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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

#161

Post by latchkey »

jamincan wrote: post #153
latchkey wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specific example: Coinmint in upstate new york is located in an old Alcoa aluminum smelter plant that has long shut down. It gets power from Moses Saunders dam a few miles away. The factory was originally placed near the dam so that it could provide massive amounts of power to keep the pot lines hot 24/7. The whole place is super remote. I've seen the costs for carrying hundreds of MW just a few miles and they are ma…

There's on the order of 7+ million people within 150km of the dam. I don't think I would call that remote.

Do you know how much to costs, per km, to run and maintain those lines?

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#162

Post by depaya »

fastball wrote: post #143
robjan wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

A factory provides jobs to locals. A factory stimulates the economy by creating local economic activity (suppliers, logistics, construction, restaurants).

A crypto operation might provide a small fraction of everything above while also producing nothing of tangible value to society.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#163

Post by sparksparkapach »

DonHopkins wrote: post #122

Don't ever let any Bitcoin or NFT shills get away with lying to you that their cryptocurrencies and CryptoKitties and Digital Pet Rocks run on renewable energy. And never let any of those get-rich-quick pyramid scheme shills get away without forcing them to openly admit that even though they're burning coal, wasting electricity, destroying the environment, causing climate change, cancer, and heart disease, they simpl…

There are quite a few carbon neutral chains that people do launch on. Most businesses do require energy but they try to offset it. People are trying to shift away from mining for the largest NFT blockchain though, ethereum.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#164

Post by latchkey »

dpierce9 wrote: post #157
jamincan wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's on the order of 7+ million people within 150km of the dam. I don't think I would call that remote.

Not to mention that all New York power plants, including Moses Saunders, are connected to a massive electrical highway that runs straight to New York City.

The lines from Moses Saunders to the plant are direct. You can even see them on google maps if you zoom in and follow them.

You can't just suddenly push more power through the same lines.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#165

Post by throwaway946513 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #107
throwaway946513 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a video I've seen someone, a year ago, setup a 'pre-heater' for their home heating system with a mining rig, so that the home heater doesn't have to use nearly as much fuel/electricity to warm the home. I forget how efficient it was, but the summary was that the net decrease in cost to run the heater was observable but not significant enough to justify everyone doing so.

That sounds freaking awesome. Do you know how to find it? I found a company called Qarnot that's offering products along those lines but they're probably extremely expensive. A home project would be ideal.

While I don't remember which video it was - I think this is a pretty close estimate to it[0].

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLO73bbIJtU

The premise was to only operate the miner in cold months, when the outside air could easily cool the system. I didn't fully re-watch this video but it does give a good setup and explanation for it.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#166

Post by trevyn »

whatisthiseven wrote: post #132
rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeaaaaah i will believe it when i see it. I don't think betting the economy on changing airplane engines mid-flight is a good play. My prediction is that if ETH switches to a PoS consensus model, the value will TANK. If this happens at all. I know the PoS timeline, I think it is fiction.

Ironically, ETH switching to PoS is the reason I am holding the currency. In the future I expect all PoW cryptocurrencies to be banned, or severely hobbled, because of their electricity usage and e-waste. I have a long bet on ETH specifically because of its eventual move to PoS. Bitcoin doesn't even have a plan, and when the legal landscape changes it will be in the worst position to pivot. We'll just have to see wha…

I wonder what the economics are like for a Starship-delivered nuclear-powered Bitcoin mine in space…

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#167

Post by sparksparkapach »

sparksparkapach wrote: post #163
DonHopkins wrote: post #122

Don't ever let any Bitcoin or NFT shills get away with lying to you that their cryptocurrencies and CryptoKitties and Digital Pet Rocks run on renewable energy. And never let any of those get-rich-quick pyramid scheme shills get away without forcing them to openly admit that even though they're burning coal, wasting electricity, destroying the environment, causing climate change, cancer, and heart disease, they simpl…

There are quite a few carbon neutral chains that people do launch on. Most businesses do require energy but they try to offset it. People are trying to shift away from mining for the largest NFT blockchain though, ethereum.

This is just one and I'm sure there are more to come because if the practice is unsustainable a large part of the community would not support it in the long term. https://medium.com/celoorg/a-carbon-negative-blockchain-its-...

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#168

Post by trevyn »

lottin wrote: post #117
adventured wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for society. Whenever you sell it, if you generated a profit on that sale, you are going to pay taxes on it (at least in the US). That's a real value for society. Can it ever be enough to offset the added squeeze on the electricity grid (which we really don't need right now, with EVs coming on and our grid in serious need of upgrade/expansion)? Someone will have…

No. Your profit from trading bitcoins is someone else's loss. The amount wealth in society remains unchanged, only it's allocated differently. Total value added = zero. A tax on profits doesn't add any value either, it's just an additional re-allocation of the same wealth.

That’s not strictly true; some forms of capital allocation increase future productivity (and therefore future wealth) at a greater rate than others.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#169

Post by matheusmoreira »

coldpie wrote: post #155
matheusmoreira wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think I'm a multi-level marketer? Is it even possible to prove otherwise? I just happen to believe in that project and like to talk about it. Am I supposed to not talk about this stuff? I don't particularly care that energy is being spent on cryptocurrency. What I hate is the fact that energy is being spent on bitcoin in particular. The energy is not supposed to be wasted, it's supposed to buy us something . N…

> I'm totally open to new ideas. Find a better hobby =/ This casino is not worth boiling the world.

It's not even 1% of global energy consumption. It's the oil companies who are boiling the world but nobody dares to touch them. The cars, the factories, the developed nations and their comfortable lifestyles supported by such a highly polluting economy. China is the most polluting country in the world, but will the US, Europe stop trading with it? No. How will the west survive without its cheap consumer products? The very computers we're posting this on? Yet I'm expected to care about BTC energy consumption? No, I refuse to care. It's a drop in the ocean compared to the real problems that no government will lift a finger to solve.

That said, I'm totally open to new hobbies.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#170

Post by sushisource »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #109
Fiahil wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit of a crypto enthusiast, but I generally agree that crypto-mining suck too much power out of the grid for it's current utility level. However, your comment is a bit short-sighted and doesn't account for the switch of Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake algorithms that is currently happening. PoS use A LOT less power and doesn't need extensive mining farms. See also: https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-p…

No, never. Bitcoin will be PoW forever. PoS is and will never have the same security properties of PoW. Its bad for decentralization, its bad for censorship resistance, and its bad for the free world.

Bad for the free world? That's a bit of a fucking stretch. I think you can pretty comfortably argue the power and e-waste situation created by PoW is much worse for the "free world" than a slightly stronger consensus mechanism for a speculative value store.
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