$BTC Many of the complaints about Bitcoin over the years have been overhyped. But the cryptocurrency’s increasing use of real physical resources— energy and computer chips — can no longer be ignored. If Bitcoin wants to avoid government crackdowns, it needs to shift to technologies that don’t require constant massive resource consumption just to maintain the currency’s price.

A real problem with addressing criticism of Bitcoin is that so many people have cried wolf about it in the past.

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The head of the Czech National Bank wants to plough billions of euros’ worth of the country’s reserves into bitcoin, a groundbreaking move that could make it the first western central bank known to hold crypto assets. Governor Aleš Michl told the Financial Times that he would present a plan to the board to invest in bitcoin as a way of diversifying the CNB’s reserves at a meeting on Thursday. Should the board approve this, then the CNB could eventually hold as much as 5 per cent of its €140bn of reserves in bitcoin, he said.