One interesting thing to me is that Bitcoin is a lot easier to steal than money in banks. A bad actor can steal your private key and take all of your BTC, and it's gone forever. Try doing that with a bank account -- the bank will back you up, there are transfer limits.
El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
121–130 of 332 posts
Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
#122The country is already going all-out in its adoption of Bitcoin, so sure, why not go from "ludicrous" to "plaid" by bringing volcanoes into the mix?[a] For those not living in El Salvador, it will be fascinating to see how this unorthodox approach to monetary policy works out in the end.
Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
#123How much money is there to be mined per year? On the order of 10 billion dollar? What share of the total hash rate could you realistically buy and power with your volcano? One percent? Probably not ten percent. What would the investment for the hardware be? I have a hard time imagining that you could make a noticeable difference this way even for an economy like Salvador's. And there are probably many better ways to…
I think this is only one part of the story for them. If 70% of their country is un-banked, many transactions are probably in cash, and there probably are a lot of undeclared sales and income that is not being taxed.
If they can really get their population using tools that would make it easier for the government to collect taxes, make it easier for tourists to visit and spend money, etc then the mining rewards are only one small part of their plan.
Of course none of this really needs to happen with crypto, they certainly could solve these problems in other ways, but I can't really blame them for trying this out.
Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
#124goblok. I feel relieved, even though Indonesian President is still Jokowi, he isn't as stupid, hippie dumb like El Salvador's president.
Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
#125Almost half the electricity produced in El Salvador is from fossil sources (they don't have nuclear power): https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.PETR.ZS?location... Option A: invest in that volcano and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Option B: invest in that volcano and mine bitcoin. B makes them richer so long as other people keep expecting Bitcoin prices to rise (increasing demand), so I can see why they do…
> B makes them richer B makes the colonizing foreign investors richer. It won't do shit for the poor country.
"To prevent colonizing foreign investors from controlling your country, you just have to run your country how I, an educated wealthy westerner, think you should."
Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
#126So, I'm going to choose to be an optimist when it comes to crypto energy consumption. There has literally never been a more direct reward for efficient energy production.
> There has literally never been a more direct reward for efficient energy production.
Yeah, too bad this happens not long after we discovered that energy production creates massive issues with regards to our future on this planet.
Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or option A + B: Invest in more geothermal - they already have a lot -, and use bitcoin mining when demand is low to help offset the cost. If mining makes it cost-effective to increase sources like geothermal past the point where it covers the base load so it reduces the need for peaker plants, that might be worthwhile (though of course the other option is to invest in storage) But the potential geothermal output for…
Okay but that's not what they're saying, is it? If that was the plan, surely there would be a mention of said plan while they're announcing plans. Would be a bit weird to only announce "we're gonna turn heat into heat+money" but not "and also reduce our climate impact whenever possible".
You're assuming there is a plan, rather than just the president using it to get attention. All that seems to have really happened is that he's asked someone at the majority government owned geothermal power company to look into doing it.
Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a false dichotomy. They can subsidize the startup costs for harvesting geothermal energy from Bitcoin mining and then use the geothermal infrastructure to produce electricity for the country.
It's not a false dichotomy. The infrastructure does not exist and they can't do both things at once
The parent said with profits they can fund plus some work will need to be made to mine bitcoin possible and those road/building can be repurposed.
Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
#129As a Salvadoran living abroad but keeping an eye on politics there, I feel the need to comment given the amount of skepticism shown here, which is understandable given the history.
I believe that what the president, Nayib Bukele, and his team have done is monumental. The reason is that I also believe that the financial system crashed back in 2008 and has been kept alive by central banks worldwide. Last summer we saw how Lebanon banks reneged to pay back their customers their holdings in USD. This seems to be increasing. The thirst for USD around the world is increasing and all the so called printing by the FED is not getting to the other countries and international companies fast enough. El Salvador is in a though position since it does not control its main currency. The other one, the Colón, while still legal tender is for all practical purposes unusable. It would take too long to grow the economy enough for it to be valued appropriately against the USD. Mandating BTC as legal tender is an awesome move. To me the most important benefit is that the 70% of the population which was excluded from banking and relegated to use physical currency will now be included. If the economy is an engine and money is the oil, El Salvador, which had only some drops of oil, will now get a complete oil change with synthetic on top of that. Lets remember that the law obligates the government to instruct all citizens on the use of the technology and to provide the means if necessary. This means that the government now has to provide connectivity to all citizens and teach them. Nayib has shown that he’s up to the task. For example, El Salvador is providing every child in the public school system with a laptop and free internet connectivity.
So I think this is beyond if BTC goes up to 200k. It doesn’t matter. If it goes back to 10k is OK too. What matters is that every citizen will now be included as equal in this new financial system.
Re: El Salvador Plans to Use Electricity Generated from Volcanoes to Mine Bitcoin
#130Can we all take a moment and appreciate this headline.