Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages • Hacker News Board

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#261

Post by zherbert » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

Bitcoin mining incentivizes the plentiful production of cheap electricity. This will make it so that there are no such thing as power shortages in the future and push us towards a Type I civilization on the Kardashev scale.

Bitcoin mining reduces the risk for energy generation projects, because they no longer need to worry about who will purchase the extra capacity.

Bitcoin mining can act as a load-balancer for the grid – spin down some machines if there is high demand, spin up machines if there is low demand.

There are so many benefits. It is unfortunate that there is a serious lack of understanding on this website.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#262

Post by sudosysgen » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

politician wrote: post #241

oblio wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any way you skin this cat, resources are limited. So it would be taking away resources from other uses. Plus producing solar farms is harmful to the environment, as is running them. Unless you actually use solar farms for something useful, you know, replacing stuff with a higher negative environmental impact. Building your own power grid for crypto speculation is kind of the textbook definition of greed and selfishne…

The Sun is not a limited resource, not until we're a K2 civilization anyway -- and we're no where close to K2. The other materials in solar panels are abundant and reusable. There is plenty of unoccupied desert to build on. In what way are resources limited?

Hyper pure quartz for photovoltaic solar is limited.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#263

Post by missedthecue » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:42 PM UTC

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.

Why do we want to subsidize a huge block of solar panel production going toward crypto mining? Not to mention the waste of computing resources that crypto burns through on a constant basis.

The core problem of crypto is that despite what its promotors seek in vain to prove, it provides little societal value, while requiring a constant flow of an enormous amount of resources. This doesn't change whether your GPU farm is connected to a coal plant or solar field.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#264

Post by honkycat » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

azth wrote: post #255

honkycat wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give us a good solution to keep the price of bread from rising above the ability for impoverished people to purchase it over government induced inflation? Oh right, I'm dealing with someone who believes in the "free market" while plugging their ears when people talk about subsidies for the gas, meat, defense, and other "profitable" industries.

> Oh right, I'm dealing with someone who believes in the "free market" I don't believe in absolute free market as defined by capitalism. Case in point: I do not deal with interest (usury), as it is prohibited in my faith. There are also some other red lines which I will not get into here, as it is not the subject of discussion. I'm happy to go into them more though if someone is curious. As such, no, it is not your t…

Interesting! I didn't know about Zakat and Islams relation to usury. Thank you for educating me!

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#265

Post by labster » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

zherbert wrote: post #261

Bitcoin mining incentivizes the plentiful production of cheap electricity. This will make it so that there are no such thing as power shortages in the future and push us towards a Type I civilization on the Kardashev scale. Bitcoin mining reduces the risk for energy generation projects, because they no longer need to worry about who will purchase the extra capacity. Bitcoin mining can act as a load-balancer for the g…

Bitcoin mining uses up all of the efficiency gains from energy saving over the past decade, and more. Bitcoin incentivizes carbon production by keeping electricity demand artificially high, even dedicating entire coal power plants to a single mining location. Therefore, cryptocurrency has already guaranteed we will never have time to advance on the Kardashev scale.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#266

Post by matheusmoreira » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #247

matheusmoreira wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll be the first to admit that bitcoin failed to achieve everything it was supposed to. However, criticizing cryptocurrency as a whole over energy usage of all things is hypocrisy. It's not even 1% of global energy consumption. The world is being destroyed, but not by this.

0.55% of energy consumption[0] is not a trivial amount of energy. 0: https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-much-energy-does-bitcoin-actuall...

Yeah, but in the grand scheme of things it's nothing. A nuisance at best. If people really are worried about climate change, they need to stop trading with China, regulate big oil, invest in public infrastructure and transportation, heavily incentivize development and usage of clean energy sources, etc. Bitcoin is just a convenient distraction from the real problems. Regulating it will contribute virtually nothing to this cause.

At this point in time, there is no reason to care about this. Maybe we start caring if some insane development happens and BTC suddenly starts representing 10-20% of our energy consumption. Until then, there are bigger problems to worry about.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#267

Post by pfortuny » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

azth wrote: post #255

honkycat wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give us a good solution to keep the price of bread from rising above the ability for impoverished people to purchase it over government induced inflation? Oh right, I'm dealing with someone who believes in the "free market" while plugging their ears when people talk about subsidies for the gas, meat, defense, and other "profitable" industries.

> Oh right, I'm dealing with someone who believes in the "free market" I don't believe in absolute free market as defined by capitalism. Case in point: I do not deal with interest (usury), as it is prohibited in my faith. There are also some other red lines which I will not get into here, as it is not the subject of discussion. I'm happy to go into them more though if someone is curious. As such, no, it is not your t…

Interest is not the same as usury whatever definition you use. The fact that your faith equates them does not make them equal. You are perfectly free to use them interchangeably in your mind but most people do not do so, and your use leads to misunderstandings.

Interest, in traditional western societies is just the measure of the present value of future time, which is understood as valuable. Thus, money+time=“more money”.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#268

Post by nathias » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

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…

crypto provides a very important social utility to the poor, the only hope that they might stop being that

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#269

Post by matheusmoreira » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

sudosysgen wrote: post #227

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…

1% energy usage is far from a drop in the ocean. It's huge!

In absolute terms, sure. In relative terms, it's nothing. Removing BTC energy consumption from the equation barely affects the result. In order to actually do something about climate change, humanity needs to tackle that big 80-90% chunk of energy consumption coming from much more problematic industries. Cryptocurrency is a nuisance by comparison, a minor problem.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#270

Post by TomSwirly » Wed, Nov 03, 2021, 6:57 PM UTC

politician wrote: post #241

oblio wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any way you skin this cat, resources are limited. So it would be taking away resources from other uses. Plus producing solar farms is harmful to the environment, as is running them. Unless you actually use solar farms for something useful, you know, replacing stuff with a higher negative environmental impact. Building your own power grid for crypto speculation is kind of the textbook definition of greed and selfishne…

The Sun is not a limited resource, not until we're a K2 civilization anyway -- and we're no where close to K2. The other materials in solar panels are abundant and reusable. There is plenty of unoccupied desert to build on. In what way are resources limited?

> The Sun is not a limited resource,

Photovoltaic cells and the materials to use them _are_ limited and the amount of power produced by solar today is _very_ limited.

> not until we're a K2 civilization anyway

People should read less science-fiction and look at the actual world as it exists today.