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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
#452[flagged]
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Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ha…
Why are you touting that as some kind of good? It would have been appropriate to decommission that dam, and there are other energy intensive industries that would have brought some prosperity to the region.
> It would have been appropriate to decommission that dam
That's your opinion.
> and there are other energy intensive industries that would have brought some prosperity to the region.
If that were true, it would have already happened.
Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
#454[flagged]
Thanks for sharing this here. A lot of beginners Like me are smashed out there every day. It's a good thing we have nice people here who want others to become successful as they are.
Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
#4552.3% 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…
I wonder what kind of shape it could take with the current mindset of putting weak signals to steer the market (ie. carbon tax, etc.). Mining bitcoin is far from being the only example of resources waste for pure profit... I can only imagine a vague but serious threat of being accused of ecocide to have an effect.
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Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
#456Earlier 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…
It already exists it’s called gold. There are some hassles associated with physical storage and transport of gold but not 2.3% of total US power consumption worth of hassles.
To people who love gold, I always want to ask what you think should happen if Elon Musk claims a meteor one of his robot ships landed on, that's got 1000 times more gold inside it than there is gold on Earth.
What do you think should happen?
Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would they seal the network in their borders? Why would that bring the whole thing down? Countries that shut down internet don't seem to bring that whole thing down in any sense
https://xkcd.com/538/ Countries have this neat tool called violence that tends to override all security whenever humans are a linchpin
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Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://www.globalenergyinstitute.org/average-electricity-re... us average: $0.18 Wyoming: yeah, cheap. But cold so a heat pump would still totally pay for itself.
Fwiw the estimate for IL seems high to me. I spend about 7c delivered in Chicago. Tons of nuclear supply keeps costs down around the Great Lakes. Perhaps downstate is raising the average.
Idk about tons, maybe if/when palisades gets fully operating again.
Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This article is about crypto mining in the US.
Re: Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power
#4602.3% 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…
The amount of economic activity it supports is somewhat of a poor measure without further information. Yes, it is a complete waste in its current form. But that doesn't strictly mean that the electricity usage will scale with the percentage of economic activity that takes place using it. I would be interested in knowing how this number would change if it supported most economic activity. Surely it would go up, but I doubt it would do so linearly.