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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

#381

Post by rcxdude »

rspeele wrote: post #363
null0pointer wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So split any cryptocurrency network into small segements, then add your machine to that network with a false history, design the network to be small enough, and your machine will out-hash the rest, and so it's history will win. Rinse-and-repeat. You cannot forge history, even with 100% of the hash power. Firstly, each transaction is cryptographically signed with the keys of the sender address. Secondly, each full n…

> The global bitcoin system is well within rearch of a hostile state 51%'ing it > I’ll believe it when I see it. They honestly have a better chance outlawing it and imprisoning anyone who’s ever used it. First of all I don't think any state is currently motivated to do this. However, if I were a state agency trying to attack Bitcoin, I would start by creating my own mining pool, which of course would purport to be pr…

Or, skip the trouble of building such a pool and rubber-hose those who control the existing pools into doing what you want.

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

#382

Post by titzer »

tgv wrote: post #278
titzer wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> probably be left to the free market. Ah yes, the mythical free market that no one ever questions, the unassailable arbiter of value in this world. This underpinning assumption needs to be pointed out. Clearly, the free market is not infallible. The question is how do mixed economies make best use of markets, regulation, taxation, and have a functioning justice system so that we don't shovel raw human souls into the…

Indeed, many people seem to think the market solves all problems. In a sense it does, but only in a very specific sense. Like, if we there was some loophole in the law that allowed killing people with a pistol, the market would respond by making bullet-proof vests expensive, and by producing cheap, but bad protection vests. And guns, of course. It wouldn't solve the killing, but it would solve the question "how much…

I have found that HN sentiment (not just in the case of my comment above) does not suffer criticism of markets well.

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

#383

Post by realreality »

FireBeyond wrote: post #254
realreality wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, crypto miners should be among the first servers to switch off.

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

#384

Post by rcxdude »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #251
pton_xd wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In some countries, that would decrease the taxation! (In the UK, for example, gambling income is tax-free)

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

#385

Post by realreality »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #246
realreality wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, Bitcoin bad. What about video games? Netflix? Porn? Yes, they're all bad. Markets are no substitute for morality. And if the market properly accounted for environmental damage, all of those uses of energy would be priced out of existence.

I don't think you're going to make many friends arguing that all electronic recreational activities are bad.

I know. Addicts don’t like to hear about how destructive their addictions are.

Our society is addicted to energy.

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

#386

Post by jstanley »

triceratops wrote: post #291
jstanley wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People like to buy energy from a company that they think shares their view on energy efficiency.

Is it common to have more than 2 options for a power company? I personally pick my power company, if I have a choice at all, based on their rates and proportion of renewable energy generated. Most people probably only care about the rate. Power companies aren't brands. People don't make choices based on which one is more "woke" or whatever.

In that case I can't see why they would bother advertising anything at all.

In the UK you have the choice of loads of energy companies, and certainly some of the marketing is around their green credentials.

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

#387

Post by kayamon »

FabHK wrote: post #342
patricius wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> thousands of people believe it is worth paying for. Except, in good old libertarian fashion, they tend not to pay for it. First, the vast majority of the around $100 it costs to process a BTC transaction comes not from explicit fees, but from (invisible) money supply increase (the mining reward). That still neglects the environmental externalities, which are probably in the $30+ region.

but the mining reward halves every few years tho

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

#388

Post by TheCaptain4815 »

timeon wrote: post #296
TheCaptain4815 wrote: post #183

The underlying problem is energy creation, not usage. If we had nuclear power plants everywhere and energy "too cheap to meter", no one would bat an eye at BTC energy usage. We need to stop thinking energy conservation, and start thinking on how we can GROW sustainable energy usage. People live better with more energy.

This thinking drives climate change. There is no perpetual motion.

That's because we're stuck with loads of dirty energy. The ultimate goal should be unlimited energy for everyone, but only sustainable energy. That first portion is rarely mentioned in the climate change community.

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

#389

Post by latchkey »

Symbiote wrote: post #379
latchkey wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look on a map. There is nothing (in the US) that is close to there that would consume the ~500MW of power the dam produces and sends to the plant. The plant was shut down and nobody made an effort to direct the power elsewhere. Transmission is insanely expensive at scale. I've seen their power bills and I talked to their head electrician who worked at the plant when it was operational. That's the best citation I can…

Have you looked on a map? The plant is right next to the largest power line between the USA and Canada, right between Ottawa and Montreal. A (presumably) new-ish wind farm is on the New York state side. Have you read their website? "With 435MW of transformer capacity at its Massena complex" — that is the amount they can draw from the grid, not the generating capacity of any nearby power plant. The plant is here: http…

I'm keenly aware of their operations as my last company looked into hosting in their facility and I know people who have hosted there too. I have also physically been there. Too bad HN doesn't allow photos, I've got some good ones.

The map shows what I'm talking about very clearly... all of the power is either used for the local Alcoa plants (there are several) or gets exported elsewhere.

There is little usage for that power locally (it is in the middle of nowhere, frozen in the winters and otherwise wasteland surrounded by superfund sites thanks to the smelting).

It also isn't like you can just plug in 115kv line into a 230kv line and call it a day. It would require new construction to send that power somewhere else, which is expensive and hard to justify over someone just paying for the power to stay right there.

I never said anything about 'generating capacity'. The dam, where I also went for a tour, is ~2k mw total, part goes to Canada and the rest to the US. The Massena facility has an allocation of that power.

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

#390

Post by duskwuff »

banannaise wrote: post #223
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…

Energy consumption by banking? We can calculate that. All commercial buildings in the United States used about 6.8 trillion BTUs, or 2 trillion kWh (2 petawatt-hours), of power in 2018 [1]. That's just over half of the 3.9 petawatt-hours used by the country as a whole [2]. Of that, 16% was consumed by offices [3], so we're down to 8%. That's all office buildings, so what percentage of office building space is devoted…

> Datacenters used less than 0.1 petawatt-hours in 2020 [4], or about 2% of total energy consumption.

FWIW, that's a projection from 2016, but it should still be in the right ballpark.

Comparing Bitcoin power usage to all other data center power usage is also enlightening. Those data centers are hosting the majority of the world's online services as well as providing services used by physical businesses; they're doing a lot more useful work, for more people, than Bitcoin is.

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