Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power

> Ending crypto mining is the easiest no-brainer in the history of energy systems.

Ending any profit-generating activity is incredibly difficult. I suspect you're not referring to ending it, but allowing it to be transferred offshore and losing the ability to regulate it. But if it's banned in the US, good luck getting every other country on earth to ban it in solidarity.

It is interesting how much media/politicians focus on the energy expended to preserve value outside of fiat currency, but are somehow far less concerned with how much energy (and human life) we expend to prop up the petrodollar and various private interests abroad. It is also interesting how little they complain about the energy we expend on ML training for next-gen spambots and copyright infringement.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_Sta...

The United States Department of Defense is one of the largest single consumers of energy in the world, responsible for 93% of all US government fuel consumption in 2007 (Air Force: 52%; Navy: 33%; Army: 7%. Other DoD: 1%).[1] In FY 2006, the DoD used almost 30,000 gigawatt hours (GWH) of electricity, at a cost of almost $2.2 billion. The DoD's electricity use would supply enough electricity to power more than 2.3 million average American homes. In electricity consumption, if it were a country, the DoD would rank 58th in the world, using slightly less than Denmark and slightly more than Syria (CIA World Factbook, 2006).[1] The Department of Defense uses 4,600,000,000 US gallons (1.7×1010 L) of fuel annually, an average of 12,600,000 US gallons (48,000,000 L) of fuel per day. A large Army division may use about 6,000 US gallons (23,000 L) per day. According to the 2005 CIA World Factbook, if it were a country, the DoD would rank 34th in the world in average daily oil use, coming in just behind Iraq and just ahead of Sweden.[1]

Due to the extremely competitive nature of Bitcoin mining, the miners must seek out the cheapest power on the market. By definition, cheap power has low demand, so the miners are not crowding out other "higher" uses of the power. In many cases, this power would be otherwise wasted. In some cases, miners are capturing vented or flared waste gasses from other processes (gas wells, landfills).

Many miners have power purchase agreements and curtailment arrangements in place with grid operators that perform two very useful functions:

- Allow grid operators to better plan for demand, since they can anticipate the large load from the miner. Secondary effect: overbuild generation capacity when building new power plants, since there is a ready buyer for the new power.

- Sell energy back to the grid when weather strains capacity. Bitcoin miners can switch off instantly when the grid operator sends a signal, so the grid is more resilient to both predictable (cloudy days) and unpredictable (plant failure) supply changes.

So Bitcoin mining is good for power grids, both from the standpoint of capacity and stability.

You do know that HN people also might be smart and can calculate things like climate change and other aspects into it?

If you don't hate a technology which disrupts an energy market by combining a local people centric market with global interets, ...

I really don't mind people playing around with blockchains, i hate that people who have access to cheap energy sell this advantage to some global weird fuckedup market and disrupting and overloading local power grids, increase demand for coal and other non renweable energy and waste double amount of resources through also requiring AC.

If every bitcoin miner would just run on real 'overpower', would use the process heat to heat houses and stop mining if energy is needed without compensation money, i would not care.

But thats just not the case for bitcoin.

And it doesn't even solve a problem because you never just transfer bitcoins from a to b and b to c without anything offchain and everything offchain can't be protected by the blockchain. So effectivly blockchain is garbage.

And don't tell me about smart contracts, this is not working. No company in the world will leverage the contract amount because 1. you would need the double amount of capital and 2. big rich companies/entities could destroy small entities because they could just frezze assets.

I live in a house house exclusively warmed by electric heating (underfloor downstairs, wall-mounted upstairs). The heating system takes electricity as an input and provides heat as an output with no other direct benefits. As a whole the heating system can be quite power-hungry during cold periods.

A crypto mining rig takes electricity as an input and provides heat as an output with the possible benefit of creating some valuable digital assets. Serious crypto mining setups can be quite power-hungry.

Crypto mining for the sole purpose of making money is often considered an egregious and possibly wasteful use of power resources.

Is crypto mining for the purpose of using the heat to warm my house, with the possible benefit of generating valuable digital assets, similarly egregious, wasteful or inconsiderate in some way?