling them all day long, and that takes a lot of energy. It also yields new bitcoins and is therefore called mining. ESMA wants cryptos to use techniques that cost less energy.

Tricky point

The enormous energy consumption of bitcoin transactions has been a thorny issue for some time. Last year, car manufacturer Tesla stopped accepting bitcoin as a payment method after less than two months. Sweden’s financial regulator has already spoken out in favor of an EU ban on mining some cryptocurrencies, including bitcoins. It has been banned in China since May.

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