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

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

#251

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pton_xd wrote: post #193
librish wrote: post #33

2.3% to support so little economic activity is just insane. This is the type of tragedy of the commons issue where regulation is needed. For any one actor they can justify spending infinity energy as long as their ROI is positive. There are enough justifications out there that it's easy to convince oneself that you're doing the world a favor ("I'm just librating finance and fighting the good fight against the central…

> 2.3% to support so little economic activity is just insane. It kind of is! But honestly that's the price we pay for not having sound monetary systems. At this point BTC is, functionally, just an alternative asset that hedges against inflation. As governments print increasingly more money, and the amount of BTC stays the same, each BTC becomes worth more. It's very simple. The demand for such an asset is apparently…

> BTC is, functionally, just an alternative asset that hedges against inflation

Bitcoin is a terrible inflation hedge. This is quantitaitvely demonstrable over its entire existence. It's a good gambling asset, and in my opinion, should be taxed as such.

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

#252

Post by latchkey »

burnished wrote: post #116
digging wrote: post #57

I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…

Looks like it has a bigger share than early 2000s US aluminum processing (a notoriously electricity intensive process), which was using 1.5% https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/2003/data/papers/SS0...

Coinmint operates in an old Alcoa plant in upstate NY near Canada. It runs entirely off a dam that was built to power smelting. Power that would otherwise be going to waste (the location is too remote and too expensive to transmit elsewhere). By using the power, it actually helps keep the dam running.

https://www.coinmint.one/

Update: if you're going to downvote me, see below before you do so. I have been there, I have seen it, I have talked to people who worked at the plant and the dam.

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

#253

Post by patricius »

acdha wrote: post #148
digging wrote: post #57

I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…

> There is no comparison made to the energy consumption of the traditional banking industry, which I am sure is not a particularly energy-efficient industry. This is your first mistake: the traditional banking system does not have a security model predicated on the ability to waste power. Bitcoin does, and it’s dynamic so there’s no way to waste less power which isn’t explicitly ceding control. The second error is tr…

Your first mistake is assuming that the power used to secure the Bitcoin network is a waste. It is clearly not, since thousands of people believe it is worth paying for.

The second error is implicitly assuming that the number of people Bitcoin serves is correlated with it’s power usage. You could serve the same number of people as the banking sector does now without increased power consumption when you bring layer 2 or 3 solutions into the picture.

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

#254

Post by FireBeyond »

realreality wrote: post #135
jonathan-adly wrote: post #38

Power usage by itself is meaningless. The real question is the power providing utility or not. Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. They provide real benefit and utility. But, perhaps power wasted on cloth dryers and Christmas lights are a western frivolity. So, the real argument is Bitcoin useful or not. Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market.

> Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. In a world of dwindling EROI and exponential carbon emissions, all data centers are bad. If we cared about the future at all, we'd be switching them off and triaging our energy use.

... like calling out BTC's egregious waste of electricity?

Where 75,502,165,623,893/75,502,165,623,894th of the work is literally thrown away.

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

#255

Post by manquer »

hk__2 wrote: post #184
lovich wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://xkcd.com/538/ Countries have this neat tool called violence that tends to override all security whenever humans are a linchpin

> Countries have this neat tool called violence that tends to override all security whenever humans are a linchpin That doesn’t work with distributed systems. No single country is able to shut the whole Internet down, for example.

They don’t need to shutdown for everyone , they need to shutdown only for their country .

Countries do this all the time , just yesterday we were talking about internet shutdown during elections and exams , then there are restricted countries like say North Korea.

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

#256

Post by amarant »

ziddoap wrote: post #188
digging wrote: post #57

I'm not a crypto proponent per se, but I do feel the need to be reasonable about it, and this reads like pure emotional anti-cryptocurrency sentiment. (edit: while I still can, I'm going to jump in and repeat that I'm criticizing this as a bad article which isn't saying anything very meaningful on its own. Thanks everyone for doing the author's work for them and gathering more data. I won't be upset if it's proven th…

You're brave to even remotely hint that you're in favor of crypto on HN! > Energy consumption is frankly not a phenomenon I give two shits about, as an environmentalist. Despite a few people specifically calling this sentence out as 'ridiculous' or whatever, I think this is a completely valid point. If 100% of the energy powering something comes from renewables, who gives a shit?

I dunno. I see your point, but at the same time there's the opportunity cost to consider.

We simply cannot currently generate enough renewable energy to cover all our energy needs, so if you are wasting power that could've been used for something more important, it's a waste regardless of the source of your energy.

The more energy society demands, the more likely it becomes that some of it is generated by coal. And does it really matter which electrons are used for what at the end of the day?

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

#257

Post by acdha »

psychlops wrote: post #119
jkubicek wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market. Except Bitcoin mining is a perfect example of why these things should NOT be left to the free market.

What better currency competition is out there?

Almost all of them? It hasn’t had much impact on the real economy so clearly most people do not consider it better.

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

#258

Post by ninepoints »

andrewheekin wrote: post #219

This article completely glosses over the hardest problem in the power industry - grid transmission constraints. What's a transmission constraint? Well, eventually the electrical resistance on high voltage power lines reaches a maximum threshold at which no more power can flow through the line, shoutout Ohm's Law :) I work in financial power derivatives, and there are entire trading desks devoted to "congestion tradin…

I'm very familiar with congestion trading and was in that industry at one point, but cmon, this is a bad crypto talking point. It's already quite apparent that bitcoin mines actually destabilize grids just as much while driving up electricity prices for local consumers far more than any positive net effect from an energy perspective.

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

#259

Post by FabHK »

Dowwie wrote: post #113

Isn't the increased demand for electricity driving the price of electricity upward? In the short term, if demand increases faster than supply, prices will rise. Externalities need to be addressed..

Incidentally, Bitcoin miners make around $15bn a year (45k $/BTC * 6.25 BTC/block * 1 block/10 minutes * 60 minutes/h * 24 h/d * 365 d/a), of which probably more than half is cost, so running a profit of a few $bn a year. On the other hand, the externalities of burning 15 GW amount to about $5bn a year.

So, the mining does not generate economic surplus, but constitutes a transfer of value from the public to miners.

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

#260

Post by o39245o9qw34u5 »

jonathan-adly wrote: post #38

Power usage by itself is meaningless. The real question is the power providing utility or not. Like, no one thinks data centers for AWS are bad. They provide real benefit and utility. But, perhaps power wasted on cloth dryers and Christmas lights are a western frivolity. So, the real argument is Bitcoin useful or not. Which, like most things, is something that probably be left to the free market.

I think AWS data centers are bad.
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