Ethereum Co-founder Criticizes Moratorium on Bitcoin Mining in New York

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has joined in the criticism of New York state’s moratorium on mining using electricity generated from carbon sources. According to him, the authorities should not choose “which specific applications” can consume energy.

He has written on Twitter:

“Ultimately I agree with this (that is, I oppose banning PoW). The government picking and choosing which specific applications are an okay use of electricity or not is a bad idea. Better to just implement carbon pricing, and use some of the revenues to compensate low-income users.”

The New York State Senate approved a few days ago a two-year moratorium on mining cryptocurrencies using electricity generated from carbon sources.

Operating companies or those in the process of obtaining permission to mine digital assets will be able to continue to operate. Over the course of a two-year period, the authorities plan to study the potential environmental impact of Proof-of-Work (PoW) mining.

Nick Carter, general partner of Castle Island Ventures and co-founder of Coin Metrics, has earlier noted the authorities of New York have de facto banned data centers from computing SHA-256 hash functions.