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Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

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Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#111

Post by jude- »

SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #103
baron816 wrote: post #88

Easy solution: tax carbon emissions. Who cares if you’re using energy to mine Bitcoin? Or if you’re using it to play video games? Or to run the AC all day? If it you’re internalizing the cost of any emissions, then you’ll use those resources efficiently.

Hard to do this when you can have other countries with much looser regulations allow Bitcoin miners run rampant. What probably should happen is to make converting from any cryptocurrency to major world currencies a crime. I have no delusions that this will halt activity in this sector entirely, but it will make it reasonably difficult to make any substantial money this way without raising some serious eyebrows.

> Hard to do this when you can have other countries with much looser regulations allow Bitcoin miners run rampant.

You tariff their imports and apply economic sanctions.

> What probably should happen is to make converting from any cryptocurrency to major world currencies a crime.

Why cryptocurrencies? There are plenty of things that pollute far more.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#112

Post by SwimSwimHungry »

o_p wrote: post #97
SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not fighting here. Your comment came off as dismissive to some growing and legitimate concerns. And don't forget. Bitcoin is not replacing these other institutions that need energy. Stop handwaving away the problem, because it's inconvenient for you to hear.

BTC miners buy the energy to power their nodes and that cost is passed to the users in transaction fees. The only legitimate criticism here may be that energy prices dont account for the externalities of carbon emissions. But thats irrelevant of how the energy is actually used

You're missing the point. We shouldn't be using the energy period. Like, regardless of where we are getting our energy from, we should be making efforts to massively reduce consumption across the board. Bitcoin mining doesn't help this at all. Capitalism be damned.

I've realized that you likely have made up your mind on this and my arguments won't sway you. That's fine by me, as long as others that have read can get it.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#113

Post by wmf »

caf wrote: post #90

The Greenidge team told potential investors last month that the plant had mined 1,186 bitcoins at an average net cost of about $2,869 for the 12 months ending in February. At this week’s Bitcoin price, that would translate into a profit margin of about $60,000 per mined coin. Surely this cannot last. This kind of outsize profit ought to be bringing online enough new mining capacity to increase the block difficulty un…

Even in 2017 when AFAIK there wasn't a general chip shortage there was still a shortage of crypto ASICs because the lead time is months and Bitmain can't know how much demand there will be for mining. I doubt mining will ever reach an equilibrium.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#114

Post by vmception »

caf wrote: post #90

The Greenidge team told potential investors last month that the plant had mined 1,186 bitcoins at an average net cost of about $2,869 for the 12 months ending in February. At this week’s Bitcoin price, that would translate into a profit margin of about $60,000 per mined coin. Surely this cannot last. This kind of outsize profit ought to be bringing online enough new mining capacity to increase the block difficulty un…

> is it the worldwide chip shortage preventing that from happening?

yes, feel free to start a new fabrication line to arbitrage away the margin lol.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#115

Post by px43 »

Just to point out the obvious, the headline is heavily editorialized and misleading.

Current HN headline: "Bitcoin miners are buying power plants"

Actual headline: "A New Threat to New York’s Clean Energy Goals: Bitcoin Mining"

It's trying to imply that buying power plants is some hot new trend, but the article is about a single crazy dude in New York buying a single plant.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#116

Post by xmprt »

seoaeu wrote: post #14
pcthrowaway wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering if 'carbon-neutral' energy production is really environmentally neutral, especially when channeled to cryptocurrency mining. Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? Not to mention the harm t…

> Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? That's some anti-renewable energy FUD I hadn't seen before... Yes, we're sure that won't cause global warming. Wind turbine operation doesn't produce greenhouse g…

Any infrastructure that we build, renewable or not, has an environmental impact. We have to mine resources and disturb natural habitats. If the renewable energy is used to replace existing fossil fuel demand, then that's a great thing. If instead we're using renewables mainly to fill new crypto mining demand, then that's a bad thing.

There might be some positive impact by spurring more innovation in renewable research but I don't think it's possible to make such an analysis in a 2 paragraph Hacker News comment.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#117

Post by pcthrowaway »

bostonsre wrote: post #102
seoaeu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? That's some anti-renewable energy FUD I hadn't seen before... Yes, we're sure that won't cause global warming. Wind turbine operation doesn't produce greenhouse g…

I guess if we theoretically had enough wind turbines, climates could start being impacted due to winds being slowed down but not exactly sure if that would heat the earth more or not. Could an area with lots of turbines have slower wind speeds and have heat dissipate less quickly? It seems plausible, but would think it would even out with a different area getting a little cooler. But yea, don't see how that would cau…

> Also, I assume wind turbines cause some emissions during manufacturing. Not sure going gang busters and making a ton to power bitcoin mining would be great for the planet.

Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. If we're building wind turbines to replace energy usage that serves a purpose, that's wonderful! Building new infrastructure for energy production so that we can pass it to a bunch of computers that piss it away is still wasteful. Even if it's less wasteful than burning coal to power those computers.

Bitcoin and proof-of-work were revolutionary, but now that we have better cryptocurrency technology, we should be moving away from it.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#119

Post by SwimSwimHungry »

jude- wrote: post #111
SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to do this when you can have other countries with much looser regulations allow Bitcoin miners run rampant. What probably should happen is to make converting from any cryptocurrency to major world currencies a crime. I have no delusions that this will halt activity in this sector entirely, but it will make it reasonably difficult to make any substantial money this way without raising some serious eyebrows.

> Hard to do this when you can have other countries with much looser regulations allow Bitcoin miners run rampant. You tariff their imports and apply economic sanctions. > What probably should happen is to make converting from any cryptocurrency to major world currencies a crime. Why cryptocurrencies? There are plenty of things that pollute far more.

Why are you handwaving away my concerns? You do realize cryptocurrencies (and to be specific, PoW ones) aren't replacing any of these so called other things that pollute.

Speaking of which, can you quantify what things pollute more? At any rate, I get the feeling we are going to be talking past each other and wasting time and energy (heh) on this conversation.

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