The head of the Swedish Financial Supervision Authority (Finansinspektionen) Eric Tedeen and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (NaturvŠ°rdsverket) Bjorn Reisinger proposed that the EU ban mining cryptocurrencies using the Proof-of-Work (PoW) algorithm. The joint statement was published on the official resource Finansinspektionen. The mining of digital money is holding the region back from meeting the Paris Agreement targets on climate change, officials said.
Proof-of-Work is a mechanism by which the authenticity and integrity of cryptocurrency transactions is verified. PoW-based systems are extremely resource intensive. Currently, this algorithm is used by most of the most popular cryptocurrencies – Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin and others. Ethereum developers have already announced plans to move from PoW to another mechanism – Proof-of-Stake (PoS), which does not require mining.