Genuinely asking this. Is it at all possible to control who mines bitcoin and how they do it? I don't know enough about the protocol to answer that, but it strikes me that if you could "control" bitcoin mining in any way, the whole point of a decentralized currency is lost.
I spent 20 years working on documentaries around the world, and one thing I can absolutely guarantee is that if there is money in something, someone, somewhere will do it. I honestly don't see how you'd regulate this. Even if you could identify and force North American and European miners to use only clean "excess" renewable energy (when/if there is ever such a thing), that would merely drive a massive influx of miners from elsewhere who could use the cheapest, dirtiest coal power they could find. The hardware doesn't care what drives the electrons, so as far as I can see it'd have to be a political/regulatory solution, which again, seems to defeat the point of a decentralized currency.
BTC is designed to be unregulated and unregulatable. Once a coin is on the ledger it's worth the same as any other. And since BTC miners are driven by pure greed, they're not going to limit their computers to only mining when excess green energy is available. As long as the payoff is higher than the cost, they'll run.
The whole crypto world is chaotic. Anybody with the programming skills and a computer can start a new crypto, creating illusory value and adding to the chaos. It's useless as currency precisely because lack of regulation precludes a stable value. Companies that accept crypto base their prices on dollars (or other local currency) and convert back to the local currency immediately. For a currency to function as a currency, it
must be regulated to maintain a predictable and relatively stable value.
By its very nature crypto may be impossible to stop, but it is also useless for legitimate transactions. It's too unstable, and transaction costs, which were subsidized by the miners when mining was more profitable, skyrocket as fewer and fewer coins remain to be mined. It's a Ponzi scheme with big profits at the start and for early adopters, and big costs for later adopters.
And the more cryptos appear (which they will because it's basically free to start a new one) the situation only becomes more chaotic and less profitable.
Also, since lost coins cannot be recovered, the total supply will diminish, and since there's no way of knowing how many coins on the ledger are lost and unrecoverable, the real "money" supply of crypto is unknown, adding to the uncertainty and the volatility.
Crypto has some seriously unflattering aspects but I don't think rewarding the criminal element is one of them. Cash is the currency of choice for criminals because it is far less traceable than crypto. Crypto leaves it's fingerprint wherever it goes and it is a very public fingerprint that never fades or goes away. It's called a public ledger. Cash changes hands without this tracer and is the currency of choice amongst criminal elements who want to leave no trace.
Given this is well-known, I'm surprised there are still people pushing the false narrative that crypto has a stronger link with criminal behavior than the actual tool of choice and the most widely accepted currency for criminals around the globe, the US greenback.
Felix Salmon of the Slate Money podcast has pointed out that large-scale effective ransomware was made possible by crypto, since it makes untraceable on-line payments possible. Your local corner dope peddler takes cash because that's a face-to-face interaction. Same with your small-time gun dealer. But for extortion and ransom, crypto eliminates the biggest risk point for the criminal: The cash drop. Crypto also makes possible untraceable transactions on the dark web for everything from drugs to sex slaves. In short: Cash is the choice for small-time criminals, crypto for the really big criminals. And crypto is useless for anything else.
If I pay for something with my credit card and the seller fails to deliver, I can file a claim with my bank and get my money back. If I buy a loaf of bread with my credit card the transaction costs pennies. If I did it with crypto the transaction cost ranges from around $5 to $50. For one loaf of bread! If you're extorting $10,000, a $50 transaction cost is worth it for the protection that crypto provides. Nobody uses crypto as currency except criminals. The true believers are not spending it. They're HODLing it, in hopes of making speculative profit.
