[HN Gopher] Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shor...
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Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages
Author : UglyToad
Score : 171 points
Date : 2021-11-03 13:16 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (eurasianet.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (eurasianet.org)
| josephcsible wrote:
| Wouldn't it make more sense to just let the price of electricity
| go up?
| DantesKite wrote:
| It actually would to some extent in a country with capable
| infrastructure. But I don't believe Kazakhstan has that luxury.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Kazakhstan used to have big oversupply of electricity. They
| used to sell electricity to Russia before bitcoins appeared.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| As far as I can tell cryptocurrency's value comes from how much
| it costs to mine the currency. So that would just affect
| everyone who isn't mining currency since the miners just offset
| their costs by selling.
| josephcsible wrote:
| But cryptocurrency can be mined anywhere, not just in
| Kazakhstan. If only Kazakhstan raises their electricity
| prices, then the price of the cryptocurrency will basically
| stay the same, but mining will naturally move elsewhere.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Kazakhstan been intermittently on the 1st, and 2nd place
| for mining output since fall in Chinese output.
|
| USA regained the firm lead after a few months when bigger
| Chinese mines moved there.
| exo762 wrote:
| > As far as I can tell cryptocurrency's value comes from how
| much it costs to mine the currency
|
| This is wrong. Multiple currencies use proof-of-stake and
| still have value. Price is determined by demand and supply.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| > Multiple currencies use proof-of-stake and still have
| value.
|
| Are they Bitcoin valuable? Are they as valuable as proof of
| work? I think not.
|
| > Price is determined by demand and supply.
|
| So the supply is lower because it's harder to mine so the
| price goes up and because the price is going up demand is
| higher. It's kinda like diamonds. Pretty useless but
| because the big companies hoarde all the diamonds they keep
| the price high and because the price is high people put
| value in them.
| gruez wrote:
| You got cause and effect flipped. Cryptocurrency's value
| determines how much money can be poured into mining it. If
| bitcoin is at $60k, the block reward is 6.25 BTC, and there's
| a block every 10 minutes, then the entire mining bitcoin
| mining system can only consume 6.25 * $60k = $375k worth of
| electricity every 10 minutes. If the cost of electricity
| doubles, all that would mean is that the system can consume
| half as much electricity.
| ctur wrote:
| Only if you want miners to have power and residents to be
| without it.
|
| Capitalism is not the cookie cutter solution to all problems.
| fastball wrote:
| Right but that's not the problem here? If there are power
| shortages then the power companies should increase supply.
| [deleted]
| kazen44 wrote:
| which might not be possible in Kazakhstan considering the
| state of its infrastructure compared to energy use by
| miners.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| There is no capability to increase supply. See my other
| post - Eastern Europe is out of coal and nat gas. Belarus
| has excess energy from Nuclear, but is still triaging
| exports. People will go without power this winter if this
| isn't done.
| fastball wrote:
| So don't rely on coal and nat gas?
|
| What about solar? Wind?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Both solar and wind are simultaneously underperforming in
| Europe at the moment because of weather phenomena that
| reduce wind and increase cloud cover, plus of course
| winter. There is no solution outside of nuclear, coal,
| and nat gas. And Europe, save for France, doesn't have
| enough nuclear to go around.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Europe tried that, now they are trying to buy more gas
| from Russia. See Poland for an example.
|
| The point of that real-time example? Wind and solar are
| great, but they take time and the infrastructure is not
| yet there. Nuclear is arguably cleaner and cheaper for
| the output in the long term. Of course, infrastructure
| for nuclear isn't there in Kazakhstan yet either.
| oblio wrote:
| Yup, the magic pixie fairy will manage to build out
| electricity producing capacity that takes years to
| decades to build in days, weeks or months at best.
| tw04 wrote:
| So the power company should spend tens to hundreds of
| millions of dollars building out infrastructure for
| subsidized bitcoin mining? And that makes sense how?
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| No. Role of government is to provide minimum standard of living
| for general population. A lot of people will freeze in Kaza, as
| basic necessities are a huge part of their monthly budget and
| price hike is too severe to handle.
|
| "Let market sort itself" only works if government thinks about
| it in advance, have fair elections, low corruption, etc.
|
| Cost of natural gas / coal / oil is going up significantly and
| is a huge problem for all of Europe (not just Eastern) at the
| moment. A lot of Eastern Europe will have rolling blackouts and
| need to buy power from Russia / Belarus. Kazakhstan is in the
| same boat in that regard. I would venture that they are
| probably still on the USSR power grid as well and can buy
| easily from Russia / Belarus.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Almost all residential heating in big cities in Kazakhstan
| comes from cogeneration.
|
| They would've gone bankrupt if they didn't do it with their
| weather (-40<Cdeg)
| xattt wrote:
| So there is clearly a market for bitcoin cogen, either city
| scale or the scale of a single dwelling.
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| This is such a bizarre comment given the history of price
| controls and their horrendous outcomes.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Was working fine in Kazakhstan until the crypto folks
| showed up to utilize subsidized power.
| ovi256 wrote:
| I think you mean history of generalized (applied to all
| products and services) price controls, especially in a
| planned economy. That definitely did not bring the hoped
| prosperity.
|
| They seem to mean price controls for a limited number of
| essential goods and services, to ensure access to them for
| the least fortunate groups. Energy definitely seems to be
| part of this even in the most market-oriented societies.
|
| One can look at cheap fossil fuels, and the unwillingness
| of Western governments to make them more expensive by
| integrating their negative pollution externalities into
| their consumer cost, as a sort of ad-hoc price control.
| Lots of social protests over living standards were
| triggered by increases in energy costs - the Gilets Jaunes
| in France for example.
| kube-system wrote:
| Price controls on utilities in the US are extremely common
| and successful. There are good ways to implement price
| controls and there are bad ways. Also, there are just as
| many examples of bad outcomes when you treat markets which
| are inherently unfree (i.e utilites, where infrastructure
| is typically monopolized) as free markets.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Kicking Bitcoin miners off the grid seems like a great
| alternative to price controls.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| this is such a narrow line of thinking.
|
| Imaging the hubris required to even suggest that an essential
| input to daily life should have its price affected by an almost
| completely useless financial hedge for the elites.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| colonial empires have been the worst offenders here, no?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company#Indian_Rebe.
| ..
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I assumed, based on my experiences as a power consumer, they
| meant increase the marginal price of electricity above some
| threshold. That's how electricity is priced everywhere I've
| lived (US). Maybe it's different on Kazakhstan, although I
| don't think it'd be hard to implement.
| rlpb wrote:
| You could tax income from mining instead, which would have the
| same effect but keep the electricity price stable for everyone
| else.
|
| A challenge might be in effective tax collection, but it isn't
| that hard to find heavy electricity consumers.
| pjc50 wrote:
| That makes everyone else in the country worse off.
| fastball wrote:
| If mining is a net positive for Kazakhstani miners, doesn't
| that make the country better off? That's a net export.
| [deleted]
| robjan wrote:
| No, because everyone pays higher electricity bills while a
| small number of people benefit from selling their mined
| crypto.
| fastball wrote:
| How is this different from a factory that uses a lot of
| electricity to produce shoes that are then exported?
|
| I thought that was a good thing to have in your country,
| but apparently because this is crypto it is suddenly a
| bad thing?
| depaya wrote:
| A factory provides jobs to locals. A factory stimulates
| the economy by creating local economic activity
| (suppliers, logistics, construction, restaurants).
|
| A crypto operation might provide a small fraction of
| everything above while also producing nothing of tangible
| value to society.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The traditional solution to that problem is taxation.
| duxup wrote:
| >If mining is a net positive for Kazakhstani miners,
| doesn't that make the country better off?
|
| How does that work?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Trickle down economics kicks in, surely.
|
| /s
| fastball wrote:
| If mining is profitable that means electricity is costing
| less than the proceeds of mining. If these miners are
| Kazakhstani, presumably they are spending the majority of
| these gains in-country, or are paying taxes on the
| proceeds. As such this should be a net gain for
| Kazakhstan, since I assume the majority of people
| _buying_ the crypto the miners are generating are not in
| fact Kazakhstani.
|
| This doesn't seem complicated tbh and I'm actually
| struggling to understand why you wouldn't get this if you
| generally understand net imports/exports.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is my sarcastic answer of "trickle-down economics"
| just with more hand-wavy elaboration on how that might
| work. Amazing!
| pjc50 wrote:
| > If these miners are Kazakhstani
|
| Article implies a lot have moved from China.
|
| > presumably they are spending the majority of these
| gains in-country
|
| Unevidenced assumption, that they are even spending the
| gains at all - it's crypto, after all.
|
| > or are paying taxes on the proceeds
|
| Unevidenced assumption, probably false for crypto
| libertarians.
| duxup wrote:
| I understand the imports and exports for goods that
| employ people create services and etc.
|
| Coin mining doesn't fit / necessarily that pattern at
| all.
|
| In the meantime they have power shortages so I'm not sure
| at all what you're thinking about here... your idea of
| cheap power is pretty meaningless when there's a
| shortage.
| oblio wrote:
| Read and be enlightened:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
| notahacker wrote:
| I mean, as an authoritarian state whose elections are generally
| considered rigged they probably _could_ let their peasants
| choose between darkness and food /heat to ensure wealthy
| foreigners continued to to use their country to print
| themselves money, but I'm not sure it would make sense to do
| so...
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Maybe it would make more sense to you, but not to most people I
| think. Electricity has much better uses than cryptocurrency.
| golergka wrote:
| If only we had an open, decentralised mechanism to figure out
| what's a better use of a limited resource is.
|
| Oh wait. That's exactly what "cost" is.
| malermeister wrote:
| Except that mechanism optimizes for profitability, not for
| social good.
|
| In this example it prioritizes made-up computer money for
| already rich people over a Kazakh citizen having heating or
| being able to refrigerate food.
|
| It's a terrible mechanism for most things.
| depaya wrote:
| Put down your Ayn Rand novel for a second and gain some
| empathy. A few rich crypto miners pricing many people out
| of electricity is inhumane.
| Taywee wrote:
| Yeah, "cost" is one of the fundamental terms of economics.
| So is "externality".
| josephcsible wrote:
| What's the externality of using electricity?
| Taywee wrote:
| Pollution (most electricity production is still coal-
| based), raising electricity prices for everybody else,
| contributing to an ongoing energy crisis (electricity is
| going to start being rationed in Kazakhstan).
|
| Electricity is a finite resource.
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Depends on the situation. If there's a shortage (or near-
| shortage) of supply, the externality could be causing a
| partial or total blackout.
| oblio wrote:
| Yup, I'm sure that every time we've let the market do its
| thing, nobody suffered. I don't really want to get into too
| much of what's very gross territory, but let's say that a
| long time ago a certain nation controlling another nation
| decided that the food from said controlled nation was
| economically most useful being sold somewhere else.
|
| The locals couldn't afford the "cost".
|
| I'll let you put 2 and 2 together for the rest.
| golergka wrote:
| > a certain nation controlling another nation decided
| that the food from said controlled nation was
| economically most useful being sold somewhere else.
|
| > The locals couldn't afford the "cost".
|
| That sounds like one of the many soviet famines, which
| happened exactly because there wasn't an open and free
| market for said food.
| oblio wrote:
| Ireland. It was Ireland.
| hanniabu wrote:
| Easy, just require an pricy mining permit that can be used to
| build renewable infrastructure.
| baybal2 wrote:
| All big scale BTC mines buy at industrial prices.
|
| You cannot run a mine bigger than what your wiring can
| support in your apartment.
|
| None of them is using the subsidised residential rate.
| yorwba wrote:
| Are industrial prices not subsidized?
| baybal2 wrote:
| Certainly not, industrial use subsidises the residential.
| And businesses have to pay for their grid connection to
| the premises.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| Residential rates are not typically subsidized, they are
| regulated and billed at cost plus. The only thing that can
| be called a subsidy is a delay in raising costs. When local
| utilities are required to supply at a fixed price and that
| fixed price is less then cost + fixed profit margin, then
| they are losing money. The remedy for this is to ask their
| regulators to change the fixed price to account for both
| the higher expected base rate and their losses during prior
| periods. The utility commissions which regulate them almost
| always grant such requests. In extreme cases, CA power
| crisis, this can bankrupt utilities but in simple shifts of
| the demand curve most utilities have great credit ratings
| and can borrow to cover opex during the shortfalls.
| baybal2 wrote:
| It is https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/Kazakhstan/elect
| ricity_pr...
