Today the European Parliament decides whether to cancel Bitcoin
The ECON European Parliament committee will vote this afternoon on a new regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies, which, according to Bloomberg, could lead to legislation that comes to "virtually ban major digital currencies including Bitcoin and Ethereum in Europe".
Cryptocurrencies issued and / or traded in the EU " will be subject to minimum environmental sustainability standards and will establish and maintain a phased implementation plan to ensure compliance " with these requirements, according to the final draft for the cryptocurrency markets (MiCA) law , the EU's vast legislative package for regulating digital assets, which was seen by Bloomberg News. This is a last-minute addition, made under the pressure of the very powerful and ubiquitous green lobby of the Parliament that risks deleting Bitcoin from the EU.
Commenting ahead of the vote, Jake Chervinsky, head of policy at the Blockchain Association, said “ The MiCA situation is worse for cryptocurrencies than anything else in the United States. Tomorrow the European Parliament will vote on "environmental sustainability standards" which seem a pretext for a ban on bitcoin . " Parliament now votes "Environmental sustainability standards" often absurd on any, without any practical verification or impact study, and the current European energy situation is the daughter of this policy.
As Bloomberg points out, the reference to minimum sustainability, as well as rollout requirements, appear to be last-minute changes introduced to curb or ban the use of digital currencies by working on a so-called "proof-of-work" consensus mechanism. , for example Bitcoin and Ethereum (at least until the launch of Ethereum 2.0 which has a “Proof of Stake” share). This is a last-minute addition made to politically please the Greens who are in government in Germany, a country that dominates any European parliamentary decision. The EU is nothing more than an extension of the Berlin government, for those who have not yet understood it.
We at Ledger will always defend freedom and self-custody, particularly in our backyard.
We are calling on you all to contact your Member of European Parliament and let them know that you oppose a Bitcoin ban in Europe: https://t.co/KXsEfi468i https://t.co/yZlaRZ97Aa– Pascal Gauthier (@_pgauthier) March 12, 2022
CoinDesk reported yesterday that the provision in question requires all cryptocurrencies to be subject to the EU's "minimum environmental sustainability standards with respect to their consensus mechanism used to validate transactions, before being issued, offered or admitted to trading in the" Union ".
The fact that "Proof of work" is energy-intensive is a problem, but on the one hand it is impossible a consensus to transform Bitcoin into "Proof of stake", which would betray its very nature, on the other a virtual currency that was completely "Proof" of stake ", ie with a verification algorithm based on the possession of the currency itself, on the one hand it would block its circulation on the other hand it would lead to its immediate classification as" Security ", with the application of the various financial regulations. Therefore the prohibition of "Proof of work" becomes a prohibition as a whole to virtual currencies.
The only settled method to create digital property is via Proof-of-Work. Non-energy based crypto approaches like Proof-of-Stake must be deemed to be securities until proven otherwise. Banning digital property would be a trillion dollar mistake. https://t.co/h8FTGaGJKi
– Michael Saylor
(@saylor) March 12, 2022
In favor of the Bitcoin destruction legislation are the Greens and the Socialists, now united in Parliament in the prohibitions and de-industrialization of Europe. The rule does not necessarily have the approval of other groups and only this afternoon's vote will tell us what will really happen to virtual currencies in the EU. Oh I forgot: for Socialists and Greens, personal freedom and freedom of exchange are just annoying trappings.
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The article Today the European Parliament decides whether to cancel Bitcoin comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/oggi-il-parlamento-europeo-decide-se-cancellare-bitcoin/ on Mon, 14 Mar 2022 09:00:35 +0000.