A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day • Hacker News Board

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#31

Post by sixstringtheory » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #25

paulgb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if I told you that you can use this "useless" BTC to purchase carbon offsets, invest in renewable energy (which otherwise would have no funding), etc? Unless they actually are using it to purchase carbon offsets, I don't see what's the point of this hypothetical? > Also, people don't understand what Bitcoin mining in wholistic sense is. Sure, some Bitcoin critics don't understand it well, but don't paint us al…

I think it is just to make a point - that BTC generated from this "wasteful" activity can be used for any purpose. It could pay off executives or the government can use it to propel society forward or offset carbon credits or build warheads. The right or wrong is not in the action of mining BTC, it is the same as any other economic acivity. I've added some more clarity. > Sure, some Bitcoin critics don't understand i…

It is wasteful because it is expending fossil fuels, manufacturing and raw materials to build the compute resources to perform calculations that don’t produce any intrinsic value, but rather just another way to represent and redistribute the value that already exists. It is as worthless as options/RSUs until you convert it to currency, and no currency is created in that transaction.

It’s like writing an unnecessary API wrapper or similar abstraction layer. YAGNI

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#32

Post by ilamont » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:20 PM UTC

Not just in the Finger Lakes. Various firms have set up shop in northern NY near the St. Lawrence River to access cheap power. Two years ago, authorities became concerned because of the impact on residential rates:

“[These] companies are using extraordinary amounts of electricity — typically thousands of times more electricity than an average residential customer would use. While such a significant amount of electricity usage might go unnoticed in large metropolitan areas, the sheer amount of electricity being used is leading to higher costs for customers in small communities because of a limited supply of low-cost hydropower,” according to the New York State Public Service Commission.

https://www.northcountrynow.com/business/blockchain-industri...

After NY state authorities set higher rates for crypto mining, one of the local communities withdrew from the local power agency so it could set its own rates, which has prompted at least one company (Coinmint) to announce plans to relocate there. https://northcountrynow.com/business/cryptocurrency-mining-c...

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#33

Post by jrockway » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #12

Reason077 wrote: post #8

> "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.

Gold is quite useful industrially, however. Last I checked, you can't coat wires with Bitcoin to make them less prone to oxidation.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#34

Post by RichardHeart » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:21 PM UTC

Imagine how much pollution Bitcoin would create a day if it became 10x more valuable. Roughly 10x. This is because the cost to mine a resource trends towards the value of a resource. Disclaimer. I invented a cryptocurrency that pays stakers inflation instead of miners.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#35

Post by jshevek » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:22 PM UTC

ryguytilidie wrote: post #20

gruez wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not any different than dumping massive amounts of cyanide into the environment so we can get some shinny yellow rocks.

Why do people find it necessary to argue like this? As if we can't solve ANY problems until every single problem is solved.

The parent noted a similarity. They did not argue for inaction or acceptance.

Edit: For example, it could be interpreted as an argument to be more mindful of gold extraction externalities.

My beef with the statement lies in "not any different". Having qualities in common doesn't preclude differences. In this case, there are differences.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#36

Post by gruez » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:23 PM UTC

DagAgren wrote: post #26

gruez wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not any different than dumping massive amounts of cyanide into the environment so we can get some shinny yellow rocks.

Gold has not been the basis of any economic system for about a hundred years.

Yet investments/central bank is responsible for 44% of total gold demand.

https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-supply-and-demand-sta...

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#37

Post by speedgoose » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:25 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #29

speedgoose wrote: post #6

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.

And yet, this "waste" of energy enables a sizeable amount of decentralized positive-sum transactions by actors who don't necessarily trust each other, and cannot always use existing (centralized) systems for this purpose. This is a socially-positive development overall.

Thankfully Bitcoin isn't the only solution to answer this problem. By the way, the world economy isn't centralized and thankfully doesn't rely on a single database with a shitty and super slow consensus algorithm that destroy the environment, by design.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#38

Post by longtimegoogler » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

Reason077 wrote: post #8

> "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.

Yup. This is ultimately the problem with Bitcoin it requires the consumption of energy to produce currency.

The only intrinsic value is the amount of energy wasted to mine the bitcoins.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#39

Post by paulgb » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

fermienrico wrote: post #25

paulgb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if I told you that you can use this "useless" BTC to purchase carbon offsets, invest in renewable energy (which otherwise would have no funding), etc? Unless they actually are using it to purchase carbon offsets, I don't see what's the point of this hypothetical? > Also, people don't understand what Bitcoin mining in wholistic sense is. Sure, some Bitcoin critics don't understand it well, but don't paint us al…

I think it is just to make a point - that BTC generated from this "wasteful" activity can be used for any purpose. It could pay off executives or the government can use it to propel society forward or offset carbon credits or build warheads. The right or wrong is not in the action of mining BTC, it is the same as any other economic acivity. I've added some more clarity. > Sure, some Bitcoin critics don't understand i…

> By all means, expand on this and enlighten me, I am curious to hear both sides.

Sure. My concern with Bitcoin mining is that (#1) it absorbs efficiency improvements by design, and that (#2) it is structurally an environmental race to the bottom.

By #1, I mean that even if you could magically halve the energy use of mining overnight, you wouldn't meaningfully reduce Bitcoin's footprint: mining would use less energy, so it would be (temporarily) more profitable, so miners would scale up until it was back at equilibrium. It's back in equilibrium when the cost of mining is the market value of a coin, and since energy costs dominate the cost of mining, this is (roughly) when energy use is on par with what it was before the efficiency improvement.

By #2, I mean that mining naturally gravitates to places where the externalities are not priced in. If Country A has a carbon tax and Country B does not, mining will just move (pushed by the invisible hand) to Country B, rendering the carbon tax ineffectual with regards to coin mining. Of course this is just part of a bigger problem of enforcing global externalities locally, but the tools that would usually help here (trade policy, etc.) do not really apply to crypto mining.

Re: A New York Power Plant Is Mining $50K Worth of Bitcoin a Day

#40

Post by speedgoose » Sat, Apr 04, 2020, 6:28 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #15

speedgoose wrote: post #10

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 people living from Bitcoin are so few that they don't really matter. I'm sure many of them would find another well paid occupation shortly after and I wouldn't be sorry for the ones that would have to reduce the costs of their lifestyle.

I do think social shaming is very powerful, but it must be used correctly. Shaming Bitcoin professionals is fine in my opinion.