this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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Not before humanity is generating a surplus of renewable energy. Until then AI & Crypto would just be delaying the decarbonizing of other industries by hogging a limited production.
If time-matched, additional, and you banned proof of work cryptocurrency, sure
It is just arbitrarily burning electricity. The security comes because people see a hashed sequence of blocks and agree on them, not because of the extra work done. Proof of stake and a trusted broker with an open book would do equally well to producing a consistent verifiable ledger.
Ethereum runs fine on proof-of-stake, and choosing not to be decentralized is another way of accomplishing pretty much the same tasks without needing to waste a huge amount of electricity.
The shift to proof-of-stake basically eliminated Ethereum's emissions.
would only work in the specific country that implemented that law (assuming it gets enforced) – and the crypto and AI companies would promptly off-shore their server farms …