Swedish call for crypto mining ban

@ 2021/11/26
Stop bork borking the hurdy gurdy planet

Faced with a sharp rise in energy consumption, Swedish authorities are calling on the European Union to ban "energy intensive" crypto mining.

Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority director Erik Thedeen and Swedish Environmental Protection Agency Bjorn Risinger said cryptocurrency's rising energy usage was threatening Sweden's ability to meet its obligations under the Paris Climate Agreement.

Between April and August this year, the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining in the Nordic country rose "several hundred percent", and now consumes the equivalent electricity of 200,000 households, Thedeen and Risinger said.

In an open letter, the directors of Sweden's top financial and environmental regulators called for an EU-wide ban on "proof of work" cryptocurrency mining, for Sweden to "halt the establishment" of new crypto mining operations and for companies that trade and invest in crypto assets to be prohibited from describing their business activities as environmentally sustainable.

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