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SolarBatteryBitcoin

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Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#91

Post by Hermio »

hparadiz wrote: post #80
Hermio wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have not shown a real scenario how bitcoin could work without an energy armes race. The power consumption is NOT arbitrary: Everyone who owns bitcoins has to be motivated to keep bitcoin alive. More people having bitcoin means more people need to make sure that mining is happening. The second point is, bitcoin mining requires a certain amount of distribution to work as intended which leads to: you need a critical…

None of this matters. The system is unblock able and your opinion doesn't matter. It will go on without me or you. That is how it is. You can complain all you want.

I see you stoped caring about real arguments because its to much effort for you to read through them and trying to argue against them.

Sure, lucky enough, i'm arguing on hn also to make sure that comments and articles dont' scew the image of bitcoins being bad for the environment and happy enough, you stop arguing about it, does exactly this.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#92

Post by Yizahi »

314 wrote: post #36
barathr wrote: post #7

I'd like to believe that something like this is possible, but I just don't get how this gets around the fact that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else. Even if many Joules of renewable power get wasted during periods of overproduction (mid-day in the summer in California), other more worthwhile loads could be shifted to use that power, because today it's negative-pric…

Adding an elastic demand sink to a peaky supply in a way that is profitable is quite interesting. Joules that are not used at all are wasted. This converts that wasted generation into cash allowing expansion of the facilities and more Joules overall.

But it's not elastic. Or rather - it can be elastic theoretically but it will never be. If you have a cheap or even negative energy generation during peak generation hours and decide, hmm, I can run some hashing meanwhile without affecting demand. Ok, but then why would you turn off during peak demand hours? Why would you turn it off at any time? Why would anyone? It's still profitable, so everyone will run hashing 24/7. Just like today.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#93

Post by Angostura »

erentz wrote: post #17
barathr wrote: post #7

I'd like to believe that something like this is possible, but I just don't get how this gets around the fact that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else. Even if many Joules of renewable power get wasted during periods of overproduction (mid-day in the summer in California), other more worthwhile loads could be shifted to use that power, because today it's negative-pric…

> that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else. This applies to so many things. Snapchat data center? YouTube using gigawatts to process and stream cat videos? On and on. It’s really hard to control what people do with energy. Much better to focus on ensuring its priced correctly and all it’s externalities are properly included in that price. Then we don’t have to involv…

But nobody is claiming that the energy wasted in the snapchat data centre can make the world a better place by increasing demand for clean energy

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#94

Post by rcxdude »

hparadiz wrote: post #86
lxgr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What‘s inaccurate about my statement? I am quite familiar with mining, but I‘d argue that‘s besides the point: This is a question of economics much more than technology.

You claim that it's possible to tell how much energy was used to produce a block minting solution given the difficulty. It is not. If you actually mined you would know that no two miners use the same amount of energy for a given hash rate and also you would know that it's possible to come up with the solution too early or too late entirely through luck and therefore you can't directly estimate how much energy was use…

It's true you can't predict exactly the energy used in a given block, but you can predict the energy use of blocks on average: this is not very difficult because the energy efficiency of state of the art mining hardware is known, and the difficulty is known.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#95

Post by hparadiz »

lanternfish wrote: post #90
hparadiz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this matters. The system is unblock able and your opinion doesn't matter. It will go on without me or you. That is how it is. You can complain all you want.

This is a remarkable regressive perspective. Nothing is 'unblockable'. If global powers decided tomorrow that bitcoin was a blight on humanity, they could effectively wipe out the network in a variety of ways; it wouldn't take very much coordinated regulation to deflate the hype to a point where the utility of crypto basically tanks for the average user (who are mostly speculators at this point). Just because a syste…

> If none of this matters, why did you even bring it up?

Because it's pretty funny everytime I come on here and people are bringing up lot's of weird theories, speculations, and just outright falsehoods but fail to acknowledge the elephant in the room: the pandora's box is open and that's that.

