I don't know what the German tweets are saying, but it's an interesting thought experiment.
If all the major cloud vendors were to make it so regular consumers are unable to spin up a server and participate in mining, then what makes it 'distributed' and fair?
I don't even know to what extent mining is prevalent on Hetzner. Is this more of a statement or are they having shortages for non-crypto applications?
A similar case could occur with GPUs where the ones effective for mining are not generally accessible to the public and only those who can get them, a small subset of people in some position of power, isn't that different than a non-crypto-distributed currency. The 51% is really being tested by China. How many countries have governments/citizens with the capacity to be represented at that scale?
If all major cloud vendors altered their TOS to forbid mining, only those who can sustain it themselves would mine and we'd be forced to internalize the externality that cryptomining is not a sustainable way to produce currency and record transactions.
If anything, a ban such as that would be good at finally putting the nails into the crypto-coffin. Currencies and transactions are really one of the worst blockchain applications that could have been chosen for the first large-scale use of the blockchain.
> Currencies and transactions are really one of the worst blockchain applications that could have been chosen for the first large-scale use of the blockchain.
But that's the only reason it exists? All the other uses so far have flopped.
It is a disaster that somebody made a system by which wasted electricity could be turned directly into financial speculation, though - a subsidy for raising the temperature of the earth.
> If all the major cloud vendors were to make it so regular consumers are unable to spin up a server and participate in mining, then what makes it 'distributed' and fair?
Not everything is cloud. You can still have regular colocation where you bring your own hardware and pay for rack space, network and power consumption. Then you can trash your CPU and disks as much as you desire.
If all the major cloud vendors were to make it so regular consumers are unable to spin up a server and participate in mining, then what makes it 'distributed' and fair?
I don't even know to what extent mining is prevalent on Hetzner. Is this more of a statement or are they having shortages for non-crypto applications?
A similar case could occur with GPUs where the ones effective for mining are not generally accessible to the public and only those who can get them, a small subset of people in some position of power, isn't that different than a non-crypto-distributed currency. The 51% is really being tested by China. How many countries have governments/citizens with the capacity to be represented at that scale?