| dpierce9 wrote:
| There being a price difference between business and
| residential does not imply a subsidy. It can simply cost
| more to distribute electricity to businesses, the time
| power is supplied may be different, and the nature of
| what is supplied may also be different. Commonly (in the
| US) businesses have larger supplies, three phase power,
| and lines and transformers may be buried or harder to
| access. Midday electricity is also more expensive
| typically and businesses use more electricity midday
| (which is why it is more expensive). Further, businesses
| may be charged real time rates while residential rates
| lag spikes in price or are averaged over time.
|
| That said, Kazakhstan may subsidize their power, I don't
| know.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Kazakhstan's residential utility subsidies are 3% of
| country's GDP.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| This is true in the US generally as well as some
| countries with already very low energy generation costs.
| For developing nations residential electricity is
| normally subsidized.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Of course it does. It also has better uses than say gaming,
| so if that is the logic maybe that should be banned, too.
| p49k wrote:
| Gaming isn't a major contributing cause to a country's
| energy crisis.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| There is a difference between the two. That's like
| comparing the fuel use or exhaust of a Fiat 500 to that of
| a cargo ship.
| Tenoke wrote:
| Under your analogy we shouldn't regulate car exhausts
| before we regulate cargo ships. At any rate, article says
| 250k mining devices there so the electricity usage is
| likely more from mining but not orders of magnitude more,
| and even if it was it would suggest they are not banned
| because of how useful it is (arguably gaming is even less
| useful) but because of size. But sure compare to gaming +
| TVs then.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Analogies are meant to be used once. You shouldn't take
| them and use them for another purpose.
| oblio wrote:
| Does it have better uses than a regular Kazakh citizen
| being able to use the light bulb in their apartment? Or
| their fridge?
| GrumpyNl wrote:
| Thats the weird thing, the more you use, the cheaper it can be
| delivered to you, same with gas. It should be the other way
| around, the more you use, the more expensive it should get.
| Im_your_dada wrote:
| Electricity = keeps you warm, cooks your food, powers your
| devices.
|
| Cryptos = suck that energy out of the power grid to gamble with
| one another.
| azth wrote:
| > Cryptos = suck that energy out of the power grid to gamble
| with one another.
|
| All crypto currencies are used for gambling?
|
| Can you give us a good solution to hedge against government
| induced inflation that does not involve usury or having enough
| cash to purchase property outright to rent it out? Note: almost
| all companies deal with interest in some way or another, even
| if they don't need to, so usury is embedded in their stocks.
| honkycat wrote:
| Can you give us a good solution to keep the price of bread
| from rising above the ability for impoverished people to
| purchase it over government induced inflation?
|
| Oh right, I'm dealing with someone who believes in the "free
| market" while plugging their ears when people talk about
| subsidies for the gas, meat, defense, and other "profitable"
| industries.
| azth wrote:
| > Oh right, I'm dealing with someone who believes in the
| "free market"
|
| I don't believe in absolute free market as defined by
| capitalism. Case in point: I do not deal with interest
| (usury), as it is prohibited in my faith. There are also
| some other red lines which I will not get into here, as it
| is not the subject of discussion. I'm happy to go into them
| more though if someone is curious. As such, no, it is not
| your typical capitalistic position.
|
| > Can you give us a good solution to keep the price of
| bread from rising above the ability for impoverished people
| to purchase it over government induced inflation?
|
| Yes. In Islam, we have something called Zakat, a form of
| "wealth tax" if you will. Its proceedings go to
| impoverished people, among others. It has been documented
| that in Iraq during the Ummayad period, there were no poor
| people left to even accept Zakat, after everyone was paying
| their share.
|
| Of course we still need to handle the root cause: move to a
| currency that is not bound to interest that keeps growing,
| and the government can print money at will, devaluing
| everyone's hard work in an instant.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Interest is not the same as usury whatever definition you
| use. The fact that your faith equates them does not make
| them equal. You are perfectly free to use them
| interchangeably in your mind but most people do not do
| so, and your use leads to misunderstandings.
|
| Interest, in traditional western societies is just the
| measure of the present value of future time, which is
| understood as valuable. Thus, money+time="more money".
| azth wrote:
| > Interest is not the same as usury whatever definition
| you use.
|
| In Islam, there is no difference. If I lend you $10,000
| and I ask for $10,000.01 back, that $.01 is usury. They
| are equal because both operate on the same exploitation
| principle, that not only pries on the poor, but
| exacerbates the wealth inequality gap that everyone is
| complaining about today. Once the door is open to
| artificially differentiate the two, many other immoral
| things become acceptable. We've seen it time and time
| again.
|
| We don't deny the time value of money, we jus say that
| use money in a moral way to extract value over time, by
| taking appropriate risk in a manner that is not
| exploitative.
| ilammy wrote:
| > _use money in a moral way to extract value over time,
| by taking appropriate risk in a manner that is not
| exploitative_
|
| I've been reading on islamic banking recently, and I have
| to say that it appears one can arrive at a consistent
| philosophy and working economics with usury being
| prohibited. The world won't grind to a halt because
| capital is no longer entitled to gains by the virtue of
| purely existing, as opposed to being used productively.
| (Observe PoS vs PoW parallels, in the theme of this
| submission.)
|
| You can lend money and earn a profit _without_ interest,
| and you can pay for getting a credit without it being
| immoral. The trick is that both parties share both the
| gains and the risk, not just the lender being responsible
| for all the risk.
| honkycat wrote:
| Interesting! I didn't know about Zakat and Islams
| relation to usury. Thank you for educating me!
| azth wrote:
| Any time :)
| sharperguy wrote:
| Miners are already looking into new business models which could
| actually improve the financial viability of green energy
| production, possibly driving down energy prices, rather than
| driving them up:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2021/08/02/gr...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Electricity = keeps you warm
|
| Computers also generate heat. Wish I could use cryptocurrency
| miners for my heating needs. Why burn fuel or pass current
| through resistances for that?
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| There was a video I've seen someone, a year ago, setup a
| 'pre-heater' for their home heating system with a mining rig,
| so that the home heater doesn't have to use nearly as much
| fuel/electricity to warm the home. I forget how efficient it
| was, but the summary was that the net decrease in cost to run
| the heater was observable but not significant enough to
| justify everyone doing so.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That sounds freaking awesome. Do you know how to find it? I
| found a company called Qarnot that's offering products
| along those lines but they're probably extremely expensive.
| A home project would be ideal.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| While I don't remember which video it was - I think this
| is a pretty close estimate to it[0].
|
| [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLO73bbIJtU
|
| The premise was to only operate the miner in cold months,
| when the outside air could easily cool the system. I
| didn't fully re-watch this video but it does give a good
| setup and explanation for it.
| [deleted]
| likpok wrote:
| Crypto miners are pretty inefficient at heating your home.
|
| A heat pump is more than twice as efficient as direct heat.
| havkd wrote:
| Maybe so, but they generate crypto, which heat pumps don't.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Can you elaborate? I've seen products that do this, it must
| be possible.
| vel0city wrote:
| Resistive heaters use energy to create heat. Heat pumps
| use energy to move heat.
|
| For a resistive heater, its taking 1 energy unit from the
| wall and putting 1 energy unit into the air.
|
| A heat pump will use one unit of energy from the wall to
| take 3-5 units of energy from one side of the system and
| dump that 3-5 units of energy to the other side of the
| system.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I see. Heat pumps must move existing heat from somewhere
| though. Won't those come from burning fuels?
|
| I have a lot of solar panels in my home. I'm generating
| more energy than I'm using. I don't consider efficiency
| to be a significant concern at the moment.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| You drill very deep shafts and move refrigerant up and
| down. It's efficient but capital costs are huge. Usually
| it does not make sense economically without government
| regulations.
| oblio wrote:
| You don't even need that. Up to circa -20C you can use a
| regular AC with an inverter and it would still work,
| albeit at reduced efficiency.
| progval wrote:
| It moves existing heat from the outside to the inside of
| the house. It works exactly like an air conditioner, but
| in the other direction. (And some heat pumps are
| reversible so they can be used as both)
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > I'm generating more energy than I'm using. I don't
| consider efficiency to be a significant concern at the
| moment.
|
| I also produce a surplus and I sell it (for more than the
| local utility charges to boot). More efficiency is more
| money in my pocket, is it not for you?
| vel0city wrote:
| There's plenty of available heat outside, even when its
| somewhat cold outside. This breaks down when it gets
| _really_ cold, like arctic kind of cold, but most places
| where lots of people live don 't get that cold for very
| long. Its the same principle as how even when its hot
| outside your AC unit can still manage to dump some heat
| out there. Its because of the latent heat of the
| refrigerant and the phase change induced by the changes
| in pressure from the compressor. Its kind of hacking the
| physics of phase changes to move energy from one place to
| another.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| This explains it far better than I can.
| https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/outdoor-
| projects/a2586...
| bouncycastle wrote:
| Yup. Also mining rigs produce a lot of noise, are more
| likely to break down & need an internet connection 24/7.
| Not your average heater.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| Immersion cooling makes it quiet and efficient, totally
| suitable for in-home use.
| bouncycastle wrote:
| Cooling for your heater, genius idea!
| vel0city wrote:
| If you're using resistive heating, a computer is about as
| efficient as a space heater.
|
| I have not recently done the math, but I'm pretty sure in my
| area its still more economically efficient to heat my home
| with natural gas than resistive heat. Obviously, emissions
| are a concern, future price uncertainty of fossil fuels, etc.
| Not the best way forward.
|
| However, heat pumps in my area can make a ton of sense.
| They're far more efficient than resistive heating as long as
| it doesn't get practically arctic cold outside. When in
| decent climates they're about as economically efficient than
| a gas furnace.
|
| In other words, mining crypto for heat isn't necessarily the
| most economical thing to do. It may just be better for you to
| use a heat pump and put your savings into buying crypto if
| ultimately having crypto and being warm is your goal.
| jcadam wrote:
| I use NatGas to heat my house here in Alaska (in-floor
| radiant heat, quite efficient). But I also have wood
| burning stoves and am surrounded by forest. If the price of
| NatGas increases to the point it becomes unaffordable,
| trust me when I say my carbon footprint will go up
| dramatically. NOT heating my house is not an option in the
| winter here.
| Symbiote wrote:
| If you're suggesting you'd burn trees, that's carbon
| neutral (very nearly, maybe a tiny bit used to fell and
| move them.)
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > I have not recently done the math
|
| What calculations are these? How do I figure out if it's
| worth it?
| vel0city wrote:
| Assuming you already have a gas furnace (I do, was in the
| house when I bought it), and the option is to either use
| resistive heat (space heaters, computers, inefficient
| lightbulbs) or the natural gas furnace, you would need to
| look at two main things. The cost of electricity per BTU
| and the cost of natural gas per BTU.
|
| On a somewhat recent decently high gas usage month that
| emulated a cold winter (forgot to turn off the pool
| heater from spa mode on the whole pool circulation mode
| for a few days...oof) my $/CCF (Centi-Cubic Foot) was
| 1.22. Converting $/CCF to $/MMBTU, divide by 1.037 to get
| ~$1.176/MMBTU.
|
| Electricity is usually billed at kWh pricing. 1MMBTU =
| ~293kWh. I pay ~$0.086/kWh, so 293 * .086 =
| $25.198/MMBTU.
|
| Obviously, you're not getting 100% efficiency with the
| natural gas furnace. I think the one I have in my attic
| which is almost a decade old is rated at like 85%
| efficient. 90% efficient furnaces are available, some of
| them don't even require a metal chimney as the resulting
| air isn't even that hot.
|
| But even at only 85% efficiency, you're still taking more
| than 10x less dollars per heat.
|
| This math changes when thinking about buying new
| equipment and other factors. I haven't looked at
| equipment pricing so it would be hard for me to say how
| expensive it would be compared to alternatives. This can
| also vary a good bit from your local market. Energy is
| stupid cheap in my area, natural gas is a good bit
| cheaper here than a good chunk of the US while
| electricity prices are about median, maybe a bit lower.
| vel0city wrote:
| Oof, misnamed a unit there. CCF = _centa_ cubic foot.
| 100, not 1 /100.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Pretty easy.
|
| Electric heat is 100% efficient. Natural gas is anywhere
| between 80-97% efficient depending on your model of
| furnace. Convert therms of gas[0] and kWh[1] to BTUs, and
| multiply by efficiency and price to determine which is
| cheapest[2]. Usually natural gas wins.
|
| For emissions it's more complicated. You need to look up
| the energy source for your grid[3], it will vary a bit
| seasonally, and factor in transmission losses for
| electric heat. You can then calculate the emissions per
| BTU of natural gas heat vs. the emissions of the grid to
| give you a BTU of electric heat. For most grids, natural
| gas still wins.
