In a Thursday speech, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Paul S. Atkins announced “Project Crypto,” an initiative to modernize the country’s securities rules and regulations to move financial markets on-chain.
“Under my leadership, the SEC will not stand idly by and watch innovations develop overseas while our capital markets remain stagnant,” he said at an America First Policy Institute event in Washington D.C. His plan includes measures to reshore crypto businesses that have left the country and to ensure that “archaic rules and regulations do not smother innovation and entrepreneurship in America.”
Eh. Bitcoin mining alone accounts for about 0.7% of 2024 global CO₂ emissions annually, with 40% of that mining happening in US and Canada. 130.50 Mt is nothing to sneeze at.
Far too little and too late.
I literally just said:
Yes, Bitcoin still uses proof-of-work. That’s because Bitcoin is itself a fossil, its userbase and developers have consciously decided to not adopt new blockchain technologies and remain locked in the current protocol. Other blockchains have continued moving on. Alas, Bitcoin has name recognition and inertia on its side, which will keep it around for a long time. But at some point I expect its obsolescence will catch up with it and overcome that inertia.
I think it’s early to call Bitcoin obsolete, it is still after all the dominant cryptocurrency by every measure.
So which systems do you see as offering real utility or innovation? Obviously there’s etherium, and it has its own issues, but what else out there do you think is really more than a just gimmick or a scheme?
Its technology is obsolete. That doesn’t mean it can’t still dominate the market share.
For example, a case could be made that coal power is obsolete. There are still plenty of coal power plants on the grid. Windows 8 is obsolete, but you’ll find plenty of computers still running it. And so forth. There’s inertia in these things.
And Bitcoin’s current “dominance” is 60%. That’s not exactly an overwhelming position.
You answered your own question.
Ethereum’s not just one token, mind you. There’s an ecosystem on Ethereum with a lot of innovation that’s not directly rooted in Ethereum’s advances. That’s the benefit of supporting smart contracts, it’s a general purpose computer that other stuff can be run on. There are a lot of layer-2 blockchains running on Ethereum, for example Aztec which has Monero-like privacy built into it.