I was reading this post on HN earlier today about how the White House may consider executive action or legislation to ban Bitcoin mining: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32789325 When reading the linked article and the White House press release (https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2022/09/08/fact-sheet-climate-and-energy-implications-of-crypto-assets-in-the-united-states/), this particular section jumped out at me: > Should these measures prove ineffective at reducing impacts, the Administration should explore executive actions, and Congress might consider legislation, to limit or eliminate the use of high energy intensity consensus mechanisms for crypto-asset mining. I am curious if the U.S. government actually has that power. Would this be considered constitutional? I can understand issuing penalties or otherwise stepping in to regulate businesses, but considering Bitcoin is an open-source, community driven software project (and so are many other crypto projects), can the government enforce that the software has to be written a certain way? Would this be considered a violation of the First Amendment? I am sure in this specific case many people may agree with the intentions or believe that this change is not a problem, but the precedent to me is pretty scary. Imagine if in the future, rich and powerful people can lobby the government to limit or crush any open-source software they want if they feel like it poses a threat to an existing company or industry. Based on this article, it sounds like code is considered free speech: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/is-code-free-speech/
Story Published at: September 10, 2022 at 06:44PM
Story Published at: September 10, 2022 at 06:44PM