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China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

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Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#61

Post by keymone »

i feel like HN's outrage about bitcoin mining is just virtue signaling.

1. bitcoin has created a market where people purchase security of their assets with the ultimate currency - energy. that market isn't going anywhere, the idea is out of the bag and you can't un-discover it.

2. energy consumption is not what causes carbon emissions, energy production does. stop chasing consumers and start regulating producers if you're honest about being so very concerned about environment.

3. it's not your business what i do with the energy that i buy at market rates.

Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#62

Post by foepys »

latchkey wrote: post #55
websites2323 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your occupation is terrible for the environment and there’s no sleight of hand with localized power sources that will change that. All these dreams of decentralized money will be worth nothing when global warming and the associated chaos kick in.

I thought this thread from Dan Held was really good: https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1351235080103096331 It starts off with: "1/ Bitcoin’s energy consumption is not “wasteful.” - It is much more efficient than existing financial systems - No one has the moral authority to tell you what is a good or bad use of energy (ex: watching the Kardashians) Let's debunk this FUD"

How is it more useful if >6 billion people are using the traditional system and a few hundred thousand, maybe a million are using cryptocurrencies while consuming an amount of electricity equivalent to Denmark?

Bitcoin, Ethereum etc. can be spent nearly nowhere except at exchanges because it's a pain in the ass to handle for merchants while I can pay with my Visa in the most countries seamlessly.

And how can it "bank the unbanned" when people need to have not only a smartphone but also a stable internet connection to the networks because if I don't observe the blockchain, I am still reliant on intermediates which are called payment processors in the traditional system that already exist.

Crypto currencies are just unnecessarily speed running financial history. Carried by ancaps and speculation that are only pushing it because legislation didn't catch up, yet.

Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#63

Post by sudosysgen »

aww_dang wrote: post #38
feawwefawefa wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people on HN like to whine about the environment. they love the statistic that bitcoin uses more energy than argentina. ask them 6 months ago (when bitcoin still used the same amount of energy as argentina) and they will tell you how much they love btc and decentralization.

Personally, I am of the opinion that individuals should be able to use electricity however they choose, provided they pay a market rate for it. Interesting to see HN praising the CCP's policies in this regard.

There is no market rate for electricity in any reasonable country. Electric generation is one of these things the free market doesn't do well, so the vast majority of electricity markets are either completely state operated (as in Canada, much of Europe, China, etc...), or highly subsidized.

The first is way more efficient and allows for much lower electricity rates, and the second is the only way to get the economics right to allow for growth.

That comes inevitably with regulatory restrictions on what you can do and how you can do it. Forbidding people using coal power to mine bitcoin is more than reasonable and indeed typical as far as energy use regulations go.

Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#64

Post by Geee »

websites2323 wrote: post #54
latchkey wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that you can't dictate what power is used. Power on a large scale is extremely hard and expensive to transmit. Comments like this do not consider the larger picture. If you plop a mining farm down next to an existing hydro dam that was previously used for powering aluminum smelting, then that farm is now funding the maintenance of that dam. That dam then can provide power to the surrounding community.…

Your occupation is terrible for the environment and there’s no sleight of hand with localized power sources that will change that. All these dreams of decentralized money will be worth nothing when global warming and the associated chaos kick in.

Energy use is allocated by how people spend their money. By choosing how you spend your money, you can choose how the energy is produced. If bitcoin is banned, then people spend their money on something else.

If people buy bitcoin instead of buying a new car, then the net effect on environment is positive, given that car production uses more fossil fuels than bitcoin production.

Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#65

Post by websites2323 »

latchkey wrote: post #55
websites2323 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your occupation is terrible for the environment and there’s no sleight of hand with localized power sources that will change that. All these dreams of decentralized money will be worth nothing when global warming and the associated chaos kick in.

I thought this thread from Dan Held was really good: https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1351235080103096331 It starts off with: "1/ Bitcoin’s energy consumption is not “wasteful.” - It is much more efficient than existing financial systems - No one has the moral authority to tell you what is a good or bad use of energy (ex: watching the Kardashians) Let's debunk this FUD"

This thread is full of conflicting logic. For example:

“No one has the moral authority to tell you what is a good or bad use of energy” followed by “Bitcoin uses less energy than than banking and the military,” implying that these are “bad” uses of energy — and in fact, that’s the entire foundation of the Bitcoin cult! That Bitcoin is better than Fiat, that it’s the righteous currency because of decentralization/etc. When you have God on your side (in this case, Satoshi, someone revered despite having never been revealed as existing...) you can justify anything. Even massive energy waste and pollution.

Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#66

Post by incrudible »

rtkwe wrote: post #53
klmadfejno wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% sounds like a lot.

Especially when China constitutes about 70% of the hashrate for bitcoin. (I'm also dubious of how they know what is powering the mining operations inside China, most of the power in China still comes from coal.)

"Around 60% to 70% of bitcoin is currently mined in China, where more than two-thirds of electricity generation comes from coal. But bitcoin mining facilities are concentrated in remote areas of China with rich hydro or wind resources (cheap electricity), with about 80% of Chinese bitcoin mining occurring in hydro-rich Sichuan province. These mining facilities may be absorbing overcapacity in some of these regions, using renewable energy that would otherwise be unused, given difficulties in matching these rich wind and hydro resources with demand centres on the coast."

https://www.iea.org/commentaries/bitcoin-energy-use-mined-th...

Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#67

Post by sudosysgen »

aww_dang wrote: post #47
blululu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market rates for electricity do not exist in a country where the power grid is controlled by communists. Given that most countries subsidize electricity consumption the same basic issue applies. Looking beyond naive libertarianism, there is the bigger question of waste and whether people are entitled to consume a resource regardless of the application. Historically efficiency was seen as a virtue, but modern attitude…

>Market rates for electricity do not exist in a country where the power grid is controlled by communists. Given that most countries subsidize electricity consumption the same basic issue applies. Yes, that's a problem in my view. Observing that it is the status quo doesn't rationalize it or further prohibitions to defend price controls. I'm not sure if you would regard it as naive, but price controls are widely regar…

I live in Québec. We have state run electricty, which turns a profit and isn't subsidized. It's by far the cheapest in North America, and the essentially the cheapest unsubsidized energy in the world. The grid is also 99.9% renewable (everywhere except for some islands)

So the idea that price controls and nationalization somehow causes inefficiency in this case is just a tale economists tell themselves. In the real world, all of the most successful energy grids use those tools.

In other words, you're arguing against reality.

Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#68

Post by andrewflnr »

keymone wrote: post #61

i feel like HN's outrage about bitcoin mining is just virtue signaling. 1. bitcoin has created a market where people purchase security of their assets with the ultimate currency - energy. that market isn't going anywhere, the idea is out of the bag and you can't un-discover it. 2. energy consumption is not what causes carbon emissions, energy production does. stop chasing consumers and start regulating producers if y…

Maybe you didn't mean it quite this way, but: "virtue signalling" is not evil, it's an integral part of human social dynamics, probably since before agriculture. And if you think you never do it, I think you're deluding yourself.

Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#69

Post by mbreese »

latchkey wrote: post #55
websites2323 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your occupation is terrible for the environment and there’s no sleight of hand with localized power sources that will change that. All these dreams of decentralized money will be worth nothing when global warming and the associated chaos kick in.

I thought this thread from Dan Held was really good: https://twitter.com/danheld/status/1351235080103096331 It starts off with: "1/ Bitcoin’s energy consumption is not “wasteful.” - It is much more efficient than existing financial systems - No one has the moral authority to tell you what is a good or bad use of energy (ex: watching the Kardashians) Let's debunk this FUD"

> It is much more efficient than existing financial systems

I find this really hard to believe. And it would really depend on what you’re measuring. If we look at transactions per second, the numbers aren’t good for Bitcoin. But really, what we’re talking about here is transactions per Watt of power. I’d love to know what these numbers are, but I can’t imagine it looks good for Bitcoin.

Maybe it looks better if you look at the total value of transactions per Watt (fewer transactions, but at high amounts). But then, Bitcoin starts to look more like a reserve currency where the major transactions are between large clearinghouses instead of a totally decentralized monetary system.

Re: China’s Bitcoin miners flee Inner Mongolia ahead of crypto mining ban

#70

Post by maxerickson »

latchkey wrote: post #50
klmadfejno wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if bitcoin just starts consuming renewable power, causing other use cases to make up the difference in coal power.

The reality is that you can't dictate what power is used. Power on a large scale is extremely hard and expensive to transmit. Comments like this do not consider the larger picture. If you plop a mining farm down next to an existing hydro dam that was previously used for powering aluminum smelting, then that farm is now funding the maintenance of that dam. That dam then can provide power to the surrounding community.…

I think most people believe that refining aluminum is a better trade off with environmental harm than securing blockchain.

It's fine to disagree of course.

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