If bitcoin uses the same energy as Portugal, then the solution is obvious.
Ban Portugal.
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The day I take environmental advice from a huge investment manager is the day I need putting to sleep 
Thanks for the early morning laugh 
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Just in case itās relevant. The Stock discussion here is about the Invesco Elwood Global Blockchain ETF which is available on FT, any account. While not giving direct exposure to cryptocurrencies it gives access to the underlying technology and companies generally operating in this space.
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You are both right and are discussing different ideas.
DT is 100% correct in that Bitcoin is a needless waste of energy as it is not providing anything new and material with other needs or holding up an industry.
Alex is also 100% right in that there are shocking other wastes of energy and people should focus on improving them.
The point is that we should be A) not creating a new wasteful energy system like bitcoin, crypto can be done without so much energy and B) improve other areas at the same time.
Simples 
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I think you would make a great couple counsellor 
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Interesting and worrying a single person comments can effect the value so much.
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Canāt help thinking the more these kind of stories pop up the more pressure on governments to ban or heavily regulate crypto will get. I know it doesnāt mention bitcoin apart from the pictures but it is the bitcoin system that is enabling so many ransomware attacks.
How? There was ransomware before Bitcoin. I canāt see a link here other than the payment system that they asked to be paid via. 
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I clearly said it doesnāt mention bitcoin didnāt I? And yes there was always ransomware but much easier for authorities to trace the money but bitcoin makes it infinitely harder and anyone who knows anything about cyber attacks knows this.
FYI
Not behind a paywall but 98% ransomware are bitcoin paid.
Edit - I should have mentioned the explosion in ransomware linked to bitcoin as it now a safer scam than with other monetary methods. This equals bitcoin use encouraging criminals to increase their ransomware attacks.
Can you share some details how itās infinitely harder?
I literally posted 2 links and one quote is
Additionally, Bitcoin provides the hacker with anonymity since the ransom payment can easily be laundered; a criminalās dream. Because of these benefits, 98% of ransomware attacks demand Bitcoin as the payment method.
I could post many but I am sure you know this anyhow
https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-hackers-use-bitcoin-and-why-it-is-so-difficult-to-trace-11594931595
Frankly, anyone who denies this is either a troll, in denial or hasnāt done any research at all People get defensive but it is just a fact criminals love the anonymity of crypto and it is their wet dream! It would take some serious blindness for crypto investors to not think that something big will happen sooner or later as the cyber crime linked to crypto is increasing at a unsustainable rate and god knows how much we donāt hear about.
Ah okay, itās the infinite bit that threw me.
My naive take is, blockchain transactions are open, writing something that tracks the flow of the coins between wallets isnāt that difficult, you can then keep a tainted list, eventually those coins will need to be converted to be exchanged for money or goods at which point it becomes less difficult.
Alternatively countries could just start banning suspected wallet addresses and forcing exchanges that operate within their country to not allow any dealings with those addresses. At which point watch the whole thing collapse.
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maybe infinitely was the wrong word but my point was that changes of some sort will come and be big. Iām not pretending to know what they will be but some of things you mention may be them. How will this affect the value? Who knows? maybe good or maybe bad just that it will happen.
It may even open the market for non bitcoin companies to come in and take the moral high ground with clean crypto that is impossible for criminals to hide behind.
Iām sure all government have utter control of off-shore shell companies and money launderingā¦
wait a minuteā¦
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2 totally different situations!!! Crime can be traced through off shore accounts fairly easily but not crypto. You are comparing apples and oranges. I think you will also find that off shore rules are actually A usually legal and B being pushed to close loopholes and restrict it, again crypto isnāt that easy to do.
That argument is weak.
Crime is traced through offshore accounts - my arse.
Well there is a reason 98% of criminal ransomware is through crypto. What you are talking about is very different and putting layers of hiding money, laundering. This is actually easy to follow in principle as it leaves a paper trail but very costly and time consuming. Crypto is super anonymous so almost impossible to track.
You may not like the facts but speak to any cyber expert and they will confirm this. There is a reason the Guardian and many others expose the off shoring accounts as it isnāt actually that hard and if you tried to hold an energy company to blackmail good luck saying just deposit the money in the Caymans
Like it or not off shore nowadays is used more for tax avoidance and laundering than ransomware and the worst of crimes that the discussion started on. Crypto is the way forward for criminals.
Just look at all the people caught out using off shore like Jimmy Carr, Robert Brockman and many other celebrities or sports stars that now donāt use off shore once caught out or the Panama papers that showed the world what happened in the past. This doesnāt happen with crypto so as I said it is a criminals dream!!
Edit - a little on some of the changes to off shore in recent times.
Regulation of international banksEdit
In the 21st century, regulation of offshore banking is allegedly increasing, although critics maintain it remains largely insufficient. The quality of the regulation is monitored by supra-national bodies such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Banks are generally required to maintain capital adequacy in accordance with international standards. They must report at least quarterly to the regulator on the current state of the business.
Since the late 1990s, especially following September 11, 2001, there have been a number of initiatives to increase the transparency of offshore banking, although critics such as the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC) non-governmental organization (NGO) maintain that they have been insufficient. A few examples of these are:
- The tightening of anti-money laundering regulations in many countries including most popular offshore banking locations means that bankers are required, by good faith, to report suspicion of money laundering to the local police authority, regardless of banking secrecy rules. There is more international co-operation between police authorities.
- In the US the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) introduced Qualifying Intermediary requirements, which mean that the names of the recipients of US-source investment income are passed to the IRS.
- Following 9/11 the US introduced the USA PATRIOT Act, which authorizes the US authorities to seize the assets of a bank, where it is believed that the bank holds assets for a suspected criminal. Similar measures have been introduced in some other countries.
- The European Union has introduced sharing of information between certain jurisdictions, and enforced this in respect of certain controlled centers, such as the UK Offshore Islands, so that tax information is able to be shared in respect of interest.
- The Bank Secrecy Act requires that Taxpayers file an FBAR for accounts outside of the United States that have balances in excess of $10,000
- FATCA (the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) became law in 2010 and ātargets tax non-compliance by US taxpayers with foreign accounts [and] focuses on reporting by US taxpayers about certain foreign financial accounts and offshore assets [and] foreign financial institutions about financial accounts held by U.S. taxpayers or foreign entities in which U.S. taxpayers hold a substantial ownership interest.ā[22]
Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel laureate for economics and former World Bank Chief Economist, told to reporter Lucy Komisar, investigating on the Clearstream scandal:
āYou ask why, if thereās an important role for a regulated banking system, do you allow a non-regulated banking system to continue? Itās in the interest of some of the moneyed interests to allow this to occur. Itās not an accident; it could have been shut down at any time. If you said the US, the UK, the major G7 banks will not deal with offshore bank centers that donāt comply with G7 banks regulations, these banks could not exist. They only exist because they engage in transactions with standard banks.ā[1]
In the 1970s through the 1990s, it was possible to own your own personal offshore bank; mobster Meyer Lansky had done this to launder his casino money. Changes in offshore banking regulation in the 1990s in the form of ādue diligenceā (a legal construct) make offshore bank creation really only possible for medium to large multinational corporations that may be family-owned or -run.
There are some cryptos that what you are saying would apply to such as Monero. Bitcoin is the opposite of anonymous, all transactions are public record and if you know the wallet address of the scammers (which you would having send BTC to it) itās easy to follow the movement of the money until it reaches a fiat gateway. I dare say itās even easier to trace than dealing with the byzantine money laundering tricks used for normal currencies.
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