Bad News for Bitcoin (BTC) and Cryptocurrency in the EU

Patrick Hansen shared: Bad news for bitcoin & cryptocurrency in the EU. The POW-ban has made its way back into the draft of the European Parliament that will be voted on in the committee on Monday. I just read the latest draft. A quick update.

4 days ago the rapporteur DrStefanBerger tweeted that his new compromise dropped any ban/addressing of POW. Now just before the vote, a last-minute draft brings back the ban. This is unexpected & I was too quick to dismiss that yesterday night.

The wording of the POW ban has changed, but the effect is essentially the same. Crypto-assets that are deemed unsustainable will be prohibited from being issued, offered, or admitted to trading.

Existing cryptocurrencies “shall set up and maintain a phased rollout plan to ensure compliance with such requirements”. Since there is no way bitcoin can & will implement a rollout plan out of POW, it would affect BTC as well.

As mentioned before, I agree with Pierr_Person & PowerHasheur that the implementation of this article would kill the competitiveness of EU crypto businesses and drive plenty of capital, talent, and companies out of the EU.

So what will happen next? Unfortunately, since the draft was changed last-minute, I expect the EP committee to vote in favor on Monday. However, I still expect/hope this article to be dropped in the upcoming trialogue negotiations.

Both the EU Commission & many member states are fully aware of the dramatic consequences this would have on the industry. I guess is that DrStefanBerger wanted to bring EP negotiations to an end & only accepted this article b/c he expects the same outcome in the trilogies.

But this is uncertain & you never know what comes out of the negotiations, esp. has given the fast-changing macro-environment. No one expected it to pass in the EU Parliament either. The risk of this insane proposition going through is higher than ever.

“It’s such a suicidal proposition it is hard to digest. It would kill the entire European crypto industry, the one sector that fully aligns with the European values and where the EU could ac competitive.”

Important addition: There are 2 alternatives to Article 2a (POW) that will both be voted on. The 2nd one doesn’t plan a ban. Only 1 of the 2 will make it through. There seems to be a very thin majority against the ban right now, but TBD.

Community Response:

They’ll just use environmentally friendly cryptos in the EU, that don’t use POW, thus avoiding the high energy usage.

Here is how we stop this. Everyone reading this writes to their local member of the parliament with the following good arguments. Hey, paddi_hansen please RT.

I’ll leave this here in case anyone in the EU wants to do good for its citizens (which at this stage I honestly doubt). Here is your case to embrace POW and why.

I don’t understand why getting rid of an outdated, prehistoric, inefficient technology is a problem? Why is the crypto sphere becoming more rigid than the trade itself? There wouldn’t be so much noise about BTC if there wasn’t so much money in it. It’s becoming like an oil lobby.

The day bitcoin dies, none of the shitcoin in your bag will survive either.

If BTC dies, monero and dash will take over! Good luck moving billions of dollars privately with BTC. Only monero and dash can do this without anyone knowing.

You’re wrong, and deep down you know it. Only BTC runs without trust. Everything else is corruptible. Plan accordingly.

Have you heard of the ISO20022 coins before? Those are ted from Feds scrutiny. If BTC was really “immune” to government policies, why is the so-called BTC community worried about phasing out proof of work? Jokes on you guys.

They can’t phase proof of work out. It will just move. POS chains on the other hand mostly have a figurehead or a group to go after. Why did IRS have a bounty for cracking the privacy of lightning if lightning wasn’t private or secure? They had a bounty for monero as well.