What was your reaction to the European Union’s attempt to ban proof of work (PoW) across the EU? https://blockworks.co/eu-committee-votes-down-anti-proof-of-work-clause-in-crypto-bill/
But could that attempt open the door for potential ramifications down the road around energy use, or fines and sanctions for the people that they can prove are doing this? There was a lot of discussion as to why they wanted to ban PoW in terms of the environmental issues, etc.
I don't think so. China tried to block Bitcoin for years; they shut down factories and seized entire mining farms. But the end result is that it just becomes more distributed. I do think that the Bitcoin hash power is largely concentrated in massive mining farms, so you would see a broader distribution of that and perhaps less efficient mining would continue. But the time to try to do that would've been 10 years ago, and it was still a big joke back then.
While I agree with you, I think it's hard to say, especially when we expand the scope to data sovereignty. Data needs to be within a particular location for privacy reasons, but there are still movements around data sovereignty that have occurred in a wide variety of countries. You could argue this is a bit different to some extent, but it still is a restriction on distributed computing nonetheless.