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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

#231

Post by azth »

Im_your_dada wrote: post #18

Electricity = keeps you warm, cooks your food, powers your devices. Cryptos = suck that energy out of the power grid to gamble with one another.

> Cryptos = suck that energy out of the power grid to gamble with one another.

All crypto currencies are used for gambling?

Can you give us a good solution to hedge against government induced inflation that does not involve usury or having enough cash to purchase property outright to rent it out? Note: almost all companies deal with interest in some way or another, even if they don't need to, so usury is embedded in their stocks.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#232

Post by bena »

cletus wrote: post #57

And so it begins. In the developed world in particular, we're seeing the move away from fossil-fuel power. This is good but currently relatively expensive. Crypto mining is starting to have very real impact on the ability of other people to live. It is adversely and disproportionately affecting poor people (who pay a greater share of their income for power). And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for s…

I think the other thing ignored is that crypto tends to take as much power as possible.

Making crypto more efficient wouldn't make it use less electricity, it would just increase the number of miners. And you'd be a fool not to do that because only one node becomes part of the chain and the more you mine, the greater your chances you get that golden ticket.

Crypto will always try to get power usage as close to 100% as possible from every possible source. We never get off of fossil fuels unless crypto stops being a thing.

And not to mention, being at capacity all the time is a bad thing. In something you want available all the time, you want a lot of potential capacity in case of failures or demand spikes.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#233

Post by matheusmoreira »

oblio wrote: post #208
matheusmoreira wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's not even 1% of global energy consumption. For now. As its usage goes up, its energy consumption will go up, >. It's crazy that we're even talking about a > (!!!) using this much power. > It's the oil companies who are boiling the world but nobody dares to touch them. We are working on all of that, I guess you haven't been following the news. It's not easy, but we are. > The cars, the factories, the developed n…

> And those real problems are being tackled, you just don't know it or refuse to see or think it's simple and easy to solve.

Okay. Let's wait for them to solve the big problems first before we focus on inconsequential stuff like cryptocurrency. Once that's taken care of, we'll see if proof of work remains an issue.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#234

Post by azth »

rank0 wrote: post #145
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…

> we eat taxes on purchases, investments and property.

Maybe lobby to lower taxes then?

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#235

Post by gaspard234 »

booleandilemma wrote: post #151

I’ve brought this up before and I was downvoted for it[0], but I don’t think I made my point clear enough last time. People seemed to think I was questioning the soundness of the algorithm, but that’s not what concerns me. I was talking about the concept of bitcoin itself. What I’m concerned with is what if the true point of this thing we have been led to call “bitcoin” is to destabilize countries. What if it’s a new…

I have friends that joke that Crypto was introduced by alien lifeforms or time travelers as a way to burn our environment down before reaching Stage 2 of the Kardashev scale[0].

Human greed is too powerful for us to ignore the negative impacts and it is destined to destroy humanity. I work in a related space so I don't agree but it is interesting to think about.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#236

Post by hanniabu »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #12
josephcsible wrote: post #2

Wouldn't it make more sense to just let the price of electricity go up?

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

Easy, just require an pricy mining permit that can be used to build renewable infrastructure.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#237

Post by SAWZALL »

ilamont wrote: post #197
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…

The crypto miners who set up shop in Northern NY to take advantage of cheap hydro and wind power caused electricity prices to spike for local residents, resulting in municipalities leveraging new taxes on the companies or issuing outright bans. This article is from 2018: Plattsburgh went over its power allotment and was forced to purchase electricity on the open market for far higher prices. This cost was distributed…

Oh, PLEASE! POST MORE VICE LINKS, YOU SILLY MORTAL.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#238

Post by sudosysgen »

zozin wrote: post #212
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…

Amazon is a net positive for energy in car dependent places. It's more energy efficient to drop something off than for someone to drive to the store to buy it. You can get significant economies of scale and those apply to energy usage.

Beyond that, we can and will eventually force Amazon to use EVs if they don't by themselves to save money, which is possible.

I'm all for strongly inducing people to use trains, buses, ebikes, and the like.

We can advocate for clean energy, and we should. But advocating against zero-sum energy usage is perfectly fine and completely consistent with good economic policy.

The internet never used all that much energy. The computers were there anyways, and when it was in its speculative stage it was piggy-backing off the telephone network for most of the actual transmission. It was never even close to a power hog until it became very evident how useful it was.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#239

Post by SAWZALL »

latchkey wrote: post #209
ilamont wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crypto miners who set up shop in Northern NY to take advantage of cheap hydro and wind power caused electricity prices to spike for local residents, resulting in municipalities leveraging new taxes on the companies or issuing outright bans. This article is from 2018: Plattsburgh went over its power allotment and was forced to purchase electricity on the open market for far higher prices. This cost was distributed…

You picked off the easily googled articles that are unrelated to Coinmint and happened during the crypto boom in 2017 / 2018, when people were renting warehouses and filling them with miners. Everyone got rightfully pissed.

THANK YOU! EXACTLY!

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#240

Post by latchkey »

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #218
latchkey wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> China banned mining. Chinese miners moved to Kazakhstan. Now Kazakhstan is having power shortages.

We wouldn't be reading about power shortages at all if 3 major power plants didn't go offline.

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