Bitcoin miners are buying power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#311

Post by whywhywhywhy » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:17 AM UTC

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…

> I think we need a carbon tax

I get the concerns for the carbon issue of Bitcoin but I don't see why the solution should be governments profiting more from it.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#312

Post by jariel » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:19 AM UTC

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…

"No entity in the world can control the price of crypto."

If it were banned in the US/EU the price would crash.

Most major BTC backers have a lot of money and they can't be involved in something that is illicit.

For regular citizens, it's just not worth the risk.

That leaves quite a lot of people to play with it, but not enough to maintain the price.

Without constant headlines, Tesla's involvement, Coinbase IPO headlines etc. the price would suffer quite a lot.

It would maintain some price but not so much that people would be buying energy sources.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#313

Post by prussian » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:20 AM UTC

hannob wrote: post #275

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…

We know since many decades that a carbon price might be a good idea. But it's not that simple, because either you do it worldwide or you introduce lots of exceptions or you do something like carbon import tariffs (which the EU wants to do, but I think no such mechanism exists anywhere in the world right now). Bottom line is: Most of the world has no carbon price, and the places that do have one (e.g. the EU ETS) ther…

I don't think it helps that carbon isn't the be-all, end-all in the polluting effects of general consumption (including crypto mining). Even if all these miners were 100% green energy, the green tech would still be a net pollution on the world. I wish we stopped thinking of things so simply.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#314

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:23 AM UTC

SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #228

bawolff wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered the best way to advance your position is to use logic instead of acting hysterically? I mean, i think i agreed with you more before i read your comments than after.

You might be projecting. I'm not hysterical, just very emphatic about my points.

I have the same amount of crypto holdings that I had 20 years ago: zero. I’m considering buying some as part of my overall asset allocation at some point, but so far have not as they seem like electronic magic beans in some ways. Bottom line: I’m far from a crypto advocate.

I am experiencing your argumentation style in this post as having a significantly greater amount of hysteria than emphasis.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#315

Post by strogonoff » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

It felt like the lede is buried at the end of the article, and signals a deeper institutional issue. It looks like the Department of Environmental Conservation was petitioned to take a look at the permit for the plant claimed to be damaging lake’s environment. Meanwhile, DEC didn’t consider environmental damage when reviewing plant’s permit, wants to ignore (seemingly on a technicality) the evidence for one particular kind of damage, and furthermore last year it has discontinued the funding for tests for that kind of damage. Encouraging more coal plant construction seems strange in this age, even if we forget about this particular use case.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#316

Post by whywhywhywhy » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

elitan wrote: post #263

Solution: Carbon emission tax.

If using a GPU to mine crypto is unethical shouldn't using a GPU to do things like videogames and rending hollywood super hero movies should also be taxed I mean they both run GPUs at 100% for hundreds of hours.

Perhaps computing power in general should be capped so it can only use small amounts of power.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#317

Post by throwaway59553 » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:26 AM UTC

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.

yeah tax the little guy playing games or trying to be confortable in a hot day, that's a great plan man.

I'm pretty sure we can all afford yet one more tax.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#318

Post by vkou » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

jrek wrote: post #274

young_unixer wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Cryptocurrencies are used because they're the only market that hasn't yet been regulated to death. People come to Bitcoin for 2 reasons, mainly: 1. It's a practical way to store value without the government destroying it by monetary emission. 2. People are free to speculate. The solution to the first point is that governments should stop pulling the rug from under people's feet. Monetary emission should be predi…

Monetary emission is already tied to the cost of consumer goods. Central banks make interest rate and reserve requirement changes that regulate growth in money supply. Those changes are aimed, in part, at achieving a price inflation target. And price inflation, which is the relevant metric (as opposed to monetary inflation) in the context of a claim that the government destroys value, has been extremely predictable f…

> What exactly is your issue with a growing money supply?

The primary issue is that simply sitting on a dragon's hoard of money should entitle me to a bigger share of the world's wealth, as time goes on, rather than a smaller share.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#319

Post by tsss » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

CTDOCodebases wrote: post #293

arcticbull wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About half is used for jewelry because gold is shiny pebbles. About 10% is used for electronics. Mining Bitcoin consumes 5X as much energy as gold, btw, per unit value extracted. It also requires mining gold to produce the circuit boards used for mining Bitcoin - given the popularity of the ENIG immersion gold plating process for PCB contacts. The secondary issue is that of course each Bitcoin transaction generates 1…

The miners don’t compute hashes of random data. They confirm transactions. If you don’t think that a technology that allows you to store value in a tamper free digital ledger is useful it’s hard to argue the usefulness of PoW crypto currencies to begin with.

It does so with the same efficiency as a Rube Goldberg machine moves a marble from one place to another.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#320

Post by jariel » Fri, Apr 16, 2021, 9:28 AM UTC

ayngg wrote: post #159

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…

To me it seems like Bitcoin (and other pow cryptocurrencies) are almost like the climate change scapegoat for a number of social and economic issues that have seemingly come to a head recently to facilitate their rise. People mine because it is expensive, it isn't the other way around, so the real questions we should be asking in good faith are things like "Why it is profitable in the first place?" and I think it is…

No, this is really quite upside down.

"People get too caught up on bitcoin because it is new and nobody understands it"

We understand it quite well thank you (and it's not new!) - far far more often than not, it's the BTC proponents who don't really grasp what it is, and it's not the 'technical aspects' that are the most salient factors.

Bitcoin creates no value.

It's 'profitable' to an individual, but not the system as a whole - and because it has negative externalizations in the form of CO2 emissions etc. - it's actually a net negative.

Making magic digital baseball cards and trading them does not help us make roads, bridges, iPhones, software, drugs, vaccines, clothing, homes - it just makes all of that a little bit harder actually.

Much like residents of Easter Island using all their resources competing to make Giant Heads. Those heads may have mad some people very powerful, they did not help them grow food, make boats.

If all BTC mining stopped right now, not a single thing would change, other than the price of electricity would be a little cheaper in some places.

BTC isn't going to 'end the world' but the energy consumption is a really negative artifact of this purely speculative activity.

There's not so much wrong with people wanting to exchange digital baseball cards if they want to do that - fine - but with the externalizes it's a problem.