Despite holding off to date, a Bitcoin ban by the EU could be on the horizon. But Bitcoin doesn’t ask for permission.

This is an opinion article by Guglielmo Cecero, the legal manager of European bitcoin investment app Relai, and Raphael Schoen, the content lead at Relai.

Bitcoin is under attack. It is increasingly seen as a “

It’s quite unlikely that such a label will scare off investors from buying bitcoin, especially since the Bitcoin community is saying that the Bitcoin network is not an obstacle but a solution for more green energy.

Therefore, the Bitcoin mining industry has the incentive to become greener: The fossil fuel analogy in the ECB paper makes no sense. The energy mix of a PoW network like Bitcoin can come entirely from renewable, green sources. Bitcoin can serve as a way to immediately monetize energy, as is already happening with flared gas that would be flared anyway. However, it’s questionable how fast and effective this effort will be to policymakers, especially since fossil energy companies like Exxon are now mining Bitcoin using flared gas.

The authors of the ECB paper are already implying that a higher bitcoin price equals more energy consumption, as more miners will participate. Destroying demand for bitcoin would hence be an effective solution to bring down the hash rate. At least in theory.

Conclusion

The academic and political consensus seems to point toward something like trying to retire the “old” PoW, and moving towards the “new” PoS standard. Particularly since Ethereum’s recent merge, many bystanders believe this could be a viable path for the Bitcoin network. We doubt that and plan to elaborate on that in a future post. As we’ve seen in different scenarios, banning Bitcoin is hard, if not impossible. The Nigerian government tried, failed and eventually gave up, for instance.

It will be quite a while until 2025, and with an energy crisis, increased focus on carbon emission as well as global uncertainty overall, the only thing we can do at this point is to expect the unexpected.

Even if the worst-case scenario happens, and we see a Bitcoin ban of some sort happen in the EU, we doubt that this will hold forever. Bitcoin does not ask for permission. Bitcoin is something that ontologically struggles to stay inside a fence. It is not an idea derived from anarchist positions, it is an argument derived from the inherent characteristics of the technology introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto. The regulators work in an authorizing logic and so it is clear that they struggle to intercept the Bitcoin phenomenon, which functions regardless of someone else’s permission.

This is a guest post by Guglielmo Cecero and Raphael Schoen. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.