You can try to make bitcoin illegal but you will find it's like making drugs illegal. All you will do is lose further control over it while not actually addressing any of the downsides of having the system running. There's always another jurisdiction that doesn't care and will perpetuate the blockchain

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#96

Post by rcxdude »

I think all this model says is the it's currently profitable for bitcoin miners to build their own power stations to run their miners. But if they're doing that, why would they contribute to the grid? From looking at the model it just assumes the power will go to the grid first and bitcoin miners second, even though it would always be more profitable to run the miners (by 2x to 3x). I don't see this happening without government intervention. And from the point of view of the human race even this approach involves a huge amount of extra resources going into the mining hardware, an extra cost which only really benefits the miners (extra mining doesn't even benefit bitcoin at this point). I find it extremely worrying that 'bitcoin price' is not an input to this model: it's buried in the assumptions that it basically remains as it is. Bitcoin price going up means even less incentive to contribute to the grid, bitcoin price going down means the benefits it can bring under the broken assumption miners are altruistic go down.

The only way I see this actually having a positive impact through market mechanisms is if there's a railroad fever and massive buildout of solar capacity for mining, followed shortly by a bitcoin crash which actually makes that energy available for the rest of us to use.

(Also, solar is not a great source for mining to use at the moment: mining hardware still costs an appreciable sum relative to the energy cost of running it, especially considering it depreciates quickly. So if at all possible the miners will run them constantly, not adjust to grid supply vs demand)

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#97

Post by dmurray »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compet…

> You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen.

Ideally you need something where the cost of electricity would normally dominate the capital costs of setting up the operation. Otherwise, you're better off running the process all the time, and it's not a useful grid battery.

Alternatively, something where you need to overbuild the infrastructure, perhaps to serve peak demand or for emergency availability.

Water desalination plants and hydrogen factories are expensive to build, so they don't work well here. Bitcoin mining rigs aren't free either. Charging cars is a great application even though cars are expensive to build: they meet the second criterion as, for logistic reasons, we build way more cars than are on the road at any point in time.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#98

Post by speeder »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #79

The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compet…

A lot of people need bitcoin.

It is really useful to hoard! Not to ge rich, but to avoid getting poorer in countries with rampant inflation.

Also it facilitate money transfers a lot.

Yes, a transaction in bitcoin is expensive, but a international wire transfer on my country for example is EVEN MORE expensive, so transferring money using Bitcoin, even after eating all the fees, is cheaper (and easier too).

So people that has the same opinion as you, I consider this opinion invalid until they come up with a solution better than bitcoin for the problems I mentined.

To be clear the problems are:

1. How to save money when government is hostile to saving money.

2. How to transfer money when it is ludicrously expensive and/or government or companies are hostile to money transferrence.

EDIT: people downvote me, but none of the answers below so far address the 2 problems I mentioned.

The closest is someone talking about solving problems with trust, but that is the whole issue, if you can't trust the central authorities and companies, who you trust?

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#99

Post by NullPrefix »

rcxdude wrote: post #96

I think all this model says is the it's currently profitable for bitcoin miners to build their own power stations to run their miners. But if they're doing that, why would they contribute to the grid? From looking at the model it just assumes the power will go to the grid first and bitcoin miners second, even though it would always be more profitable to run the miners (by 2x to 3x). I don't see this happening without…

Crypto mining will pave the way for a nuclear return. Mark my words.

Re: SolarBatteryBitcoin

#100

Post by rcxdude »

NullPrefix wrote: post #99
rcxdude wrote: post #96

I think all this model says is the it's currently profitable for bitcoin miners to build their own power stations to run their miners. But if they're doing that, why would they contribute to the grid? From looking at the model it just assumes the power will go to the grid first and bitcoin miners second, even though it would always be more profitable to run the miners (by 2x to 3x). I don't see this happening without…

Crypto mining will pave the way for a nuclear return. Mark my words.

I'm not sure even crypto mining is profitable enough to make the cost of nuclear worthwhile (to say nothing of the risk taken on on the crypto markets between starting construction and actually getting power).
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