Europe to vote on limiting PoW crypto mining used by Bitcoin and Ethereum
The European Union could spell the end of Bitcoin mining when the bloc's parliamentarians head to a vote on Monday.
The European parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee will vote on the proposed Markets in Crypto Assets (MiCA) framework, the EU’s legislation for governing digital assets.
A last-minute addition to the bill was added over the weekend, which aims to limit the use of cryptos that are powered by the energy-intensive process called proof-of-work (PoW).
The bill was previously removed from the framework before as it faced backlash from the crypto community.
Bitcoin and Ethereum use PoW, the mechanism used to confirm transactions and add new blocks to the chain.
The system requires a global network of computers to run at the same time when a transaction takes place, which is why it uses so much energy.
Many countries such as China have banned crypto mining due to its massive energy consumption, as the country battled power cuts last year.
Despite the crackdown in China, which was the top destination for crypto miners, a recent study showed Bitcoin mining actually got much dirtier and emits around the same amount of CO2 annually as a country the size of Greece.
Several EU parliamentarians have been pushing to ban PoW cryptos over energy concerns. However, they have also raised concerns that switching to renewable energy would mean such energy is favoured for crypto mining rather than for public use.
CoinDesk reported on Sunday that the provision in the EU bill would require all crypto assets to be subject to the bloc’s “minimum environmental sustainability standards with respect to their consensus mechanism used for validating transactions, before being issued, offered or admitted to trading in the Union."
Th
Read more on euronews.com
