Why not locate in Texas where oil wells are flaring off natural gas because they have no way to deliver it, but can still deliver the oil?
Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
121–130 of 578 posts
Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
... do we really need another energy demand to drive R&D? We're already working with an energy budget equivalent to 1/3 the decay that powers the Earth's fiery core. Is it really fair to credit any new breakthroughs to the last ~12 GW of demand, instead of the first ~18 TW?
Yes, building more solar panels and and batteries gives the industry more experience at doing so, which (for a time) will allow it to refine the tech through multiple iterations, making future capacity cheaper and better-quality. EDIT: this is to say, renewable tech production is still following a learning curve ( https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth )
We have plenty of work to do just replacing existing power generation with renewables, so it's not clear to me how additional demand accelerates such replacement.
(This is in answer to both you and tshaddox.)
Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's the problem with this sentiment. Bitcoin isn't replacing anything. Not pre-existing fiat currency, not banks, nothing. Bitcoin only adds to the problem at an alarming rate. Bitcoin is certainly not a scapegoat. It's a massive problem and, largely, a symptom of human greed that must be put in check.
I think that’s highly unlikely. Surely the people mining Bitcoin would be doing something else if Bitcoin didn’t exist. Or to think of it the other way, if there was some better way of making money with electricity then the Bitcoin miners would be doing that instead.
Have you considered that they wouldn’t be trying to turn electricity into money and might be making money some other way?
Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
#124The 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…
That's at 19 megawatts burning natural gas. So that means they spend about 140MWh of energy for one BTC. I calculate that comes to around $20/MWh, which seems to be on the low side of energy production. Coal is $40 to $143 per MWh.
Edited to add: That's roughly 60 tons of CO2 emissions per BTC mined. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11
The other aspect here is let's say you're a speculator and you think the price of BTC can go up another 50x or roughly $1M/BTC. Then even spending any amount less than the BTC spot price now is a bargain.
Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
#125It’s a simple equation: So long as there is more money in mining BTC than there is cost in energy to mine it, mining will proceed. No entity in the world can control the price of crypto. But, we can and already do regulate energy production. I think we need a carbon tax, that is specifically a financial disincentive towards any means of energy production that directly pollutes the atmosphere. Seriously, what are the…
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Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
When profits are being made, who cares what happens to future generations. Cryptocurrency is, for the most part, a contagion. We opened Pandora's box and the genie is out of the bottle. Short of some kind of cataclysmic black swan event, I'm not sure this insanity will end anytime soon. :(
This is one of the few energy consumers that has a pretty straightforward solution: switch to proof of stake. You can't magically switch all existing cars to be 100% electric, but you actually can kind of magically switch all cryptocurrencies to consume orders of magnitude less energy. The question is if Bitcoin will ever try to switch to it. Unfortunately, it seems like they probably won't anytime soon.
Ethereum 2.0 is POS apparently.
I haven't figure out how to get onboard yet though. I have to do a bunch of homework to figure out what the hell means what.
I don't have 32 ETH ($70k odd USD) so I have to join a staking pool but then that means I won't be running a validator I think.
In which case this seems like simply just buying some ETH2.0 but it clearly isn't... so I have no idea honestly...
More homework required on my part.
Anyone have a good link with an overview of the moving parts AND motivations of the ETH2.0 structure?
Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that’s highly unlikely. Surely the people mining Bitcoin would be doing something else if Bitcoin didn’t exist. Or to think of it the other way, if there was some better way of making money with electricity then the Bitcoin miners would be doing that instead.
Have you considered that they wouldn’t be trying to turn electricity into money and might be making money some other way?
And to your point, likely a way that doesn't have global implications? Even other bubbles of the past didn't have quite the reach that the likes of Bitcoin has (maybe with the exception of the entire stock market in the Roaring 20s leading right up to the crash of 1929). That's why this time, this is much more dangerous in the long run.
Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
#128It’s a simple equation: So long as there is more money in mining BTC than there is cost in energy to mine it, mining will proceed. No entity in the world can control the price of crypto. But, we can and already do regulate energy production. I think we need a carbon tax, that is specifically a financial disincentive towards any means of energy production that directly pollutes the atmosphere. Seriously, what are the…
Mining difficulty tends to be a lagging indicator of price, not the other way around. I doubt that a price increase in power would have much affect on the price of the currency itself.
We 100% need massive carbon taxes right now. It's really telling how the energy industry is trying to push blame to consumers, especially cryptocurrency miners, in order to distract from the discussion of real carbon taxes to force polluters to pay for the damage they're causing.
I'm sure I'm one of the largest supporters of cryptocurrency in this thread so far, and I'm perfectly comfortable stating the obvious that mining with fossil fuels is an abomination. It's going to keep happening though until regulators get serious about reigning in the fossil fuel industry.
Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
#129The more I see stories like this, the more I've come to realize that we really screwed up by allowing this technological experiment to get out of hand. Not to sound pedantic, but our future generations are going to come to regret this when our planet is a toasted marshmallow, because we couldn't stop being greedy.
It's reasonably likely that there will be a run on dollars at some point. If/when it happens, the bitcoin network collapsing is a pretty likely outcome. (what I mean by a run on dollars is that lots of people may decide they want dollars instead of bitcoin, so the people with dollars won't have to pay as much for bitcoin, and then the people who want dollars will have to accept less for their bitcoin, and then…)
There's an outside possibility that mining will drop off so quickly that the 2016 block difficulty recalculation will struggle to happen, but honestly if that happens there will be a consensus fork.
Thankfully what will happen if the price collapses is that mining will reduce.
Bitcoin has been through a cycle of a "run on dollars" before, it has never died before.
Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>regardless of where we are getting our energy from
So you dont care about the actual real problem which is carbon emissions?
>we should be making efforts to massively reduce consumption across the board Why? Theres no problem with the consumption of renewable energies
When you want to trample on people's freedoms just because you dont deem them "worthy" of consuming energy its no wonder that people gives you the finger.