‘Target The Bitcoin Price’—Internal Documents Reveal How The EU Could Crack Down On Bitcoin And ‘Protect’ Ethereum

Bitcoin

BTC
, by far the largest and most widely known cryptocurrency, has come under pressure from environmental activists and regulators in recent months due to its sky-high energy use.

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As the bitcoin price has rocketed higher, so has the bitcoin network’s electricity demands with the process of securing the network, confirming transactions and minting new coins thought to use a similar amount of electricity annually as some small countries.

Now, after an energy-reducing upgrade to ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency after bitcoin, was pushed back to the end of the year, internal European Union documents have revealed the extent of anti-bitcoin talks among EU officials—and their desire to “protect” the likes of ethereum.

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Earlier this year, Swedish financial regulators and the EU’s European Commission discussed the possibility of banning bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) mining mechanism due to its environmental impact, according to documents published by German website Netzpolitik and obtained under the EU’s freedom-of-information laws.

Officials went as far as suggesting the EU enact an outright ban on trading bitcoin to curb its overall energy consumption and suggested applying pressure to the bitcoin community and developers to follow ethereum in transitioning to the less energy…