|
| Where this gets complicated is if you use a heat pump,
| either a "mini split" (common in Europe and some new
| apartments) or a ground source ("geothermal") heat pump.
| These have a seasonally adjusted efficiency rating[4],
| usually between 2 and 4. This means per unit of
| electrical energy the unit is moving 2-4 units of heat
| (depending on model and exterior conditions). You can
| take the electric heating number from above and divide by
| this number to figure out the cost and emissions for a
| heat pump. Usually a heat pump will win on emissions and
| lose on price (including installation costs) because
| natural gas is very very cheap.
|
| 0 - A "therm" of gas is the traditional measuring and
| billing unit of natural gas in the United States, it's
| equivalent to roughly 100,000 BTUs. Your bill will
| probably be in therms, but cubic feet are trivially
| convertible to BTUs too.
|
| 1 - 1 kWh is 3,412 BTUs
|
| 2 - You can either compare per BTU costs, or your
| estimated monthly cost based on your heating need. The
| latter is important if you have tiered or seasonal
| electricity pricing. To figure this out take a sample
| monthly gas bill from winter, subtract your summer gas
| bill (if you have gas hot water) and use the calculations
| above to determine your heating needs in BTUs. This lets
| you calculate your electricity needs in kWh and therefore
| costs.
|
| 3 - It's important that this is a seasonally correct.
| Most grids get dirtier as more polluting and less
| efficient power plants are turned on for summer AC, often
| coal power plants in most regions. Therefore the
| emissions per kWh will vary on a month by month basis for
| a given grid.
|
| 4 - If we're being very precise, a non seasonally
| adjusted number would be best here. An air sourde Heat
| pump will struggle to extract heat from very cold
| exterior air, reducing its efficiency. A ground source
| one will be more efficient, given that ground water is
| warmer than the air typically.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Computers also generate heat. Wish I could use
| cryptocurrency miners for my heating needs. Why burn fuel or
| pass current through resistances for that?
|
| Realistically? Cost. If your goal is to heat a space, it's
| much cheaper and more reliable to NOT use thousands of
| dollars of silicon. Doing calculations based on the site
| below, you might be able to heat a smallish bedroom with a
| _very_ beefy PC. I can get a space heater that puts out that
| much heat for less than $50 and is far less likely to stop
| working (e.g. heatsink gets clogged and system overheats).
|
| https://www.stelpro.com/en/expert-advices/calculating-the-
| ri...
| adflux wrote:
| I already have an rtx gpu. It nets about 8$ of eth a day.
| Uses 250w. So that's around 1$ of power a day. And enough
| wattage to heat my office. So I can get paid to keep my
| room at a nice temperature. This is why I mine now
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I already have an rtx gpu. It nets about 8$ of eth a
| day. Uses 250w. So that's around 1$ of power a day. And
| enough wattage to heat my office. So I can get paid to
| keep my room at a nice temperature. This is why I mine
| now
|
| Unless your office is the size of a closet, that doesn't
| sound like it's enough to provide all of its heating
| needs (at least according to the formula of the website I
| linked).
|
| It's certainly practical to provide to exploit heat
| generated by computers to partially heat a space, but I
| don't think it's practical to use silicon as the main
| heat source.
| gambiting wrote:
| I mean, you laugh, but during winter in my office at home
| whenever I get cold I just start running Folding@Home on my
| pc, it helps cure cancer _and_ keeps me nice and warm. As
| far as I can tell it 's cheaper than turning the heating on
| in the whole house too.
| 0des wrote:
| My heater doesn't become less effective each year, requiring
| replacement. While ASIC concretely implies this, GPU is not
| excluded if you want to remain competitive (read: generating
| profit)
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It doesn't have to be competitive.
|
| 4+ kWh electric showers are ubiquitous in my country.
| Literally a dumb piece of metal resistance immersed in
| water. Anything is better than the current situation. What
| if it was a processor instead?
|
| What if a bunch of home servers could heat up stored water
| through their heat instead of just dissipating that energy
| uselessly into the air?
|
| We'd be getting the heat we need _and_ we 'd be helping
| build a decentralized cash network. We were gonna spend
| energy heating up stuff anyway. Might as well get some
| cryptocurrency out of that heat.
| bserge wrote:
| A datacenter that doubles as district heating seems like
| a pretty good idea.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| This is what WiseMining.io is addressing with their Sato
| "bitcoin boiler." It uses hashcards (daughterboards
| populated with mining ASICs) immersed in coolant to
| augment a typical heat pump setup.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That's interesting. My search for products in this
| category turned up the Qarnot company which also has a
| "digital boiler". Apparently, it's a general purpose
| Linux server that can be used to mine any coin or perform
| any type of computation.
|
| https://qarnot.com/en/heating-water/
|
| Not sure if it's even available outside Europe. I wonder
| if it's possible to somehow replicate this with a home
| server. How is it pumping the heat out of the components
| and into the water system?
| rlpb wrote:
| You might say that a regular electric heater is 100%
| efficient, converting every unit of electricity into
| exactly one unit of equivalent heat.
|
| Crypto mining hardware is >100% efficient, as it's exactly
| as efficient as an electric heater, but also generates
| revenue. Over time, others make more efficient crypto
| mining hardware, reducing the yield from yours. This causes
| your "efficiency" to gradually reduce down to 100%, but no
| lower.
|
| However, nowadays we have heat pumps, which are also more
| efficient than our 100% benchmark, and produce additional
| useful heat.
| hvis wrote:
| > Crypto mining hardware is >100% efficient
|
| It also makes the hardware depreciate (simply with the
| passage of time, but also because of the particular
| usage), which in practice effects the balance and can
| easily turn the monetary efficiency into negative.
| trixie_ wrote:
| Technically if all electric space heaters were crypto miners as
| well then crytpo mining would be well distributed, resistant to
| attack and unprofitable to mine - win, win, win.
|
| Edit: Looks like matheusmoreira below doesn't understand a 500w
| electric heater and a 500w crypto miner produce the same amount
| of heat and use the same amount of electricity.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Exactly! This sounds like the perfect way to create a
| distributed proof-of-work network.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| More like Proof-Of-Waste, both of precious electricity, and
| of precious rare earth elements and other materials.
|
| Not to mention how much precious time cryptocurrency shills
| waste, and dangerous greenhouse gasses they produce from
| all the hot air of their rancid breath, by droning on and
| on and on about cryptocurrency all the time, parroting all
| the lies they heard in youtube get-rich-quick pyramid
| scheme videos.
|
| Another shill in this thread just mindlessly repeated the
| same old lie they parrot all the time:
|
| >Crypto helps accelerate the growth, demand, and build-out
| of renewable energy.
|
| That's like saying using more Cocaine helps you quit using
| Cocaine faster.
|
| "Cocaine makes me feel like a new man. And he wants some
| too!"
|
| In an unfortunate and unintended way, it's true...
|
| And the absurd idea of using a crypto rig as a space heater
| has already been completely debunked in this thread. Go
| back and read it.
|
| If it's such a great idea, then why doesn't everybody
| already have one or a hundred of them, huh?
|
| matheusmoreira: Do you really believe in get-rich-quick
| schemes and perpetual motion devices and miracle cures,
| even when you can't seem to find any for sale that actually
| work? Then you must not believe in the free market, either.
| Is it easier to believe there's a huge well organized
| conspiracy suppressing these technologies, instead of
| simply the laws of physics and economics?
|
| Go back and read astoor's comment again, which trixie_'s
| fancifully wishful reply simply doesn't refute. But of
| course you can't argue facts with a true believer.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29095560
|
| >Theoretically if every space heater right now was also a
| crypto miner, it would make any dedicated mining operation
| completely unprofitable.
|
| If your grandmother had wheels, then she'd be a bicycle.
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=If%20my%20g
| r...
|
| >Sir, this is a casino. Please direct your anger towards
| Wall Street.
|
| POS = Proof of Shock:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjbPi00k_ME
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I'm just gonna ignore the hateful parts of your post.
|
| > More like Proof-Of-Waste, both of precious electricity,
| and of precious rare earth elements and other materials.
|
| Is it really a waste if the heat produced is useful?
|
| > idea of using a crypto rig as a space heater has
| already been completely debunked
|
| Where? I've read detailed posts describing that it
| probably wouldn't be as efficient as other heat transfer
| methods. Doesn't mean it is "debunked". I'm convinced it
| could work in certain circumstances, such as availability
| of free energy in the form of solar power.
|
| > If it's such a great idea, then why doesn't everybody
| already have one or a hundred of them, huh?
|
| I don't know. I've been wondering for a while. That's why
| I started a discussion. Maybe the idea is too new or
| there aren't consumer products in the market that make it
| easy for people to do it.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| If only we could harvest hate for energy, then we could
| power our mining machines from your opinion alone!
|
| Sir, this is a casino. Please direct your anger towards
| Wall Street.
| trixie_ wrote:
| Did you miss the point? An electric space heater that is
| also a crytpo miner would be the same efficiency.
|
| Theoretically if every space heater right now was also a
| crypto miner, it would make any dedicated mining
| operation completely unprofitable.
| astoor wrote:
| There have been a number of startups selling crypto-mining
| electric heaters, but they've all faced the same problems:
|
| - They're much more expensive than normal heaters, and the
| returns on mining don't make it cost effective.
|
| - If you've spent that much money on heaters/miners, you're
| going to want to max them out 24/7 before they become
| obsolete rather than just switch them on when its cold, which
| defeats the point.
|
| - They'll also need to be upgraded every 6-12 months to keep
| up with the mining arms race, and no-one wants to have to
| replace their super-expensive heating system that often.
| trixie_ wrote:
| The chips can be less powerful, cheaper, and higher volume
| because the goal would be to put them in millions of
| heaters without increasing the base price too much. People
| buying them would be for heat, not mining. It could be
| advertised to save a few bucks on heating each month but
| nothing major.
| geraneum wrote:
| But imagine when you want to warm yourself up in a cold time,
| instead of plunging a simple heater in, you have to deal with
| a machine which might even need to connect to internet to
| work (if looking at current IoT devices is any indication). I
| don't like to deal with such a complexity, unless they make
| it so simple that I can gift a crypto heater to my suburban
| grandma and not worry about installing it for her.
| trixie_ wrote:
| I'm sure it would still generate heat still without doing
| anything other than plugging it in.. Stick a LTE chip in
| there as a fallback to mine for the company's pool. Would
| probably make enough money to offset the cost.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| A 500w crypto miner produces much less useful heat than even
| the cheapest and most primitive 500w heat pump. So no, crypto
| mining is always less efficient.
| ineedasername wrote:
| Easy solution: Mining generates heat to keep you warm and cook
| your food. A peltier setup turns some of it into electricity to
| power stuff. #rocket #diamondhands /s
| g42gregory wrote:
| I am not getting the sense that people, who talking about global
| warming, will really follow up with the actions, when it concerns
| their wallets or their quality of life. Look at the number of the
| private jets at the COP26. Look at number of Hummers that Arnold
| Schwarzenegger (whom I love btw!) owns. He talks climate change
| but drives a Hummer.
|
| By the same token, people with money, progressive or otherwise,
| will continue to invest in crypto as it is the highest yielding
| asset on the market. Kazakhstan became the 2nd largest crypto
| miner, after the US. It looks like they are balancing the demand
| for the energy supply between crypto miners and the rest of their
| customers. This sounds like a very reasonable thing for them to
| do.
|
| We will see more regulations concerning the crypto currency and I
| think it's a good thing for the market. The regulations will
| ensure continuous growth and mainstream acceptance of crypto.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| To be fair, I think he is aware of the contradiction:
|
| https://www.motor1.com/news/181048/schwarzenegger-shows-elec...
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Welcome to hell. Wait until you realize its a scam in plain
| sight.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Don't ever let any Bitcoin or NFT shills get away with lying to
| you that their cryptocurrencies and CryptoKitties and Digital Pet
| Rocks run on renewable energy.
|
| And never let any of those get-rich-quick pyramid scheme shills
| get away without forcing them to openly admit that even though
| they're burning coal, wasting electricity, destroying the
| environment, causing climate change, cancer, and heart disease,
| they simply don't give a flying fuck about that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Kazakhstan#Electrici...
|
| >In 2013, the country produced 93.76 billion kWH - 70 billion kWh
| (81%) from coal, 8 from gas and 8 from hydro. The country has 71
| power stations, including 5 hydro power plants located on the
| Irtysh river, which translates to total installed generating
| capacity of 19.6 GW. 75 percent of electricity generated is
| consumed by industry, 11 percent by households, 2 percent by
| transportation.[25]
| zozin wrote:
| You could have made the same argument about the Internet itself
| 20 years ago (i.e., a speculative new technology that provides
| little evident utility while costing a lot in terms of energy
| usage). What about Amazon's 2-hr delivery? Do you really need a
| gas-guzzling vans delivering at all hours when the USPS will
| come to your door daily anyway? What about ride share? How many
| millions of people opted to ride alone in a gas-guzzling car vs
| taking a bus or the train?
|
| Energy usage is highly correlated with economic development,
| trying to curtail energy usage is akin to economic suicide.
| What you should be advocating for is clean energy production,
| not consumption. You're headed down a precarious slope if you
| start policing how and on what people can use energy.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Amazon is a net positive for energy in car dependent places.
| It's more energy efficient to drop something off than for
| someone to drive to the store to buy it. You can get
| significant economies of scale and those apply to energy
| usage.
|
| Beyond that, we can and will eventually force Amazon to use
| EVs if they don't by themselves to save money, which is
| possible.
|
| I'm all for strongly inducing people to use trains, buses,
| ebikes, and the like.
|
| We can advocate for clean energy, and we should. But
| advocating against zero-sum energy usage is perfectly fine
| and completely consistent with good economic policy.
|
| The internet never used all that much energy. The computers
| were there anyways, and when it was in its speculative stage
| it was piggy-backing off the telephone network for most of
| the actual transmission. It was never even close to a power
| hog until it became very evident how useful it was.
| sparksparkapach wrote:
| There are quite a few carbon neutral chains that people do
| launch on. Most businesses do require energy but they try to
| offset it. People are trying to shift away from mining for the
| largest NFT blockchain though, ethereum.
| sparksparkapach wrote:
| This is just one and I'm sure there are more to come because
| if the practice is unsustainable a large part of the
| community would not support it in the long term.
| https://medium.com/celoorg/a-carbon-negative-blockchain-
| its-...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I wonder how much coal China burned to fabricate all the
| computers necessary for you to post this and for everyone else
| to read it.
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's cliche at this point, but: https://thenib.com/mister-
| gotcha/
|
| I'm guessing since there are no hypocrites in crypto you are
| all using non-fiat "coins" to pay your bills and buy
| groceries, right?
| politician wrote:
| Looks like you're being downvoted by all of the people that
| refuse to own up to their own hypocrisy over this issue.
| You're exactly correct, of course. China manufactures the
| vast majority of this equipment, and China runs on coal.
| oblio wrote:
| It's not hypocrisy.
|
| We need computers for a lot of solid, real life uses.
|
| We don't need cryptocurrencies for almost anything being
| peddled. They're supposed to be decentralized, but you
| can't really use them that way in 99% of situations.
| They're supposed to be currencies and instead they're
| vehicles for speculation. Etc.
|
| I think their slogan should be: "You don't really need
| cryptocurrencies for that".
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I'll be the first to admit that bitcoin failed to achieve
| everything it was supposed to. However, criticizing
| cryptocurrency as a whole over _energy usage_ of all
| things _is_ hypocrisy. It 's not even 1% of global energy
| consumption. The world _is_ being destroyed, but not by
| this.
| honkycat wrote:
| 0.55% of energy consumption[0] is not a trivial amount of
| energy.
|
| 0: https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-
| actuall...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Yeah, but in the grand scheme of things it's nothing. A
| nuisance at best. If people really are worried about
| climate change, they need to stop trading with China,
| regulate big oil, invest in public infrastructure and
| transportation, heavily incentivize development and usage
| of clean energy sources, etc. Bitcoin is just a
| convenient distraction from the _real_ problems.
| Regulating it will contribute virtually nothing to this
| cause.
|
| At this point in time, there is no reason to care about
| this. Maybe we start caring if some insane development
| happens and BTC suddenly starts representing 10-20% of
| our energy consumption. Until then, there are bigger
| problems to worry about.
| politician wrote:
| Indeed. If folks weren't just virtue signaling about
| climate change, then we could get on with tiling a third
| of the State of New Mexico with solar panels to power the
| North American hemisphere.
|
| We already have the technology and the land area.
| politician wrote:
| PoW crypocurrencies are global communications systems
| that offer nonrepudiation, instant settlement, and
| finality; a subset additionally offer privacy. It's
| valuable to people who need those guarantees. There are
| speculators in every market.
| oblio wrote:
| > There are speculators in every market.
|
| For crypto speculation is <<the market>>.
| u2c4m6 wrote:
| What crypto currency offers privacy?
| yo_nigger wrote:
| on_level? ?know if honk else username scream then doesn't
| matter the decibels in your talk unless you declare the level
| you are on for sure on your level, things seem bleak but on
| another level, things seem honk
|
| what ground do you stand on? when you scream your thoughts
| whats the foundation your knowledge adors? how far do you go to
| orgenize us all? shall we reached deeper so you can question
| your soul?
|
| what do you think happen on 911? whatever they say where do
| they aim their informational canons? this, we hide away
|
| get real man, you sound like a puppet on a string lacking the
| substance, a barrel dropping a mountain woosh woosh look at
| this guy scream
|
| come front, you scared little weasel and repeat after me those
| words "Chancellor on brink of second bailout for Banks" get-
| rich-quick pyramid scheme are out of snacks
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Don't ever let any Bitcoin or NFT shills get away with lying
| to you that their cryptocurrencies and CryptoKitties and
| Digital Pet Rocks run on renewable energy.
|
| Cryptokitties run on Ethereum and Ethereum is already partially
| using PoS. Now from day one people have said "PoW does not
| work" and yet PoW, so far, is still working. People are now
| saying "PoS does not work" and yet, so far, PoS is working.
|
| The cryptocurrencies haters better come up with something else
| than the "energy" argument against cryptocurrencies because the
| shift to PoS is coming and it's coming fast.
| makeworld wrote:
| _If_ PoS comes, it 'll be something to stop criticizing
| Ethereum over. It'll still be useful to criticize
| cryptocurrencies in general. See Bitcoin, Monero, etc.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > If PoS comes
|
| Like they said, it's already here. The only thing that's
| left is to end PoW which will happen within the next ~5
| months.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I've brought this up before and I was downvoted for it[0], but I
| don't think I made my point clear enough last time.
|
| People seemed to think I was questioning the soundness of the
| algorithm, but that's not what concerns me. I was talking about
| the concept of bitcoin itself.
|
| What I'm concerned with is what if the true point of this thing
| we have been led to call "bitcoin" is to destabilize countries.
| What if it's a new type of nation-state attack, or virus, that we
| haven't seen before. Something we don't yet have a word for.
| Something that takes advantage of a country's citizens' greed
| while doing things like disrupting power grids and causing
| countries to be worse off than they would be without bitcoin.
|
| It's like finding food someone left on your doorstep and eating
| it without being worried someone is trying to poison you.
|
| Most people that are supporters of bitcoin are driven by pure
| greed. What if someone has found a way to weaponize greed?
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446571
| gaspard234 wrote:
| I have friends that joke that Crypto was introduced by alien
| lifeforms or time travelers as a way to burn our environment
| down before reaching Stage 2 of the Kardashev scale[0].
|
| Human greed is too powerful for us to ignore the negative
| impacts and it is destined to destroy humanity. I work in a
| related space so I don't agree but it is interesting to think
| about.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale
| bufbupa wrote:
| Sorry that I don't know how to present this more
| constructively, but you sound pretty tin-foil-hat-y. You
| argument seems to be just "I don't understand this thing, so
| doesn't that mean someone could have introduced it out of
| malice". As the replies from your previous comment stated, try
| reading about the block chain protocol. It's definitely easier
| to understand than the whole of our fiat currency system.
|
| In my opinion, crypto is largely a ponzi scheme, so rest
| assured I'm not saying this out of love for bitcoin. But I also
| don't believe there's some master-mind illuminati behind the
| scenes orchestrating this intentionally. This is a 100% open
| and transparent protocol that people are supporting out of fear
| of existing societal power structure. If you have a good reason
| to suspect someone of manipulating crypto for some greater
| purpose, present your evidence and let us evaluate it. But
| vague paranoia about some puppet master's scheme sounds a bit
| like crying wolf to me.
|
| We as a society just haven't gotten good at pricing in
| externalities (eg: carbon emissions) to consumer goods yet. If
| crypto miners were providing enough societal value to afford
| the excessive consumption of energy, then I think everyone
| would be praising crypto as the next industrial revolution --
| improving quality of life for everyone! But instead, I think
| most people recognize it as siphoning value from many for the
| benefit of a fortunate few.
| honkycat wrote:
| Government induced inflation is a useful tool for controlling
| food prices and other economic concerns.
|
| Allowing people to abandon their currency for another one only
| used by wealthy people could starve people who do not make
| enough money to catch up.
|
| Look at the housing market. It has become a store of wealth.
| And now people can't afford housing and we have a massive
| unhoused epidemic.
| ineedasername wrote:
| The general public doesn't have the best grasp on crypto to begin
| with. If it starts messing with their ability to go about their
| daily lives with consistently available electricity at inflated
| prices then mining in those impacted areas may die a quick
| political death. Or have their facilities burned down by mobs
| that need those fires to keep them warm.
| agent_simon wrote:
| Makes sense, since winter is coming and power needed to keep
| people warm
| zherbert wrote:
| Bitcoin mining incentivizes the plentiful production of cheap
| electricity. This will make it so that there are no such thing as
| power shortages in the future and push us towards a Type I
| civilization on the Kardashev scale.
|
| Bitcoin mining reduces the risk for energy generation projects,
| because they no longer need to worry about who will purchase the
| extra capacity.
|
| Bitcoin mining can act as a load-balancer for the grid - spin
| down some machines if there is high demand, spin up machines if
| there is low demand.
|
| There are so many benefits. It is unfortunate that there is a
| serious lack of understanding on this website.
| jmcgeeney wrote:
| If you're honestly looking for the best solution to plentiful,
| on-demand, cheap electricity, energy storage via batteries is a
| much better solution. Why burn up excess energy from a wind
| farm, rather than storing it to be reused during peak periods?
| poontang1 wrote:
| Batteries are actually terrible at storing large amount of
| energy for any significant period of time, otherwise this
| would be the solution everywhere
| jmcgeeney wrote:
| You don't usually need to store energy for a significant
| period of time, just until the daily peak. Last I checked,
| the efficiency for charge + discharge was something like
| 70%, which, in any case, is much better than the 0% energy
| savings from using that energy to mine crypto.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| However bad batteries are at storing energy long-term, I
| guarantee that bitcoin mining rigs are _worse_. It 's hard
| for a battery to do worse than losing 100% of "stored"
| energy immediately to heat.
| labster wrote:
| Bitcoin mining uses up all of the efficiency gains from energy
| saving over the past decade, and more. Bitcoin incentivizes
| carbon production by keeping electricity demand artificially
| high, even dedicating entire coal power plants to a single
| mining location. Therefore, cryptocurrency has already
| guaranteed we will never have time to advance on the Kardashev
| scale.
| zherbert wrote:
| That's preposterous, Bitcoin incentivizes production of
| whatever energy is _cheapest_. That does not necessarily mean
| fossil fuels, though it is often that those are cheaper.
|
| Hydro is a perfect example. A sizeable percentage of all
| Bitcoin mining is done with cheap hydro.
|
| Bitcoin will do the same for nuclear, making it cheap and
| plentiful.
| labster wrote:
| How does Bitcoin incentivize cheap energy? It only
| incentivizes energy that has a marginal cost less than the
| Bitcoin it can produce. As long as human speculation
| outpaces finite resources, it makes economic sense to burn
| the most expensive, dijon fuels. This is true even if
| externalities are factored into energy prices, which they
| aren't.
| Aretas77 wrote:
| Take the benefits and double them up to get the drawbacks.
|
| The components used for mining could have much better use cases
| and the raw material shortage does not make this easier.
|
| I doubt that mining is the reason why
| countries/companies/people are pushing for that cheaper green
| energy.
|
| Additionally, the cryptocurrency market right now is a mess, an
| online casino one might say, where only few can benefit.
|
| And to push prices up, people are encouraging others to buy
| them, to push the prices up more and not because they believe
| in the future.
| zherbert wrote:
| You think the current global financial system is energy
| efficient? How about the raw materials used by global
| militarizes financed by unending money printing? If you fast
| forward a couple decades, and Bitcoin becomes the global
| reserve currency, mining will be far more efficient than the
| amount of enormous military spending and middle-eastern oil
| production financed by fiat currencies and the petrodollar
| standard.
|
| You people are advocating for shutting down one of the most
| important human advancements of all time - money that is
| directly linked to energy.
| Aretas77 wrote:
| It is not efficient, I agree. But the cryptocurrencies
| should be of low priority right now, there are much more
| significant topics and problems, plus - how do you expect
| people to use cryptocurrencies if they won't even have any
| computers due to various shortages caused by the miners?
|
| Maybe sometime, but not right now.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Breaking windows incentivizes the plentiful production of new
| windows. This will make it so that there is no such thing as
| window shortages in the future.
| thomcano wrote:
| I didn't realized that Kazakhstan is one of the top giant miners
| in the world. Is there any reason for this one?
| vbezhenar wrote:
| It shares border with China. Mining has been forbidden in China
| recently, Kazakhstan has cheap electricity, they flocked here.
| baybal2 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostochny_Coal_Mine
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| Is this even possible to restrict? Does this also basically ban
| all datacenters until you prove you're not mining?
| vimy wrote:
| The crypto hate here is ridiculous. Every thread about crypto is
| the dropbox thread x 10.
|
| Unless you want to live in a dictatorship where the government
| dictates what is and isn't a useful use of energy, the constant
| bitcoin electricity usage hysteria is a waste of everyone's
| energy. :-)
| malermeister wrote:
| Why does a government that regulates energy use have to be a
| dictatorship? A democratically elected one could put measures
| in place too.
| oblio wrote:
| Aren't there quite strict regulations about what you can use
| electricity for, in almost every country in the world?
| Especially at industrial scale.
|
| I don't think you can just start your own power plant and/or
| major consumer without a ton of permits.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| You're not free to use the grid as you please. That's not how
| freedom works anywhere. The grid can decide to subsidize some
| uses, tax others, and forbid some.
| justbored123 wrote:
| Yep, sounds like the problem is that they just can't get
| healthy price market for electricity going to regulate
| consumption by just increasing cost to certain brackets.
|
| My shitty country has the same problem, too many illegal power
| connections that they fail to properly control and punish.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I wonder if cryptominers in poorer countries speed up the
| buildout of more stable and robust electricity networks in the
| long run? I understand they sometimes stress it too much in the
| short run such as here and then the regulators have to take
| action but the interplay on a longer timescale would be
| interesting to see.
| [deleted]
| nwah1 wrote:
| You could say the same about whether bridges to nowhere
| generate important economic robustness. The problem with this
| view is it ignores that such activity crowds out the ability to
| do something actually useful with the same resources, while
| also producing all the same externalities (both positive and
| negative).
| cinntaile wrote:
| You're talking about the broken window fallacy. I don't think
| it's immediately clear that a more robust and stable
| electricity network wouldn't lead to additional economical
| and societal benefits thus making it a positive sum game?
| notahacker wrote:
| I don't think it's immediately clear that cryptomining
| leads to a more robust and stable electricity network for
| the people it outcompetes on power. The evidence of
| Kazakhstan certainly doesn't point in that direction...
| cinntaile wrote:
| What do you mean by outcompeting?
|
| I don't know the answer of course otherwise I wouldn't
| have posed the question but I guess asking questions
| qualifies for getting downvoted to -3. Some of you are
| clearly sitting on all the answers but you're not sharing
| them with the rest of us.
|
| We see the short term results, my question was directed
| at the long term. I don't think it really matters if it's
| crypto mining or aluminum melters or any other energy
| intensive industry, it just happens to be crypto mining
| in Kazakhstan.
|
| It just seems plausible since higher energy usage
| correlates with BNP. (I know, I know tax havens are
| exceptions to that rule.) If mining sticks around then
| this may turn out well for Kazakhstan, from an economical
| perspective.
| notahacker wrote:
| What I mean by outcompeting is that if rich cryptominers
| are pricing poor Kazakhs out of an electricity supply
| which was perfectly fine before, I don't see how that
| counts as a win for their robustness and stability of
| power supply.
|
| And PoW crypto isn't like aluminium smelting. The value
| of aluminium smelting isn't in winning an arms race with
| other aluminium smelters based on how much power they
| consume, so if you bring more power plants online at a
| lower-than-average price, market logic doesn't dictate
| that competing aluminium smelters should immediately seek
| to buy _all_ that capacity until they 've bid the price
| up to the original level.
|
| The whole "crypto creates demand for innovation in power
| supply" only makes sense if you believe people haven't
| been investing in innovation in power supply because
| there's been barely anybody that wants cheap electricity
| for the past century or so! That _might_ be the case for
| [formerly] tiny niches affected by new use cases, like
| say, _lithium batteries suitable for powering vehicles_.
| It isn 't the case for _Kazakh ability to keep the lights
| on_
| cinntaile wrote:
| > What I mean by outcompeting is that if rich
| cryptominers are pricing poor Kazakhs out of an
| electricity supply which was perfectly fine before, I
| don't see how that counts as a win for their robustness
| and stability of power supply.
|
| The article doesn't mention any of that though. It says
| that the miners got cut off (rationed) because 3 coal
| plants were offline. The regulator is stepping in to make
| sure regular people and industries are prioritized.
|
| > The whole "crypto creates demand for innovation in
| power supply" only makes sense if you believe people
| haven't been investing in innovation in power supply
| because there's been barely anybody that wants cheap
| electricity for the past century or so! That might be the
| case for [formerly] tiny niches affected by new use
| cases, like say, lithium batteries suitable for powering
| vehicles. It isn't the case for Kazakh ability to keep
| the lights on
|
| Investments and innovation follow demand so now that
| demand has risen and assuming demand stays high, what
| should we expect will happen? This is not unique to
| crypto, it just happens to be the driving force here. Of
| course other industries can lead to similar outcomes. If
| you think this will not lead to innovation and
| investments, you are basically saying that cryptomining
| deviates from the norm and you would need to justify this
| claim.
| notahacker wrote:
| > The article doesn't mention any of that though. It says
| that the miners got cut off (rationed) because 3 coal
| plants were offline. The regulator is stepping in to make
| sure regular people and industries are prioritized.
|
| The regulator has stepped in to ration to avoid
| cryptominers competing with the Kazakh poor for the
| electricity that is left over. That sounds like the power
| supply is less robust to me. (A quick google suggests the
| power companies are claiming the shutdowns were scheduled
| but the recent demand spikes weren't part of the plan...)
|
| > Investments and innovation follow demand so now that
| demand has risen and assuming demand stays high, what
| should we expect will happen? This is not unique to
| crypto, it just happens to be the driving force here. Of
| course other industries can lead to similar outcomes. If
| you think this will not lead to innovation and
| investments, you are basically saying that cryptomining
| deviates from the norm and you would need to justify this
| claim.
|
| I'm not sure why you're pretending I haven't already
| observed what's different about POW cryptomining (unlike
| other industries which tend to increase yields by
| consuming less energy per unit of output than the
| competition, miners seeking block rewards maximise yields
| by consuming _more_ energy, which means they are highly
| incentivised to consume _all_ increases in energy output
| at a given price) or indeed why you are claiming that the
| _norm_ is for increase in demand to result in something
| becoming cheaper and more widely available (it invariably
| has the opposite effect in the short term, and usually in
| the long run too) in an attempt to shift the burden of
| proof onto me, but doesn 't exactly create the impression
| that you are arguing in good faith.
| cinntaile wrote:
| You are making assumptions about what I write, if
| something is unclear simply ask and I will try to clarify
| my argument. I am not saying the norm for an increase in
| demand is to result in something becoming cheaper and
| more widely available. I am saying demand spurs
| investment and innovation. I am saying that this could
| have beneficial effects such as a more stable and robust
| electricity net as well as other societal benefits, since
| this is what we usually observe when investments are made
| and innovation happens. This is not unique to crypto
| mining, hence why expecting something else to happen
| would be outside the norm.
| dannyw wrote:
| To say it generates no value is a misstatement. Proof of Work
| offers some value, it is just consumimg too much.
|
| Think about as providing some form of uncensorsable money, eg
| for orgs like Wikileakd, Tor Project, etc.
| nwah1 wrote:
| But the uncensorable aspect also allows money transfer
| between organizations that we do want to censor, like
| terrorists or those who prey on children. So even that
| supposed benefit is largely nullified.
| sharperguy wrote:
| This point hinges on the assumption that bitcoin itself
| doesn't provide any benefit to humanity.
|
| If its a useless speculative asset with no purpose other than
| as a ponzi scheme then yes, all energy used towards it is a
| huge waste and needs to be eradicated immediately.
|
| If it has the potential to allow people to save their wealth
| under unstable regimes, as a long term hedge against
| inflation, as away of getting people to save more instead of
| spending every penny they have before it depreciates, to
| cause real wages to rise again, to encourage actual economic
| productivity rather than continually investing fake printed
| currency into an endless series of economic bubbles producing
| significantly more environmental damage than anything that
| could occur as a result of bitcoin mining.... then it is not
| waste.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Why not create incentives to mine crypto with solar?
|
| Lower or eliminate any sort of capitol gains taxes on crypto
| mined with solar, make solar panels tax free for companies that
| mine crypto, and crypto would not only go up in value but the
| solar industry would also be supported.
|
| Oh yeah. The Federal Reserve and the central banks need fiat.
| rank0 wrote:
| Is this a serious suggestion?
|
| Us peasants have to work for the government 4 months a year and
| even after our take home we eat taxes on purchases, investments
| and property.
|
| But yeah, let's give crypto miners the tax breaks surely they
| deserve it...
| azth wrote:
| > we eat taxes on purchases, investments and property.
|
| Maybe lobby to lower taxes then?
| ravenstine wrote:
| It's serious to the extent that I'm introducing it as a topic
| of discussion. Whether I wholeheartedly believe in it is a
| different story.
|
| As I mentioned to someone else, applying a solution to one
| particular problem doesn't exclude it from being applied
| elsewhere.
| latchkey wrote:
| https://oilcity.news/wyoming/legislature/2021/04/15/gordon-s...
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Because you could use that existing solar for more useful
| things.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Why do we want to subsidize a huge block of solar panel
| production going toward crypto mining? Not to mention the waste
| of computing resources that crypto burns through on a constant
| basis.
|
| The core problem of crypto is that despite what its promotors
| seek in vain to prove, it provides little societal value, while
| requiring a constant flow of an enormous amount of resources.
| This doesn't change whether your GPU farm is connected to a
| coal plant or solar field.
| graeme wrote:
| Why would you want to give crypto a selective subsidy vs
| subdizing solar for all? (If solar subsidy is your goal)
|
| Picking winners doesn't work very well
| ravenstine wrote:
| Well, I didn't say it _couldn 't_ be subsidized for all. In
| fact that'd probably a great thing. Just applying a potential
| solution to one particular problem doesn't exclude it from
| being applied elsewhere.
| [deleted]
| cletus wrote:
| And so it begins.
|
| In the developed world in particular, we're seeing the move away
| from fossil-fuel power. This is good but currently relatively
| expensive.
|
| Crypto mining is starting to have very real impact on the ability
| of other people to live. It is adversely and disproportionately
| affecting poor people (who pay a greater share of their income
| for power).
|
| And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for
| society.
|
| Crypto-mining apologists will point to figures that say "crypto-
| mining uses mostly renewable energy". What this actually means is
| that crypto-mining is focused on areas that have hydroelectric
| power because it's the cheapest, generally.
|
| While you might say that's still good, it's starting to raise
| prices for other people. this has been an issue in towns on the
| Hudson Valley in New York, for example.
|
| Even if you believe the overall impact of crypto-mining is small
| I _guarantee_ you it 's only a matter of time before politicians
| start using crypto-mining as a convenient whipping boy.
| paganel wrote:
| > Crypto-mining apologists will point to figures that say
| "crypto-mining uses mostly renewable energy".
|
| Which is a shit take anyway because that means that non-
| renewable energy (plus the renewable energy non-consumed by the
| miners) is now more expensive for everyone else, it's the basic
| law of supply and demand.
|
| And in the process those miners are also making non-renewable
| energy a more desirable investment because it now returns more
| money to those who invest in it (because of said increased
| prices people are now forced to pay for said non-renewable
| energy).
| njarboe wrote:
| If big crypto-mining syndacates start using small scale
| nuclear (as some have shown interest in doing) to be carbon
| neutral, they could be on the vangaurd of proving out the
| technology and be a net positive in the medium to long term.
|
| They really want low, consistent prices for electricity.
| Hydro gives them that but nuclear could also. Solar and wind
| do not.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > If big crypto-mining syndacates start using small scale
| nuclear...
|
| Any volunteers for living in the exclusion zones?
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Seems fine to me. I already have nuclear irradiated
| genes, I'm sterile, and I prefer nature for company over
| human beings.
|
| (If you were sarcastically implying that no one would
| volunteer, you are mistaken. I encourage making your
| point more clearly and with less sarcasm, since a
| worthwhile discussion _is_ possible if you do so.)
| malermeister wrote:
| I keep reading that this or the other crypto thing had a
| design flaw that caused people to lose millions.
|
| I really don't want those same kinds of people running
| nuclear reactors so I can read about how crypto scheme X
| literally blew up.
| nathias wrote:
| so crypto doesn't count for supply and demand or what are you
| saying?
| cletus wrote:
| It's sad that this gets downvoted because you're not wrong eg
| [1][2][3].
|
| [1]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2284222-coal-
| powered-bi...
|
| [2]: https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-
| china-env...
|
| [3]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/old-coal-
| plant-i...
| latchkey wrote:
| China has banned mining.
|
| Update cause I'm getting down voted: the point is that the
| quoted articles are talking about China and are therefore
| outdated. I'm not referring to what is happening today with
| regards to the movement of mining.
|
| _Some_ miners moved to Kazakhstan, but the truth is, they
| went global.
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| Did you read any of the articles? China banned mining.
| Chinese miners moved to Kazakhstan. Now Kazakhstan is
| having power shortages.
| latchkey wrote:
| Apparently you didn't fully read the article. The
| shortages aren't the miners, it is the fact that 3 plants
| shut down...
|
| "On October 15, the national grid operator, KEGOC,
| announced electricity rationing after three major coal-
| fired power plants shut down. KEGOC did not directly
| blame miners, but it used language similar to the energy
| minister's and said it was cutting off customers who
| "over-consume.""
| LurkingPenguin wrote:
| > KEGOC did not directly blame miners, but it used
| language similar to the energy minister's and _said it
| was cutting off customers who "over-consume."_
|
| And:
|
| > "We have seen that our [country's] electricity
| consumption has literally increased by 7 percent in one
| year. That's a very big increase," Energy Minister Magzum
| Mirzagaliyev said on September 30, noting that
| consumption usually grows by about 2 percent per annum.
|
| > _Mirzagaliyev linked the demand to mining_ and proposed
| the government limit supplies of electricity to 1 MW per
| mining farm and to 100 MW for the whole sector.
|
| Where's the mystery here? Again, hopefully for the last
| time: China banned mining. Chinese miners moved to
| Kazakhstan. Now Kazakhstan is having power shortages.
| latchkey wrote:
| > China banned mining. Chinese miners moved to
| Kazakhstan. Now Kazakhstan is having power shortages.
|
| We wouldn't be reading about power shortages _at all_ if
| 3 major power plants didn 't go offline.
| malermeister wrote:
| We also wouldn't be reading about them if crypto people
| didnt increase power draw by 7%.
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| Energy is not fungible. Just because you have electricity in
| place A doesn't mean you can get it to place B in a cost-
| effective way, so mining next to, say, a hydro station with
| spare capacity (where electricity is cheap) doesn't
| necessarily have any impact at all elsewhere.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| What an odd take, given that electricity is almost the
| poster definition of fungible. Sure there are transmission
| losses, but they are very minor.
|
| It's not perfectly fungible, but nothing in the real world
| is, everything has some sort of shipping costs. I can't
| think of anything more fungible than electricity except for
| virtual items like dollars.
| SAWZALL wrote:
| THANK YOU! Finally, someone with a fully functioning
| brain cell.
| paganel wrote:
| I disagree, the hydro stations that we have in place were
| in fact meant to transport electricity from place A (a
| mountain area, in most of the cases) to place B (where
| people actually live) in cost-effective ways, that was
| their purpose from the very beginning. Using that energy up
| increases the price people from place B have to pay.
|
| You could say that one could build a new hydro station just
| for delivering energy to crypto miners but that would open
| another can of worms as we're slowly starting to realise
| that hydro stations are not the most environment-friendly
| things imaginable (especially when it comes to habitat loss
| and disruption).
| acdha wrote:
| It's not that simple because these imbalances won't last
| forever. If the cost of renewable power remains low, it
| will encourage people in those regions to buy EVs,
| electrify their homes and businesses, relocate industrial
| usage to that area, etc.
|
| If crypto-miners jump in to soak up that excess capacity,
| that cycle doesn't happen and there's very little positive
| outcome to show compared to all of those uses. 50 years
| from now, people are going to wish electrifying normal life
| had happened quickly but they're not going to be using a
| blockchain or glad that some speculators were able to make
| large returns for a few years.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| What you must also mention is that electricity is a finite
| resource. Consuming electrical energy - even at a hydro
| power station - means the energy you used isn't delivered
| to somewhere else.
| mr_spothawk wrote:
| is electricity finite? i don't think so.
|
| you might say that the grid can only support a certain
| load at a some given time, but obviously more energy
| _could_ be provided.
|
| in any case, i think it's silly to concern ourselves with
| (specifically Bitcoin's) energy consumption, as it's tiny
| compared to the efficiency gains that are realized
| elsewhere as a result of bitcoin's adoption.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Yes, electricity is finite. Just because you could add
| more power generation doesn't mean it's infinite, c'mon
| now.
| latchkey wrote:
| Specific example:
|
| Coinmint in upstate new york is located in an old Alcoa
| aluminum smelter plant that has long shut down. It gets
| power from Moses Saunders dam a few miles away. The factory
| was originally placed near the dam so that it could provide
| massive amounts of power to keep the pot lines hot 24/7.
|
| The whole place is super remote. I've seen the costs for
| carrying hundreds of MW just a few miles and they are
| massive at this scale. You can't just economically build
| more lines to send the power elsewhere.
|
| Short of firing up the superfund site again and smelting
| aluminum, a bitcoin mine is literally the most profitable
| thing you could use this power for. The dam needs
| maintenance and a constant draw of power to keep it
| operational, and this pays for it.
|
| Since the power lines are direct from the dam to the plant
| and the contracts were all drawn up decades ago, this has
| zero impact on the local community prices. Never mind that
| the local community doesn't draw anywhere near enough power
| compared with what the dam produces.
| ilamont wrote:
| The crypto miners who set up shop in Northern NY to take
| advantage of cheap hydro and wind power caused
| electricity prices to spike for local residents,
| resulting in municipalities leveraging new taxes on the
| companies or issuing outright bans. This article is from
| 2018:
|
| _Plattsburgh went over its power allotment and was
| forced to purchase electricity on the open market for far
| higher prices. This cost was distributed among the city's
| residents, some of whom ended up paying between $100 and
| $200 more for their electricity than usual._
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/8xk4qv/bitcoin-ban-
| plattsbur...
|
| Massena (near the Alcoa facility) this year issued a
| moratorium so the city could draw up new regulations:
|
| _"The moratorium is a pretty straightforward procedure.
| The language is relatively clear. The idea is that we
| place a moratorium on any further cryptocurrency mining
| development while we get some regulations in place that
| will govern those types of facilities. The planning board
| had indicated, and I agreed that the code lacked any real
| regulatory scheme for these types of facilities within
| the town," Mr. Gustafson said._
|
| https://www.nny360.com/communitynews/business/town-of-
| massen...
|
| https://www.northcountrynow.com/letters/snake-oil-alert-
| bloc...
| latchkey wrote:
| You picked off the easily googled articles that are
| unrelated to Coinmint and happened during the crypto boom
| in 2017 / 2018, when people were renting warehouses and
| filling them with miners. Everyone got rightfully pissed.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Ya would have to agree. That far upstate NY, it's a
| different game.
|
| The other aspect to consider, which is being dropped, is
| Coinmint operates with support from NYS via Empire State
| Development, so there's that.
| SAWZALL wrote:
| THANK YOU! EXACTLY!
| ilamont wrote:
| The article about the moratorium is from the summer, and
| if you are looking for the Coinmint angle, here you go
| (dated July 23, 2021):
|
| https://www.northcountrynow.com/news/massena-town-board-
| plan...
| latchkey wrote:
| You are just googling articles and not even reading them.
| Coinmint is mentioned in there, but there is no 'angle'
| in that article other than the mention. They are still in
| operation today and expanding and I doubt that is going
| to change any time soon.
| SAWZALL wrote:
| Oh, PLEASE! POST MORE _VICE_ LINKS, YOU SILLY MORTAL.
| jamincan wrote:
| There's on the order of 7+ million people within 150km of
| the dam. I don't think I would call that remote.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| Not to mention that all New York power plants, including
| Moses Saunders, are connected to a massive electrical
| highway that runs straight to New York City.
| latchkey wrote:
| The lines from Moses Saunders to the plant are direct.
| You can even see them on google maps if you zoom in and
| follow them.
|
| You can't just suddenly push more power through the same
| lines.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| The Moses Saunders dam is connected to the NYISO
| transmission network. The power system in New York is
| designed to move power north to south, west to east
| (lines tend to be symmetric in theory but a good model is
| that the city is the load). You can look at a price map
| of New York State and see that. Power from the dam can go
| from it to anywhere else in New York (or the eastern
| interconnect) at the cost of transmission losses and
| tolling. Drawing power directly from a hydro plant
| doesn't make that power green because, insofar as the
| plant could supply electricity to the rest of the grid,
| it means your power usage has the same environmental
| impact as the average unit of electricity on the grid at
| that time. The only thing it does is reduce your cost.
| latchkey wrote:
| The amount of load that is allocated to the Alcoa
| facility has been negotiated and fixed into contracts and
| capex has been spent to build out the infrastructure for
| that. It isn't like you can just flip a switch and direct
| the power to the NYISO.
|
| > at the cost of transmission losses and tolling
|
| ... a key point that I feel you're glossing over.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| Yes you can flip a switch and direct the power elsewhere,
| that is what switching yards do. The plant might have a
| supply contract with Alcoa but if Alcoa doesn't use the
| supply they contracted for you they don't have to throw
| the power away. Usually those agreements have take or pay
| provisions which require the buyer to pay regardless of
| whether they take the power. If they don't take the power
| the generator is free to sell it on.
|
| Transmission losses are not nothing but they are not
| huge. Maybe 2% to New York (it isn't they far). Maybe 5%
| total if you include distribution.
|
| Edit: Follow the lines out of the plant, at 44.978432,
| -74.797925 they split.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| This does make me wonder how difficult it is to raise the
| voltage on the same lines by changing transformers.
|
| You might need to separate the lines more (and need
| bigger insulators), but I wonder how much of this gets
| overbuilt at the point of construction so you can upgrade
| to run more energy over the same wires without replacing
| them.
|
| Anyone know?
| jamincan wrote:
| The NYPA is in the process of upgrading the Massena-
| Adirondack transmission lines which will initially be at
| 230kV, but later be able to be run at 345kV.
|
| https://www.nny360.com/news/stlawrencecounty/power-
| authority...
| dogman144 wrote:
| Lol your 150km loop captures Ottawa, Montreal and
| Kingston in Canada and Watertown/Plattsburgh NY.
|
| All of these are about as apples to oranges in relation
| to geographic ties to Massena as you can get.
|
| Between Massena and those places is a whole lot of
| nothing for a couple hours.
|
| That's like saying there is some meaningful geographic
| tie between Bethlehem, PA and NYC (133km), or that "Unity
| House, PA" is not remote because it's 143km away from NYC
| and its 8.4mil residents.
| latchkey wrote:
| Do you know how much to costs, per km, to run and
| maintain those lines?
| jamincan wrote:
| You seemed to be asserting that without a major user near
| the dam, they would need to build more transmission lines
| or otherwise waste the generating capacity available.
|
| This seemed unlikely to me, as transmission grids are
| built with significant redundancy, especially for the
| high-voltage networks. For example, the transmission
| capacity for the 8 500kV circuits from Bruce Nuclear
| (ignoring 3 230kV circuits) is 1.5 times the generating
| capacity. I wasn't sure about this particular station,
| but with a bit of digging, it seems like the Massena-
| Adirondack lines alone (there are several others) can
| carry 900MW, which is more than the capacity of the power
| station. So no additional lines should be needed.
| oblio wrote:
| I can't be that much since we've had long distance high
| voltage transmission lines for decades, even in
| relatively poor countries.
|
| Plus, if you really wanted to because there was no other
| use, you could, you know, shut down the hydro power plant
| and return the land to nature. Hydro power plants still
| have an environmental impact, no point in running them
| for what is practically, speculation.
| latchkey wrote:
| In the US, the people who pay for those lines are the
| consumers and it isn't cheap to run. This translates to
| more expensive power bills.
|
| Shutting down the dam isn't going to happen. It is split
| by Canada and the US and does more than just power
| Coinmint.
| Symbiote wrote:
| The lines are cheap enough to run. About 1-2% of the
| electricity cost in the UK.
| jcranmer wrote:
| People don't build hydroelectric plants in, say, northern
| Quebec and suddenly discover that there's all this free
| energy and no one around to use it. The build those
| hydroelectric plants _and_ the transmission lines to places
| (say, Montreal) where people need that energy, even if
| those lines are 1000s of km long.
|
| The electricity may be cheaper next to that hydro station
| because you're not _also_ paying for the 1000km
| transmission line. But your use of that electricity would
| preclude the people 1000km away from using it.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Taxation could be a solution though, with rebates for low-
| income people and individuals. This means that the
| disadvantaged still get access to cheap power, where as crypto
| miners have to pay the (taxed) price which makes their
| operation less profitable.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's not uncommon for poor people to not have spare money to
| float some taxes to the government for up to 12 months until
| they can get their rebate at tax time. That's assuming that
| the rebate is easy enough to get for 100% of those eligible
| to claim it.
|
| This seems strictly worse than just taxing "mined" bitcoins
| more harshly.
| politician wrote:
| Would you be bothered if folks built their own solar farm to
| power crypto mining on their own independent grid?
| oblio wrote:
| Any way you skin this cat, resources are limited. So it would
| be taking away resources from other uses.
|
| Plus producing solar farms is harmful to the environment, as
| is running them.
|
| Unless you actually use solar farms for something useful, you
| know, replacing stuff with a higher negative environmental
| impact.
|
| Building your own power grid for crypto speculation is kind
| of the textbook definition of greed and selfishness.
| politician wrote:
| The Sun is not a limited resource, not until we're a K2
| civilization anyway -- and we're no where close to K2. The
| other materials in solar panels are abundant and reusable.
| There is plenty of unoccupied desert to build on.
|
| In what way are resources limited?
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > The Sun is not a limited resource,
|
| Photovoltaic cells and the materials to use them _are_
| limited and the amount of power produced by solar today
| is _very_ limited.
|
| > not until we're a K2 civilization anyway
|
| People should read less science-fiction and look at the
| actual world as it exists today.
| politician wrote:
| Yes, let's look at the actual world as it exists today:
| the land area required to power the annual global energy
| consumption (110 TWh) with the inefficient solar panels
| that we have today is smaller than the US state of New
| Mexico.
|
| How's that for pragmatics?
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Hyper pure quartz for photovoltaic solar is limited.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Are you thinking of purified silicon? Silicon is made
| starting with quartz, quartzite, or similar minerals rich
| in silicon dioxide. Crude silicon always requires
| additional purification for solar uses after it's
| initially created, so the purity of quartz going into the
| electric furnace isn't critical.
|
| You can see the process flow from raw materials to
| completed PV modules here:
|
| http://oasis.mechse.illinois.edu/me432/ME432_L31_Nov4.pdf
| nitrogen wrote:
| A bit, because that solar manufacturing capacity wasn't used
| for reducing global carbon emissions or other direct human
| needs.
| politician wrote:
| On the contrary, it directly reduces global carbon
| emissions by removing a load from a grid that has not been
| decarbonized.
| bena wrote:
| I think the other thing ignored is that crypto tends to take as
| much power as possible.
|
| Making crypto more efficient wouldn't make it use less
| electricity, it would just increase the number of miners. And
| you'd be a fool not to do that because only one node becomes
| part of the chain and the more you mine, the greater your
| chances you get that golden ticket.
|
| Crypto will always try to get power usage as close to 100% as
| possible from every possible source. We never get off of fossil
| fuels unless crypto stops being a thing.
|
| And not to mention, being at capacity all the time is a bad
| thing. In something you want available all the time, you want a
| lot of potential capacity in case of failures or demand spikes.
| nathias wrote:
| crypto provides a very important social utility to the poor,
| the only hope that they might stop being that
| morning_gelato wrote:
| It does not appear that this particular electricity shortage is
| caused by moving away from fossil fuels. The coal plant
| shutdowns mentioned in the article were outages (2 unplanned
| and 1 planned) [1] rather than permanent closures due to an
| energy transition.
|
| [1] https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/kazakhstan-rations-power-
| aft...
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Even if it did use mostly renewable energy, which I doubt (I've
| heard some buy old coal fired plants to run their mining
| operations), it's still energy that could have been used for
| something useful. It takes away power for real enterprises and
| people that use it for their daily living.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| An important distinction here, this really only applies to PoW
| (proof of work) tokens. The original philosophy for Bitcoin
| being proof of work is that you had to give up something
| (electricity) to produce it.
|
| Your comment is very true for Bitcoin and other PoW tokens but
| that will soon be in the rearview mirror as more and more coins
| either come out as PoS (proof of stake) or migrate to it (in
| the case of Ethereum), even Bitcoin is taking about migrating
| to a PoS model.
|
| Crypto will evolve past this.
| cletus wrote:
| This has been a popular defense for several years now. For
| awhile I too bought into it. But there are real questions
| about whether it can ever work and won't in fact be
| vulnerable to attack.
|
| The best evidence for this is that PoS hasn't happened
| despite years of talk about it.
| dlubarov wrote:
| > But there are real questions about whether it can ever
| work and won't in fact be vulnerable to attack.
|
| At this point PoS is quite prevalent among modern
| blockchains (Cosmos, Solana, NEAR, Algorand, Polygon,
| Cardano, ...). As far as I know, there have been no
| successful attacks based on PoS's theoretical weaknesses,
| like its reliance on weak subjectivity. Some PoS networks
| like NXT have been in production for nearly a decade now.
| Isn't that fairly strong evidence that PoS works fine in
| practice?
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| There have been several consensus failures from PoS,
| including the recent outage of Solana. One just needs to
| look at the Steem/Hive 'takeover' by Sun to see how
| political wars can form and threaten the security model
| in PoS world. Contrast with bcash incident of 2017.
|
| A few years ago, I saw a Hybrid PoS/Work chain (a
| satoshi-client derivative coin) being attacked in real
| time, and totally hijacked. Ultimately it was a bug in
| the PoS logic that enabled it. I am very apprehensive
| about PoS even providing a fragment of the security.
| Chain takeovers are a real threat in PoS world. The
| attacker needs very little physical resources -- just
| know the right stakeholders. PoW need resources. PoW is
| trivial to verify and test. PoS advocates like to gloss
| over all the real world failures.
|
| You may notice that during the China ban, Bitcoin worked
| pretty much as expected (with some slight block delays
| until difficulty adjusted). PoW works.
|
| The other metric to observe is how many chain reorg's
| occur due to PoS. This is practically a non-event in
| large PoW chains like Bitcoin, today. In Turing complete
| chains like EVM chains, it might not be possible to
| reorder transactions with no-loss during reorgs as
| transactions are state dependent. PoS potentially
| destroys finality.
| dlubarov wrote:
| > the recent outage of Solana
|
| Do you mean [1]? It sounds like the consensus issues
| there were related to Solana's unusual PoH model.
| Validators being "unable to process all the proposed
| forks" would never happen in a BFT PoS model, like
| Tendermint etc, since forks cannot occur (under a 2/3
| honesty assumption).
|
| > Ultimately it was a bug in the PoS logic that enabled
| it.
|
| To state the obvious, PoW chains can have bugs too. It
| sounds like you were just looking at a niche project that
| didn't have high standards for engineering and audits.
|
| > PoS advocates like to gloss over all the real world
| failures.
|
| PoS and PoW chains have both had plenty of incidents, but
| you haven't really pointed out any PoS incidents that
| were caused by weaknesses inherent in the PoS security
| model.
|
| > Bitcoin worked pretty much as expected
|
| Bitcoin has been around the longest, has a relatively
| small feature set, and rarely changes. One would expect
| such a chain to be very stable regardless of PoW/PoS.
|
| > The other metric to observe is how many chain reorg's
| occur due to PoS.
|
| Reorgs can't occur in BFT PoS chains (under a 2/3 honesty
| assumption).
|
| [1] https://solana.com/news/9-14-network-outage-initial-
| overview
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Agreed about bugs. Bugs can exist everywhere. It is far
| easier to validate and test PoW code. Its a <
| comparision.
|
| Contrasting: https://etherscan.io/blocks_forked and
| https://polygonscan.com/blocks_forked it would appear
| that indeed PoS BFT chains like Polygon can and do reorg,
| very regularly.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > What this actually means is that crypto-mining is focused on
| areas that have hydroelectric power because it's the cheapest,
| generally.
|
| Hydro is also interesting because it _has_ to output power.
| When the reservoir gets above a certain level water has to be
| let out because dams can 't handle overflow. That's achieved by
| diverting water to a stream without a turbine.
| dogman144 wrote:
| > this has been an issue in towns on the Hudson Valley in New
| York, for example.
|
| Believe you have your NY State river valleys swapped. There's
| not much mining downstate. Most of the the mining in NYS is up
| in the North Country and pulling excess power of the St.
| Lawrence River and a dam up there that supplies a fair bit of
| power to NYS/Canada/surrounding region. There was a study from
| Wharton recently on the impacts of power prices as a result.
| risyachka wrote:
| "extremely limited utility for society" is harldy an argument.
|
| It's limited today. In 10 years it can change many things for
| people (very possibly in areas that are not even close to
| crypto).
|
| Going to space had hardly any utility, going to Mars even less.
| But on the way there will a TON of progress and discoveries
| made that will be used in medicine, manufacturing etc.
| oblio wrote:
| Yeah, but meanwhile let's not burn the planet down.
|
| Let's ban all resource intensive crypto-currencies.
|
| If they're so good for society, surely they can be lean, too?
| Fiahil wrote:
| I'm a bit of a crypto enthusiast, but I generally agree that
| crypto-mining suck too much power out of the grid for it's
| current utility level.
|
| However, your comment is a bit short-sighted and doesn't
| account for the switch of Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake
| algorithms that is currently happening. PoS use A LOT less
| power and doesn't need extensive mining farms. See also:
| https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-power-no-more/
|
| The only remaining question is: are we going to transition away
| from bitcoin, the largest PoW bastion, or not ? Probably, yes.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| No, never. Bitcoin will be PoW forever. PoS is and will never
| have the same security properties of PoW. Its bad for
| decentralization, its bad for censorship resistance, and its
| bad for the free world.
| L33tCrown wrote:
| Actually PoW accentuates the concentration of miners, while
| in Ethereum 2 you are limited to a few mining machine, thus
| distributing more equally the mining power.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Actually, no, the opposite. One of the fundamental
| problems with PoS is that it has no externally observable
| metric that a block is correct. PoW is trivially
| externally verifiable. This is good for decentralization.
| There can be no lies from the miners.
| ilammy wrote:
| Bitcoin miners _per se_ do not control Bitcoin network.
| They are the backbone, but the nodes ultimately decide
| whether they include a mined block or not. Validating
| blocks is way cheaper than mining them. Expensive mining
| process only ensures that you can 't easily flood the
| network with bogus blocks.
| Fiahil wrote:
| I didn't meant for Bitcoin to transition to PoS, but rather
| everyone using Ethereum instead of Bitcoin because it's now
| PoS.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Yeaaaaah i will believe it when i see it. I don't think
| betting the economy on changing airplane engines mid-
| flight is a good play. My prediction is that if ETH
| switches to a PoS consensus model, the value will TANK.
| If this happens at all. I know the PoS timeline, I think
| it is fiction.
| whatisthiseven wrote:
| Ironically, ETH switching to PoS is the reason I am
| holding the currency.
|
| In the future I expect all PoW cryptocurrencies to be
| banned, or severely hobbled, because of their electricity
| usage and e-waste. I have a long bet on ETH specifically
| because of its eventual move to PoS. Bitcoin doesn't even
| have a plan, and when the legal landscape changes it will
| be in the worst position to pivot.
|
| We'll just have to see what the future holds. But I got
| my money down.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Nah, I don't think it can be banned. At least not in the
| non-authoritarian parts of the world.
|
| Even if it is, they would need to break my fingers to
| prevent me running a Bitcoin node. And I will get the
| blocks via Satellite. If there was a credible threat, we
| would go somewhere it is not.
|
| If your economic thesis is based on hoping the government
| bans something, why are you even playing with state-
| resistant decentralized monetary systems?
| oblio wrote:
| > Nah, I don't think it can be banned. At least not in
| the non-authoritarian parts of the world.
|
| Why can't it be banned? It's wasteful and closer to a
| Ponzi scheme than an actual currency.
|
| > Even if it is, they would need to break my fingers to
| prevent me running a Bitcoin node. And I will get the
| blocks via Satellite. If there was a credible threat, we
| would go somewhere it is not.
|
| That could be hard if many of the worthwhile places ban
| it :-)
|
| > If your economic thesis is based on hoping the
| government bans something, why are you even playing with
| state-resistant decentralized monetary systems?
|
| Most people in crypto are in it for the money, not for
| idealism.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| As someone who has been in this space a long time, I
| assure you I am idealistic in my positions. Hopelessly
| idealistic.
|
| What does Ban even mean? That it is illegal to run in
| places like the US? Very unlikely, and as more
| institutional money flows into it, it grows more
| unlikely. Some places are starting to put 401k/pension
| funds into it. Some places are raising it as legal
| tender. There is also that 1st amendment thing.
|
| So will it banned like drinking straws? (which are still
| available) Or banned like drugs? (which are still
| available).
|
| I feel you WANT it to be banned because it tickles your
| authoritarian tendencies. I am glad we live in a world,
| at least today, where your wishes are ignored.
| crummy wrote:
| How is the first amendment relevant here?
| oblio wrote:
| This discussion is worth revisiting in 10 years :-)
| trevyn wrote:
| I wonder what the economics are like for a Starship-
| delivered nuclear-powered Bitcoin mine in space...
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Why would Ethereum's value tank when it shall be
| switching entirely to PoS (the PoS chain is already up
| and running perfectly fine btw)?
|
| Ethereum shall also lower the block reward, lower the
| fees, and make more people hold on to their ETH to get
| the staking reward.
|
| Why would the price tank? Also ETH is already at 1/2th
| the "market cap" of Bitcoin, so a takeover is definitely
| not unthinkable.
| swalsh wrote:
| I'm currently staking ETH 2.0 Many people are.
| sushisource wrote:
| Bad for the free world? That's a bit of a fucking stretch.
| I think you can pretty comfortably argue the power and
| e-waste situation created by PoW is much worse for the
| "free world" than a slightly stronger consensus mechanism
| for a speculative value store.
| trevyn wrote:
| I haven't dug into this, but I do intuitively sense some
| risks with PoS. Can anyone recommend a good, thoughtful
| writeup of the specific risks?
| mr_spothawk wrote:
| isn't the current virtual money system already a PoS system?
|
| (i mean proof-of-stake, not the alternative inflammatory PoS)
| adventured wrote:
| > And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for
| society.
|
| Whenever you sell it, if you generated a profit on that sale,
| you are going to pay taxes on it (at least in the US).
|
| That's a real value for society. Can it ever be enough to
| offset the added squeeze on the electricity grid (which we
| really don't need right now, with EVs coming on and our grid in
| serious need of upgrade/expansion)? Someone will have to do the
| math on that.
| lottin wrote:
| No. Your profit from trading bitcoins is someone else's loss.
| The amount wealth in society remains unchanged, only it's
| allocated differently. Total value added = zero. A tax on
| profits doesn't add any value either, it's just an additional
| re-allocation of the same wealth.
| trevyn wrote:
| That's not strictly true; some forms of capital allocation
| increase future productivity (and therefore future wealth)
| at a greater rate than others.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| Crypto transactions cannot create or destroy fiat currency.
|
| If you buy and hold cryptocurrency, at no time will it
| produce "dividends" in fiat currency, or physical objects
| like cell phones.
|
| So if you make money by selling some cryptocoin, that is
| _entirely_ because someone else purchased it at a greater
| price than you did.
|
| Their expectation is that someone else will later buy it at a
| greater price from them, and that person will be buying it on
| the hope that someone will pay yet more again.
|
| No actual cashflows appear anywhere in this process.
|
| What happens when there isn't a new Greater Fool?
| ilammy wrote:
| > _at no time will it produce "dividends" in fiat currency,
| or physical objects like cell phones_
|
| Why it has to be physical? One could use cryptocurrencies
| to pay for virtual things on virtual internet, which are
| nevertheless thought to be meaningful.
|
| Like, fiat currencies exist as a way of paying taxes to
| your government _and also_ you can exchange them for goods
| and services.
| trevyn wrote:
| The value of fiat could go to zero.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for
| society.
|
| This is true for _bitcoin_. It failed at everything it set out
| to be and yet it is the most mined coin. Truly a waste of
| energy.
|
| There are better projects out there which actually provide
| value and utility. Monero is an example. It's pretty sad that
| bitcoin is still number one despite the existence of these
| projects.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| Monero is a proof of work cryptocurrency. I like PoW, it is
| the most secure distributed consensus algorithm we have
| discovered. If Monero was as popular as Bitcoin, it would use
| something similar to the energy. None of it is a 'waste of
| energy'.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I agree with you. It's a waste of energy because that
| energy is being spent mining BTC, a useless coin that isn't
| anonymous, private, decentralized, fungible, it isn't even
| an actual currency. It should be spent mining Monero
| instead which actually does have all of those properties.
| rfd4sgmk8u wrote:
| I like and hold Monero, it is a good coin.
|
| But it is not Bitcoin. It likely will never have the
| attention of large capital holders (eg: Financial
| Institutions). Ignoring the regulatory risks (which
| absolutely exist), IMHO the real critical risk is that
| bugs or bad math will break the economic model.
|
| With transparent blockchains like BTC, you can trace
| every satoshi. With opaque chains like XMR, you risk that
| a bug in the code will permit invisible inflation. This
| has happened before!
| (https://jonasnick.github.io/blog/2017/05/23/exploiting-
| low-o...).
|
| The same problem applies to all ZK based solutions --
| Zcash, Grin, Mina... You are one mistake away from
| invisible inflation that will sap all the value from the
| coin.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Ignoring the regulatory risks (which absolutely exist)
|
| I'm of the opinion that Monero is a failure if it can't
| withstand regulation.
|
| > IMHO the real critical risk is that bugs or bad math
| will break the economic model.
|
| I agree. I don't think I have sufficient cryptography
| knowledge to evaluate this risk but I acknowledge its
| existence. For the moment I trust that the Monero
| developers will do everything possible to prevent this
| from happening.
|
| Still, BTC is way too valuable for something that failed
| to become everything it was envisioned to be. It seems to
| be driven by brand name alone. XMR is way too undervalued
| and undermined for a coin that at least tried to address
| the majority of problems in BTC.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| Oh dear.
|
| I don't remember who said that crypto is Lululemon,
| Amway, multi-level marketing for tech guys, but it's
| amazing the similarities.
|
| In a discussion on Proof of work does not scale, cannot
| scale, will choke out production in the economy going
| forward because of its design, a person responds with say
| "you're right, that product is bad. Don't buy that one
| instead buy this one".
|
| Does this other one solve any of those problems? Nope,
| but the person hawking it has purchased a lot of product
| and gets a cut if you buy into it.
|
| It's amazing how disingenuous crypto conflict of interest
| has made any and all discussion about crypto.
| slaman wrote:
| Lululemon is a regular clothing retailer, with no MLM,
| membership or even loyalty program at this time.
|
| You can't earn any money by re-selling their clothes,
| you'd probably get sued if you tried.
|
| You probably mean LuLaRoe, a brand that is capitalizing
| on the name similarity.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuLaRoe
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lululemon_Athletica
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| Yes, I meant LuLaRoe thank you. Too late to correct it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| So you think I'm a multi-level marketer? Is it even
| possible to prove otherwise? I just happen to believe in
| that project and like to talk about it. Am I supposed to
| not talk about this stuff?
|
| I don't particularly care that energy is being spent on
| cryptocurrency. What I hate is the fact that energy is
| being spent on bitcoin in particular. The energy is not
| supposed to be wasted, it's supposed to _buy us
| something_. Namely, a decentralized, private, anonymous,
| uncensorable, unsanctionable digital cash network.
| Something that could withstand even the might of the US
| and China if needed.
|
| Bitcoin is not it. At this moment I think Monero is
| closest to being it. I'm totally open to new ideas.
| coldpie wrote:
| > I'm totally open to new ideas.
|
| Find a better hobby =/ This casino is not worth boiling
| the world.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's not even 1% of global energy consumption. It's the
| oil companies who are boiling the world but nobody dares
| to touch them. The cars, the factories, the developed
| nations and their comfortable lifestyles supported by
| such a highly polluting economy. China is the most
| polluting country in the world, but will the US, Europe
| stop trading with it? No. How will the west survive
| without its cheap consumer products? The very computers
| we're posting this on? Yet I'm expected to care about BTC
| energy consumption? No, I refuse to care. It's a drop in
| the ocean compared to the real problems that no
| government will lift a finger to solve.
|
| That said, I'm totally open to new hobbies.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| 1% energy usage is far from a drop in the ocean. It's
| huge!
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| In absolute terms, sure. In relative terms, it's nothing.
| Removing BTC energy consumption from the equation barely
| affects the result. In order to actually do something
| about climate change, humanity needs to tackle that big
| 80-90% chunk of energy consumption coming from much more
| problematic industries. Cryptocurrency is a nuisance by
| comparison, a minor problem.
| oblio wrote:
| > It's not even 1% of global energy consumption.
|
| For now. As its usage goes up, its energy consumption
| will go up, <<by design>>. It's crazy that we're even
| talking about a <<currency>> (!!!) using this much power.
|
| > It's the oil companies who are boiling the world but
| nobody dares to touch them.
|
| We are working on all of that, I guess you haven't been
| following the news. It's not easy, but we are.
|
| > The cars, the factories, the developed nations and
| their comfortable lifestyles supported by such a highly
| polluting economy.
|
| Same. Electric cars, environmental regulations for
| factories, increased energy efficiency for houses, etc.
|
| > China is the most polluting country in the world, but
| will the US, Europe stop trading with it? No.
|
| China's working on it and the US and EU are actually kind
| of gearing up towards a trade reduction.
|
| > No. How will the west survive without its cheap
| consumer products? The very computers we're posting this
| on?
|
| These computers are also used for work, hobbies, making
| people's lives better.
|
| > No, I refuse to care. It's a drop in the ocean compared
| to the real problems that no government will lift a
| finger to solve.
|
| It's not a drop. It's something we created about a decade
| ago and it uses up a 100th of the energy the entire world
| is using. That's crazy. And those real problems are being
| tackled, you just don't know it or refuse to see or think
| it's simple and easy to solve.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > And those real problems are being tackled, you just
| don't know it or refuse to see or think it's simple and
| easy to solve.
|
| Okay. Let's wait for them to solve the big problems first
| before we focus on inconsequential stuff like
| cryptocurrency. Once that's taken care of, we'll see if
| proof of work remains an issue.
| trevyn wrote:
| The evidence seems pretty strong that the world's gonna
| get boiled anyway, fwiw.
|
| It's fine to hope that things might be different, but
| making decisions and plans based on that hope
| seems...imprudent.
| TomSwirly wrote:
| > Namely, a decentralized, private, anonymous,
| uncensorable, unsanctionable digital cash network.
|
| In other words, the perfect ability to money launder,
| evade taxes and purchase contraband. Great.
|
| But what would a law-abiding person do with this?
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| > So you think I'm a multi-level marketer? Is it even
| possible to prove otherwise? I just happen to believe in
| that project and like to talk about it.
|
| And do you own any Monero?
| brezelgoring wrote:
| >yet it is the most mined coin
|
| Not a surprise when it is the most valuable one, a day of
| drops and the corresponding surges that come afterwards can
| set you up for a long time if you're not from the EU/US, it
| also appreciates faster than a house, which makes it a great
| asset to hold.
|
| Not a surprise it is the most sought after, looking at it
| from the supply/demand aspect.
| obiwan14 wrote:
| Is Texas next? Given that several mining companies have set up or
| about to set up shop on Rockdale and Pyote. And this is a state
| that endured a major grid crisis early this year.
| hanniabu wrote:
| That'd be tough, they'd need to figure out the mental
| gymnastics with their muh freedom narratives, especially since
| this is something that'd be good for the environment which it
| seems they're adamantly against.
| webinvest wrote:
| Crypto helps accelerate the growth, demand, and build-out of
| renewable energy.
| FriedrichN wrote:
| Which will be totally useless if it's completely consumed by
| cryptocurrencies, thus only adding to further destruction of
| the climate.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| That doesn't really help if crypto is also consuming the
| renewable energy it "helps" build-out.
|
| The problem isn't that the relative proportion of renewable
| energy is too low, but that the consumption of non-renewable
| energy is too high. It doesn't matter if renewables make up 10%
| or 90% if that number doesn't mean a large reduction in the
| consumption of fossile fuels.
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