Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity • Hacker News Board

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#181

Post by frosted-flakes » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #180

frosted-flakes wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While geothermal systems do use heat pumps, the term "heat pump" in general conversation almost always refers to air-source heat pumps (air to air), not geothermal. In the US/Canada, drilling additional wells is prohibitively expensive for most people, which is why geothermal systems haven't taken off. Heat pumps don't perform very well, or at all, when it's -30° or -40°, so a secondary heat source is needed. Usually…

The context maters here. If a boat is being discussed, it won't be air to air.

What's your point?

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#182

Post by matheusmoreira » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:03 PM UTC

awrence wrote: post #159

Empf wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very curious how that can be better then an electrical heater. It has to be more inefficient as you are not spending energy on calculation but if you substitute it with selling your bitcoins you would need to compensate your co2

It's pretty brilliant actually. Case 1 electric space heaters blindly pass electricity through dumb wires. Case 2 instead of dumb wires you use ASICs. Case 2 is a win win that helps secure a decentralized monetary asset, get paid for it, and heat your home which you would have done anyway, all with the exact same carbon footprint (assuming you're expending equivalent amount of electricity to just heat your home as or…

Wow, this is actually amazing. In my country electric showers are really popular. They're literally just big resistances immersed in water. I wonder how long it'll take for them to put cryptocurrency miners in there.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#183

Post by Empf » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:06 PM UTC

arsome wrote: post #156

Empf wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very curious how that can be better then an electrical heater. It has to be more inefficient as you are not spending energy on calculation but if you substitute it with selling your bitcoins you would need to compensate your co2

My understanding is it's essentially just as efficient as a resistive electrical heater as all the energy used in your video card is converted to heat at some point in the process. There may be some very minor loss here, but I'm not enough of a physicist to say what it'd be.

That's what I'm wondering. It costs energy to move electrons

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#184

Post by robocat » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

arsome wrote: post #146

bluGill wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just electrical rate, also what you do with the waste heat. I know at least one person who is heating his garage. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than an electric heater for the same task. A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that.

Yeah, during the winter I mine on my video card because I'm basically just swapping some of my natural gas heat out for a few hundred watts of electric heat and my electricity is primarily provided by nuclear and hydro. Kind of weird to think of mining as a way to reduce your carbon emissions but in some cases it certainly can be. I'll definitely look more into heatpumps when it comes time to replace my furnace or ai…

> my electricity is primarily provided by nuclear and hydro. Kind of weird to think of mining as a way to reduce your carbon emissions but in some cases it certainly can be.

I think you are likely mistaken, although it is a surprisingly common misconception. Most places in the world, if you are using an extra kWh of power, the system needs to generate up to an extra marginal kWh from coal or gas.

Example 1: France generates power 70% from nuclear. However if a French person uses an extra kWh during base load, that could easily lead to one less kWh exported, which would most likely mean one extra kWh is generated from say coal somewhere else in Europe.

Example 2: New Zealand generates 60% of power from hydro. If I use an extra kWh of power at the moment (even at cheap rates), then if we have a drought in 6 months time, then an extra kWh needs to be generated from coal in 6 months time. I am presuming the coming critical storm[1] this weekend won’t fill our hydro lakes[2] and that the predicted long term dry weather pattern[0] will occur. I am a New Zealander.

You could be right if you are only using your power when it is cheapest (which usually implies the usage of base load nuclear), although it is surprisingly difficult to actually figure out whether you have generated zero extra carbon.

[0] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/441393/hydro-power-more-...

[2] https://www.transpower.co.nz/system-operator/security-supply...

[1] https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/05/rare-red-...

Edit: on second thoughts in NZ I am sure our lakes can’t fill that quickly from one good storm - the inflow rate is limited by the size of the river and the inflow rate is small compared to the storage size?

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#185

Post by Empf » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:07 PM UTC

awrence wrote: post #159

Empf wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm very curious how that can be better then an electrical heater. It has to be more inefficient as you are not spending energy on calculation but if you substitute it with selling your bitcoins you would need to compensate your co2

It's pretty brilliant actually. Case 1 electric space heaters blindly pass electricity through dumb wires. Case 2 instead of dumb wires you use ASICs. Case 2 is a win win that helps secure a decentralized monetary asset, get paid for it, and heat your home which you would have done anyway, all with the exact same carbon footprint (assuming you're expending equivalent amount of electricity to just heat your home as or…

But how much energy is used percentage wise for mining?

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#186

Post by pengaru » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:16 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #108

alex_young wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that entirely dependent on your electrical rate? There must be some break even point right?

Not just electrical rate, also what you do with the waste heat. I know at least one person who is heating his garage. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than an electric heater for the same task. A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that.

> A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that.

Last I checked, heat pumps didn't produce assets of potentially increasing value as a side effect of moving heat around.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#187

Post by teebs » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:18 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #186

bluGill wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just electrical rate, also what you do with the waste heat. I know at least one person who is heating his garage. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than an electric heater for the same task. A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that.

> A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that. Last I checked, heat pumps didn't produce assets of potentially increasing value as a side effect of moving heat around.

You could always buy Bitcoin with the money you saved

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#188

Post by Nextgrid » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:19 PM UTC

Empf wrote: post #185

awrence wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty brilliant actually. Case 1 electric space heaters blindly pass electricity through dumb wires. Case 2 instead of dumb wires you use ASICs. Case 2 is a win win that helps secure a decentralized monetary asset, get paid for it, and heat your home which you would have done anyway, all with the exact same carbon footprint (assuming you're expending equivalent amount of electricity to just heat your home as or…

But how much energy is used percentage wise for mining?

Technically a "perfect" miner would use zero energy (beyond microamps for driving the signal wires in the network cables), the heat comes from imperfect components that "waste" energy by turning it into heat.

So the mining itself doesn't use any energy, it's just that instead of dumping power into a dumb coil of wire, you dump it into a smarter coil of wires and various components that produce some output (that happens to be valuable to the Bitcoin network and it rewards you in exchange) as a side-effect.

For any given watt of electricity, the heat output is the same, just that with a miner you also get useful calculation results out of it.

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#189

Post by henvic » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

pengaru wrote: post #186

bluGill wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just electrical rate, also what you do with the waste heat. I know at least one person who is heating his garage. Mining bitcoin is cheaper than an electric heater for the same task. A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that.

> A heat pump would probably be more cost effective in the long run, but I didn't tell him that. Last I checked, heat pumps didn't produce assets of potentially increasing value as a side effect of moving heat around.

Last time I checked Bitcoin was a speculation madness.

https://henvic.dev/posts/bitcoin/

Re: Sandwell Bitcoin mine found stealing electricity

#190

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 28, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #59

sschueller wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they just need to pay the amount they stole plus penalty.

Here in the UK we have what's known as CPSPOC, or "Criminal Prosecution Service Proceeds of Crime" unit. Their job is to recover all proceeds from criminal activity. In this case I imagine they'll try to argue that the bitcoins mined with stolen electricity are proceeds of crime, and they'll confiscate them. The money recovered will go to the treasury after the electricity company has been compensated.

[deleted]