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Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

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Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#141

Post by caf »

gruez wrote: post #89
rebuilder wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe at the hobby level that thinking works. At scale, though, it does not unless you're building a renewable power plant where it simply can't connect to the grid. If you can get on the grid, then the power your plant produces and what you do with it are two separate things. Instead of e.g. mining crypto, you could sell the power generated. By using it instead of selling it, you're just pushing other users to use m…

>The calculus IMO is power consumption * grid-wide average CO2 emissions. This is also too simplified, because it doesn't factor in transmission costs and interconnection capacity. Electricty doesn't move frictionlessly throughout the grid, and this can be seen because north american electricity prices vary wildly by region[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26829186

Yes, and it also doesn't take into account the time of use.

There are times when renewables have to be curtailed in some regions, so using renewable sources at that time has a marginal CO2 impact of near zero.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#143

Post by jude- »

wmf wrote: post #122
jude- wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

It's faster and cheaper to build out new capacity and then later retire old capacity than it is to do an in-situ replacement. Build the battery-backed solar and wind farms now, and then watch the coal and gas plants go bankrupt.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#144

Post by [deleted] »

o_p wrote: post #130
SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fin…

[deleted]

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#145

Post by nightski »

Animats wrote: post #121

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?

They have already been doing this in ND. There are shipping containers with mining equipment inside set up next to flares. The oil companies are catching on to how much they are making though and want in on the action (since they provide access to the flare). It's in the tens to hundreds of thousands per month in profit iirc.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#146

Post by caf »

bransonf wrote: post #94

It’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…

An increase in energy price wouldn't (in equilibrium) affect the Bitcoin price - it would affect the Bitcoin block difficulty, requiring less energy to mine the blocks (the mechanism being that miners unprofitable at the new energy price are driven out).

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#147

Post by varajelle »

amenghra wrote: post #20
runawaybottle wrote: post #12

What’s the bandwidth from a probe close to the sun with a Bitcoin miner on it? Beam back the coin, we can wait. Or, mine it near the sun and then bring it back. Could take 20 years, but the returns should be better than the SPY. We’d need a spaceship I guess with the largest solar panels ever. Park it near the sun, mine Bitcoin, come back to earth.

Mining is a race. If you have X seconds latency because you are millions of miles away, you’ll loose $Y over the long run. You can figure out the function which ties X and Y together.

It depends how many of these minors are near the sun. If the minors near the sun start mining on top of blocks discovered near the sun, then they have the head start again. This means there would me many more chain re-organisation, and that a 50.1% attack would be easier, so the network less secure.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#149

Post by SwimSwimHungry »

o_p wrote: post #130
SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fin…

When the externalities of your actions cause undue harm to others, your activities are no longer appropriate. I consider the damage to the environment caused by all this mining to be an end game that results in misery for everyone.

Your responses are obviously hostile, so I'm going to bid thee adieu.

EDIT: Lest we forget, there's a thing in Libertarianism called the Non-Aggression Principle (aka NAP). If your actions are an aggression on the health and well-being of our planet and future generations, this would violate NAP.

Bitcoin violates NAP in the long run. Ergo, Bitcoin is a net negative. QED.

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