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Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

eurasianet.org

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Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#141

Post by matheusmoreira »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #118
matheusmoreira wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you. It's a waste of energy because that energy is being spent mining BTC, a useless coin that isn't anonymous, private, decentralized, fungible, it isn't even an actual currency. It should be spent mining Monero instead which actually does have all of those properties.

I like and hold Monero, it is a good coin. But it is not Bitcoin. It likely will never have the attention of large capital holders (eg: Financial Institutions). Ignoring the regulatory risks (which absolutely exist), IMHO the real critical risk is that bugs or bad math will break the economic model. With transparent blockchains like BTC, you can trace every satoshi. With opaque chains like XMR, you risk that a bug in…

> Ignoring the regulatory risks (which absolutely exist)

I'm of the opinion that Monero is a failure if it can't withstand regulation.

> IMHO the real critical risk is that bugs or bad math will break the economic model.

I agree. I don't think I have sufficient cryptography knowledge to evaluate this risk but I acknowledge its existence. For the moment I trust that the Monero developers will do everything possible to prevent this from happening.

Still, BTC is way too valuable for something that failed to become everything it was envisioned to be. It seems to be driven by brand name alone. XMR is way too undervalued and undermined for a coin that at least tried to address the majority of problems in BTC.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#142

Post by fastball »

duxup wrote: post #33
fastball wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If mining is a net positive for Kazakhstani miners, doesn't that make the country better off? That's a net export.

>If mining is a net positive for Kazakhstani miners, doesn't that make the country better off? How does that work?

If mining is profitable that means electricity is costing less than the proceeds of mining. If these miners are Kazakhstani, presumably they are spending the majority of these gains in-country, or are paying taxes on the proceeds. As such this should be a net gain for Kazakhstan, since I assume the majority of people buying the crypto the miners are generating are not in fact Kazakhstani.

This doesn't seem complicated tbh and I'm actually struggling to understand why you wouldn't get this if you generally understand net imports/exports.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#143

Post by fastball »

robjan wrote: post #24
fastball wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If mining is a net positive for Kazakhstani miners, doesn't that make the country better off? That's a net export.

No, because everyone pays higher electricity bills while a small number of people benefit from selling their mined crypto.

How is this different from a factory that uses a lot of electricity to produce shoes that are then exported?

I thought that was a good thing to have in your country, but apparently because this is crypto it is suddenly a bad thing?

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#144

Post by latchkey »

cletus wrote: post #80
paganel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto-mining apologists will point to figures that say "crypto-mining uses mostly renewable energy". Which is a shit take anyway because that means that non-renewable energy (plus the renewable energy non-consumed by the miners) is now more expensive for everyone else, it's the basic law of supply and demand. And in the process those miners are also making non-renewable energy a more desirable investment because i…

It's sad that this gets downvoted because you're not wrong eg [1][2][3]. [1]: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2284222-coal-powered-bi... [2]: https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-env... [3]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/09/old-coal-plant-i...

China has banned mining.

Update cause I'm getting down voted: the point is that the quoted articles are talking about China and are therefore outdated. I'm not referring to what is happening today with regards to the movement of mining.

_Some_ miners moved to Kazakhstan, but the truth is, they went global.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#145

Post by rank0 »

ravenstine wrote: post #137

Why not create incentives to mine crypto with solar? Lower or eliminate any sort of capitol gains taxes on crypto mined with solar, make solar panels tax free for companies that mine crypto, and crypto would not only go up in value but the solar industry would also be supported. Oh yeah. The Federal Reserve and the central banks need fiat.

Is this a serious suggestion?

Us peasants have to work for the government 4 months a year and even after our take home we eat taxes on purchases, investments and property.

But yeah, let’s give crypto miners the tax breaks surely they deserve it…

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#146

Post by vbezhenar »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #72
vel0city wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resistive heaters use energy to create heat. Heat pumps use energy to move heat. For a resistive heater, its taking 1 energy unit from the wall and putting 1 energy unit into the air. A heat pump will use one unit of energy from the wall to take 3-5 units of energy from one side of the system and dump that 3-5 units of energy to the other side of the system.

I see. Heat pumps must move existing heat from somewhere though. Won't those come from burning fuels? I have a lot of solar panels in my home. I'm generating more energy than I'm using. I don't consider efficiency to be a significant concern at the moment.

You drill very deep shafts and move refrigerant up and down. It’s efficient but capital costs are huge. Usually it does not make sense economically without government regulations.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#147

Post by bryanlarsen »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #106
paganel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto-mining apologists will point to figures that say "crypto-mining uses mostly renewable energy". Which is a shit take anyway because that means that non-renewable energy (plus the renewable energy non-consumed by the miners) is now more expensive for everyone else, it's the basic law of supply and demand. And in the process those miners are also making non-renewable energy a more desirable investment because i…

Energy is not fungible. Just because you have electricity in place A doesn't mean you can get it to place B in a cost-effective way, so mining next to, say, a hydro station with spare capacity (where electricity is cheap) doesn't necessarily have any impact at all elsewhere.

What an odd take, given that electricity is almost the poster definition of fungible. Sure there are transmission losses, but they are very minor.

It's not perfectly fungible, but nothing in the real world is, everything has some sort of shipping costs. I can't think of anything more fungible than electricity except for virtual items like dollars.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#148

Post by notahacker »

cinntaile wrote: post #74
nwah1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same about whether bridges to nowhere generate important economic robustness. The problem with this view is it ignores that such activity crowds out the ability to do something actually useful with the same resources, while also producing all the same externalities (both positive and negative).

You're talking about the broken window fallacy. I don't think it's immediately clear that a more robust and stable electricity network wouldn't lead to additional economical and societal benefits thus making it a positive sum game?

I don't think it's immediately clear that cryptomining leads to a more robust and stable electricity network for the people it outcompetes on power. The evidence of Kazakhstan certainly doesn't point in that direction...

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#149

Post by matheusmoreira »

DonHopkins wrote: post #127
matheusmoreira wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! This sounds like the perfect way to create a distributed proof-of-work network.

More like Proof-Of-Waste, both of precious electricity, and of precious rare earth elements and other materials. Not to mention how much precious time cryptocurrency shills waste, and dangerous greenhouse gasses they produce from all the hot air of their rancid breath, by droning on and on and on about cryptocurrency all the time, parroting all the lies they heard in youtube get-rich-quick pyramid scheme videos. Anot…

I'm just gonna ignore the hateful parts of your post.

> More like Proof-Of-Waste, both of precious electricity, and of precious rare earth elements and other materials.

Is it really a waste if the heat produced is useful?

> idea of using a crypto rig as a space heater has already been completely debunked

Where? I've read detailed posts describing that it probably wouldn't be as efficient as other heat transfer methods. Doesn't mean it is "debunked". I'm convinced it could work in certain circumstances, such as availability of free energy in the form of solar power.

> If it's such a great idea, then why doesn't everybody already have one or a hundred of them, huh?

I don't know. I've been wondering for a while. That's why I started a discussion. Maybe the idea is too new or there aren't consumer products in the market that make it easy for people to do it.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#150

Post by latchkey »

ravenstine wrote: post #137

Why not create incentives to mine crypto with solar? Lower or eliminate any sort of capitol gains taxes on crypto mined with solar, make solar panels tax free for companies that mine crypto, and crypto would not only go up in value but the solar industry would also be supported. Oh yeah. The Federal Reserve and the central banks need fiat.

https://oilcity.news/wyoming/legislature/2021/04/15/gordon-s...
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