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

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

#41

Post by gruez »

jrockway wrote: post #33
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 is quite useful industrially, however. Last I checked, you can't coat wires with Bitcoin to make them less prone to oxidation.

According to[1], "technology" demand (eg. not for jewelry, investment, or central bank reserves) is only 7.5% of total demand. Your response only excuses a small fraction of the pollution being generated from gold extraction.

I should say there's also 48% used for jewelry, but that doesn't really make a good excuse either. The pollution is necessary because ... people need to display their wealth?

[1] 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

#43

Post by kevinqiu1 »

fermienrico wrote: post #14
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.

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? 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, peopl…

Except in Model A the products have some utilitarian/recreational value to humanity (coats, iPhones, ect.)

In Model B the product is a transaction network that is horribly inefficient in terms of $$$ transferred per unit of energy input. It probably makes sense to buy Cocaine (even then other cryptos are likely more efficient energy wise/secure) with Bitcoin, it doesn't make any sense to buy a car with it when there's already a banking system

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

#44

Post by paulgb »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #18
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.

Bitcoin hardly created the perverse incentive; pollution has always been an externalized cost in most parts of the world. We really need a carbon tax (or similar) so that pollution costs aren't externalized.

Unless buyers of the coins were charged based on the carbon footprint of the coins they bought, this would just cause mining to move to places where there was no carbon tax.

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

#45

Post by ezrast »

fermienrico wrote: post #14
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.

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? 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, peopl…

That's not the same at all. You left out an important step in the first model:

Energy -> Factory + Labor -> Goods and Services -> Revenue

Goods and services improve the life of people, and we have deliberately organized our society in such a way that providing goods and services is incentivized with revenue.

That you can also leech revenue for yourself by shuffling liquid assets around while providing no net benefit to the world is a side effect nobody intended. If you happen to reinvest that revenue into something more positive than what the other suckers would have, then no harm no foul, I suppose, but then "Revenue" shouldn't be the endpoint of your model. Something like "Well-being" should.

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

#46

Post by jessaustin »

MadSudaca wrote: post #17

Reminder: not all cryptocurrencies are this wasteful. Don’t disregard cryptos in general for the pitfalls of the first one.

Why can't the less "wasteful" currencies compete with bitcoin? (serious question; I've never owned it and though the crypto seems straightforward enough I don't feel I understand the market in general)

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

#47

Post by fermienrico »

ezrast wrote: post #45
fermienrico wrote: post #14

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? 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, peopl…

That's not the same at all. You left out an important step in the first model: Energy -> Factory + Labor -> Goods and Services -> Revenue Goods and services improve the life of people, and we have deliberately organized our society in such a way that providing goods and services is incentivized with revenue. That you can also leech revenue for yourself by shuffling liquid assets around while providing no net benefit…

This is a really good counterpoint, thanks. What, if any, government interventions could be put in place to somehow add value to BTC mining?

What are your thoughts of governments using a resource such as hydroelectric dam or wind power to mine BTC and using it to build infrastructure (Goods), healthcare (Service), etc.? It kind of sounds like trickle down economics though, I am afraid.

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

#48

Post by [deleted] »

longtimegoogler wrote: post #38
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.

[deleted]

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

#49

Post by T-1000 »

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.

What would the ransomware industry look like without cryptocurrencies?

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

#50

Post by BenjiWiebe »

beamatronic wrote: post #11
beautifulfreak wrote: post #4

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.

It’s fascinating, such a machine, so much power, with no visible (tangible) output. Other than heat.

It's a 100% efficient 14MW electric heater.
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