Erik Thedéen, the vice-chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), has expressed his concerns about the nature of proof-of-work mining. He believes that the energy consumption of PoW is tremendously high and would rather that the European Union enforced proof-of-stake mining instead.
In an interview with Financial Times, he even went as far as to state: "The solution is to ban proof-of-work. Proof-of-stake has a significantly lower energy profile."
Thedéen’s statement seems rather too harsh, as European Union is not particularly abundant with cryptocurrency miners at the moment. According to the latest data provided by Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, after the Chinese ban, the US took the lead in crypto mining and now represents 35.4% of the world’s mining power. The States are followed by Kazakhstan (18.1%) and Russia (11.23%).
However, there are those who believe that banning mining in China (and possibly other countries to come) might result in miners migrating their power to Europe. This scenario still feels unlikely at the time, though.
The overall attitude towards crypto, however, seems to be directed towards greater regulation within the scope of adoption rather than enforcing bans, not only in Europe but around the world as well. As is the case with everything, the time should tell eventually.
