With bitcoin-related news constantly in mass-media there are few legislative initiatives in my country that scare me regarding future of distributed computing per se.
Being obsessed by mining farms revenue and eager to get some money from them via taxes government seeks the ways to detect such farms.
But by external manifestations mining farm and SETI farm (for example) are identical. Both consume electricity in specific 24/7 manner, both require internet traffic and top computing hardware and so on and so forth.
So, any regulations in bitcoin (and similar) mining will harm volunteer computing it seems.

I would like to read how thing are going in this area in your countries?

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SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

Raistmer, this is the first time I have heard a concern about a conflation between the govt's extremely strong desire to wring their $ out of miners any way they can, and an effect on us crunching for science. Do you have any ideas as to what they are proposing to do, how they plan to detect it, how to prove (or in our case, disprove) that said activity is actually happening? This is a new one to me, and am interested in hearing more discussion about it.

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What I heard so far (from mass-media channels):
1) put mining on special (read worse) electricity payment plan.
2) take some actions against owner (in case mining activity would be forbidden by law, there is moot point will or not so far, but bitcoin definitely attracts public attention to what processing power is and how it could be used or taxed. Last incidents: "youtube miners" (advertisment on youtube that actually mined some coins while user watched youtube) and some mining farms in one of ministry's network of Belorussia).
3) tax it.

Regarding how to detect: by energy consumption pattern (that's why I started to worry).

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SETI apps news
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1) put mining on special (read worse) electricity payment plan.

I assume worse = more expensive

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

I dunno. I'm all for taxing bitcoin usage.
I don't agree with folks trying to create there own hidden economy and creating value out of thin air.
My power usage has always been very high due to my participation here.
All I would have to do to prove what my computing power is doing is link the authorities to my Seti creds.

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"The secret o' life is enjoying the passage of time." 1977, James Taylor
"With cats." 2018, kittyman

1) put mining on special (read worse) electricity payment plan.

I assume worse = more expensive

yep, more expensive for farm owner. And w/o discrimination between computing for money and computing for science it will harm us directly.

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SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

I dunno. I'm all for taxing bitcoin usage.
I don't agree with folks trying to create there own hidden economy and creating value out of thin air.
My power usage has always been very high due to my participation here.
All I would have to do to prove what my computing power is doing is link the authorities to my Seti creds.

I think the problem here now the appearance of Gridcoin on the DC projects. If the governments do move to tax and restrict based on what Raistmer has outlined. The claim that this is only a scientific project won't hold water as Gridcoiners are being paid... That will prove to be a downfall many projects. Will have to wait and see how they go proving who is doing what....

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I dunno. I'm all for taxing bitcoin usage.
I don't agree with folks trying to create there own hidden economy and creating value out of thin air.
My power usage has always been very high due to my participation here.
All I would have to do to prove what my computing power is doing is link the authorities to my Seti creds.

I think the problem here now the appearance of Gridcoin on the DC projects. If the governments do move to tax and restrict based on what Raistmer has outlined. The claim that this is only a scientific project won't hold water as Gridcoiners are being paid... That will prove to be a downfall many projects. Will have to wait and see how they go proving who is doing what....

Well, then maybe Gridcoin should be blacklisted from participating in Boinc. That is NOT what Boinc was meant to facilitate.
I do not have a problem with mining coin in general.
The effect it is having on the price of GPUs I can even accept as being part of the free market system, although I dislike the results.
But when somebody assigns a monetary value to that mined coin and then thinks they are getting a free lunch by hiding it in the shadows, then our theological ways part. Then their free lunch is coming off of MY plate. Because if your living is made by mining coin and you do not pay taxes on it, then my taxes go up to cover what you are not paying.

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"The secret o' life is enjoying the passage of time." 1977, James Taylor
"With cats." 2018, kittyman

Tax Gridcoin should not be an easy task, there are so many users from so many different countries, who government will tax them?

There is no way the US government, for example, tax me who live on another country.

Only an international treaty can do that.

BTW I don't do Gridcoin was just an example to show who difficult is to do that.

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Tax Gridcoin should not be an easy task, there are so many users from so many different countries, who government will tax them?

There is no way the US government for example tax me who live on another country.

Only an international treaty can do that.

Well, it is something that would have to be handled by an international authority. Maybe one that does not even exist yet.
We shall have to wait and see how this progresses. And it is not going to happen quickly, unless some ill advised band aid measures are applied that might harm or burden those not participating in mining activities.
I hope that this will be carefully thought out before it becomes law.

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"The secret o' life is enjoying the passage of time." 1977, James Taylor
"With cats." 2018, kittyman

What the governments could do is forbidden their residents to deal, buy, sale, etc. Bitcoin or equivalents, but even that is hard to do.

I not sure but i believe the China government & others are trying to do that. I not follow the process to see if that is working or not.

What is sure the GPU's reach high prices (some even insane!) and that is bad for us who use them in distributed computing.

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In Italy not only the Gov but also the scientific establishment ignores the existence of BOINC, so I don;t think they will bother us.
Tullio

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What is sure the GPU's reach high prices (some even insane!) and that is bad for us who use them in distributed computing.

Yep, it's the "first robin" of negative influence.

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SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

In Italy not only the Gov but also the scientific establishment ignores the existence of BOINC, so I don;t think they will bother us.
Tullio

Here too, but that's for BOINC per se. The question is how they will discriminate between "nobody known BOINC" and "well-known" computation load that starts more and more to associate exclusively with mining.

New "paradigm" forming: if your PC busy, you are miner perhaps.
Because mining is in news (known to the masses) but BOINC isn't (not known).

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SETI apps news
We're not gonna fight them. We're gonna transcend them.

I can see two ways in which cryptocurrency has hurt volunteer distributed computing already:

First, it's driving up the price and down the availability of new video cards.

Secondly, try finding a rental apartment these days with included electricity! Too many miners sell the building's power for their own personal profit. Distributed computing is rare enough that it was "under the radar" but many landlords are well aware of crypto miners. At least the apartment grow-ops (edit: link added) were illegal so they could get rid of them. :^p

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“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”
--- Margaret Mead

Not to try and appear dense or uninformed, but what does a grow-op mean? It must stand for some type of practice, just haven't heard of that one before. But then, I'm just a guy out in the suburbs, maybe that's a big city, downtown type of thing? :-)

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Not to try and appear dense or uninformed, but what does a grow-op mean? It must stand for some type of practice, just haven't heard of that one before. But then, I'm just a guy out in the suburbs, maybe that's a big city, downtown type of thing? :-)

I think he means people growing marijuana.

grow-op, grow operation,

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Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

I still get offers for GPU boards in Italy without any increase in price. What I get are invitations to buy Bitcoins from people who evidently do some mining. But there are news that American banks will not allow the use of credit cards to buy Bitcoins. So far Italian banks have almost ignored the subject and the price of a Bitcoin has dropped below 10k dollars.
Tullio

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I dunno, maybe it will just disappear?
It's certainly Not having a good week, http://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/BTC-USD
BITCOIN PRICE (BTC - USD)
6,338.7598 USD -563.5903 (-8.17%)

All markets in general are having bad days this past Friday and today. Worldwide. The degree of the BTC drop has been escalated by the influences of other markets and the further threat of government regulation. The other crypto currencies are getting hammered also.

The devaluation is healthy and good for popping the asset bubbles.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours