11–20 of 97 posts
The server farm currently consumes 14 megawatts of the 106 megawatts of Greenidge's capacity. That's enough electricity to power well over 11,000 average U.S. homes.
> "The plant used to only open at peak times in the summer and winter months; the new mining initiative means it now operates all year round." This is actually pretty sad. This isn't power that would otherwise be wasted: they are emitting more pollution and greenhouse gasses in order to mine Bitcoins. Bitcoin has created a perverse incentive to pollute here.
> "The plant used to only open at peak times in the summer and winter months; the new mining initiative means it now operates all year round." This is actually pretty sad. This isn't power that would otherwise be wasted: they are emitting more pollution and greenhouse gasses in order to mine Bitcoins. Bitcoin has created a perverse incentive to pollute here.
Not any different than dumping massive amounts of cyanide into the environment so we can get some shinny yellow rocks.
I think everyone involved in this project should be ashamed. Energy shouldn't be wasted into bruteforcing sha1 checksums of lists of transactions, a hash of a previous block to have a neat Merkle tree, and random data to find checksums starting with enough zeros. This is so unnecessary when we have global warming and much better things to do with our energy budget.
Sure, money has no value when you're stuck on an island, but a bow and arrow does. Similarly, a bow and arrow has little value in Tokyo city and money does. Money is the engine that drives motivation - it can be used to compel others to do good things.
Also, people don't understand what Bitcoin mining in wholistic sense is.
Model A: Energy -> Factory (Assets) + Labor -> Revenue
Model B: Energy -> Mining hardware (Assets) -> Revenue
It is surprisingly the same (we can even argue that labor is involved in building mining assets, GPUs don't grow naturally). You can argue that any economic endeavor is a waste.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People have found bitcoin valuable to them. There are a million other things people spend money (energy) on that are just as wasteful if not more. Why not eliminate movie theaters, air conditioning, travel, sports? People should be free to do as they please and this is all enabled by energy.
It's all about finding a balance. Some people think we should reduce our energy consumption but still maintain a good quality of life. We could cut the energy consumption of bitcoin to zero and the quality of life of everyone would not change at all.
If you'd like to account for the carbon externalities, then do so. Tax carbon emissions. Proxy by purchases of fossil fuels if you have to. The reason we don't do that is that most people are rampant polluters. They know it, because when you put the numbers up, we know something interesting: most of those attempting to shame others here are rampant polluters, emitting large multiples of the median human's carbon. The truth is you can't maintain the standard of life you're talking about at the emissions necessary.
Shame doesn't work here. Only policy. Tax the carbon if that's what you don't like. Tax the sound if that's what you don't like. Tax the land on its value if you think this is an uneconomical use of the land.
But shaming is ineffective. You will walk away with the dopamine rush of outrage, having achieved nothing of note.
> "The plant used to only open at peak times in the summer and winter months; the new mining initiative means it now operates all year round." This is actually pretty sad. This isn't power that would otherwise be wasted: they are emitting more pollution and greenhouse gasses in order to mine Bitcoins. Bitcoin has created a perverse incentive to pollute here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's all about finding a balance. Some people think we should reduce our energy consumption but still maintain a good quality of life. We could cut the energy consumption of bitcoin to zero and the quality of life of everyone would not change at all.
That's not true. There are people who are making a living of trading Bitcoin whose lives will deteriorate. Since Bitcoin only functions when it's hard, cutting the energy consumption means cutting the thing. And attempting to control things like this is a whack-a-mole expedition. If you'd like to account for the carbon externalities, then do so. Tax carbon emissions. Proxy by purchases of fossil fuels if you have to.…
> "The plant used to only open at peak times in the summer and winter months; the new mining initiative means it now operates all year round." This is actually pretty sad. This isn't power that would otherwise be wasted: they are emitting more pollution and greenhouse gasses in order to mine Bitcoins. Bitcoin has created a perverse incentive to pollute here.
Not any different than dumping massive amounts of cyanide into the environment so we can get some shinny yellow rocks.