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Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

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Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#161

Post by caf »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #108
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…

Since I'm getting downvoted, here's a study on it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511... Your misunderstanding seems possibly intentional. I'm very much in favour of renewable energy as an alternative to nonrenewable energy. I'm just not in favour of wasting energy for very little purpose. Build solar/wind energy to replace fossil fuels? Great! Obviously I'm in favour of that. Built an insan…

Regardless of whether it increases the local temperature, it's clearly not increasing the overall temperature because that energy in the wind would have ended up as heat, somewhere, eventually anyway.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#162

Post by fergie »

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.

Why tax carbon emissions rather than directly taxing the manufacture of bitcoin? Carbon taxes increase costs for everything. Should we increase the cost of say, hospitals because some people _really_ want to mine bitcoin?

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#163

Post by lamontcg »

pcthrowaway wrote: post #108
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…

Since I'm getting downvoted, here's a study on it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511... Your misunderstanding seems possibly intentional. I'm very much in favour of renewable energy as an alternative to nonrenewable energy. I'm just not in favour of wasting energy for very little purpose. Build solar/wind energy to replace fossil fuels? Great! Obviously I'm in favour of that. Built an insan…

That study says that if you replaced 100% of the power generation of the United States with wind farms concentrated in the middle 1/3rd of the country that it would create localized 0.50C rise in SURFACE temperatures at the wind farms and 0.24C rise in SURFACE temperatures across the whole USA.

The authors note very clearly that isn't a global rise in temperature and would be offset by the effects of GHG reduction. Furthermore the wind farm cost is "one time". The effects of GHGs are cumulative.

See:

https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/false-claim-wind-tur...

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#164

Post by shawnz »

SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #87
caterama wrote: post #68

Who cares? Everyone is fixated on Bitcoin... there are tons of energy inefficient processes out there. The solution has nothing to do with Bitcoin... environmental impact needs to be priced into energy itself, whatever the application. This is a failure of the markets (and therefore ourselves). Bitcoin is a scapegoat.

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.

So, are you saying that new technologies must be considered wasteful if they don't wholly replace existing technologies and instead create new usages of their own?

For example would you say that smartphones are wasteful because they allow us to communicate more frequently than we could before, thus they don't strictly replace an existing consumption of energy?

That seems like a silly interpretation to me. Of course our energy demands rise as we develop and use new technologies. It's because we are doing more things with them!

Also, as I mentioned in another part of the thread, I don't think it's obvious that cryptocurrencies won't replace any existing usages of energy.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#165

Post by young_unixer »

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.

Or kill all people.

Both are effective at fixing the emissions problem. Both are also extremely oppressive and unjust.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#166

Post by astrange »

endisneigh wrote: post #50
Meekro wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This case seems like an aberration, though? I think the logic goes something like this: bitcoin miners have a huge incentive to find the cheapest power in the world; renewable energy sources are cheaper than fossil fuels and getting cheaper all the time; therefore miners will prefer renewable power.

Renewables are getting cheaper and are in certain circumstances but in general they definitely are not cheaper than fossil fuels.

New renewables are cheaper than new fossil fuel plants.

https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

That's enough to eliminate them over time, because the plants do get old eventually. And the trend is for renewables to get even cheaper - this means any study using current prices is going to be extremely pessimistic, it's going to get even cheaper and obsolete your results.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#167

Post by astrange »

shp0ngle wrote: post #92
camgunz wrote: post #13

Every time I'm like "BTC is roasting the planet" people come out of the woodwork to remind me about renewable energy. Funny I don't see any of them here....

Any energy mining bitcoin is clean by definition, because Bitcoin is good for whole mankind. By definition.

Seems like the fact people already own BTC is a minus for future users, if there's exponential adoption nobody has any reason to value the early users' claim and might just use a new currency.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#168

Post by monkeycantype »

If you're a miner considering this, can I suggest you investigate decommissioned mothballed plants in new zealand. I don't know whats happening with wye creek plant, but my understanding is that there are hydro plants in nz that were built to provide power to alcoa aluminium smelters that are now unused.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#169

Post by cjblomqvist »

fergie wrote: post #162
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.

Why tax carbon emissions rather than directly taxing the manufacture of bitcoin? Carbon taxes increase costs for everything. Should we increase the cost of say, hospitals because some people _really_ want to mine bitcoin?

Yes, because everyone should pay the "real" price stuff costs unless deliberately subsidized. If hospital bills go up because of it (doubt it), then subsidize hospitals. The incentives will be much better in that world. Hospitals can for example optimize for using less energy, which would be a win for the world.

Just look at Europe and the effect of the carbon tax there. I don't have links (sorry), but there are lots of studies "proving" that that makes for a more efficient and optimized market aligned with the desired outcome.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#170

Post by caf »

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.

You'd be far better off building floating wind turbines in the deep ocean, say in the roaring 40s.
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