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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

#211

Post by oblio »

politician wrote: post #205
matheusmoreira wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much coal China burned to fabricate all the computers necessary for you to post this and for everyone else to read it.

Looks like you're being downvoted by all of the people that refuse to own up to their own hypocrisy over this issue. You're exactly correct, of course. China manufactures the vast majority of this equipment, and China runs on coal.

It's not hypocrisy.

We need computers for a lot of solid, real life uses.

We don't need cryptocurrencies for almost anything being peddled. They're supposed to be decentralized, but you can't really use them that way in 99% of situations. They're supposed to be currencies and instead they're vehicles for speculation. Etc.

I think their slogan should be: "You don't really need cryptocurrencies for that".

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#212

Post by zozin »

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…

You could have made the same argument about the Internet itself 20 years ago (i.e., a speculative new technology that provides little evident utility while costing a lot in terms of energy usage). What about Amazon's 2-hr delivery? Do you really need a gas-guzzling vans delivering at all hours when the USPS will come to your door daily anyway? What about ride share? How many millions of people opted to ride alone in a gas-guzzling car vs taking a bus or the train?

Energy usage is highly correlated with economic development, trying to curtail energy usage is akin to economic suicide. What you should be advocating for is clean energy production, not consumption. You're headed down a precarious slope if you start policing how and on what people can use energy.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#213

Post by makeworld »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #187
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…

> 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. Cryptokitties run on Ethereum and Ethereum is already partially using PoS. Now from day one people have said "PoW does not work" and yet PoW, so far, is still working. People are now saying "PoS does not work" and yet, so far, PoS is working. The cryptocurr…

If PoS comes, it'll be something to stop criticizing Ethereum over. It'll still be useful to criticize cryptocurrencies in general. See Bitcoin, Monero, etc.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#214

Post by oblio »

vbezhenar wrote: post #146
matheusmoreira wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't even need that. Up to circa -20C you can use a regular AC with an inverter and it would still work, albeit at reduced efficiency.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#215

Post by oblio »

vimy wrote: post #175

The crypto hate here is ridiculous. Every thread about crypto is the dropbox thread x 10. Unless you want to live in a dictatorship where the government dictates what is and isn’t a useful use of energy, the constant bitcoin electricity usage hysteria is a waste of everyone’s energy. :-)

Aren't there quite strict regulations about what you can use electricity for, in almost every country in the world? Especially at industrial scale.

I don't think you can just start your own power plant and/or major consumer without a ton of permits.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#216

Post by swalsh »

rfd4sgmk8u wrote: post #121
Fiahil wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't meant for Bitcoin to transition to PoS, but rather everyone using Ethereum instead of Bitcoin because it's now PoS.

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.

I'm currently staking ETH 2.0 Many people are.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#217

Post by oblio »

Tenoke wrote: post #13
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it would make more sense to you, but not to most people I think. Electricity has much better uses than cryptocurrency.

Of course it does. It also has better uses than say gaming, so if that is the logic maybe that should be banned, too.

Does it have better uses than a regular Kazakh citizen being able to use the light bulb in their apartment? Or their fridge?

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#218

Post by LurkingPenguin »

latchkey wrote: post #204
LurkingPenguin wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read any of the articles? China banned mining. Chinese miners moved to Kazakhstan. Now Kazakhstan is having power shortages.

Apparently you didn't fully read the article. The shortages aren't the miners, it is the fact that 3 plants shut down... "On October 15, the national grid operator, KEGOC, announced electricity rationing after three major coal-fired power plants shut down. KEGOC did not directly blame miners, but it used language similar to the energy minister’s and said it was cutting off customers who “over-consume.”"

> KEGOC did not directly blame miners, but it used language similar to the energy minister’s and said it was cutting off customers who “over-consume.”

And:

> "We have seen that our [country's] electricity consumption has literally increased by 7 percent in one year. That's a very big increase," Energy Minister Magzum Mirzagaliyev said on September 30, noting that consumption usually grows by about 2 percent per annum.

> Mirzagaliyev linked the demand to mining and proposed the government limit supplies of electricity to 1 MW per mining farm and to 100 MW for the whole sector.

Where's the mystery here? Again, hopefully for the last time: China banned mining. Chinese miners moved to Kazakhstan. Now Kazakhstan is having power shortages.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#219

Post by oblio »

golergka wrote: post #42
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it would make more sense to you, but not to most people I think. Electricity has much better uses than cryptocurrency.

If only we had an open, decentralised mechanism to figure out what's a better use of a limited resource is. Oh wait. That's exactly what "cost" is.

Yup, I'm sure that every time we've let the market do its thing, nobody suffered. I don't really want to get into too much of what's very gross territory, but let's say that a long time ago a certain nation controlling another nation decided that the food from said controlled nation was economically most useful being sold somewhere else.

The locals couldn't afford the "cost".

I'll let you put 2 and 2 together for the rest.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#220

Post by oblio »

fastball wrote: post #14
pjc50 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes everyone else in the country worse off.

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

Read and be enlightened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_(Ireland)
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