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Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

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Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#101

Post by tshaddox »

saalweachter wrote: post #17
epinephrinios wrote: post #10

It would be great if the gigantic Bitcoin energy demand leads to renewable energy breakthroughs.

... do we really need another energy demand to drive R&D? We're already working with an energy budget equivalent to 1/3 the decay that powers the Earth's fiery core. Is it really fair to credit any new breakthroughs to the last ~12 GW of demand, instead of the first ~18 TW?

You seem to be asking that rhetorically with the implication that the answer is obvious “no.” But that’s certainly not obvious to me. Seems to me that adding energy demand is a good thing for the advancement of renewable energy. Surely a decrease or stasis in energy demand would be devastating to the renewable energy industry.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#102

Post by bostonsre »

seoaeu wrote: post #14
pcthrowaway wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering if 'carbon-neutral' energy production is really environmentally neutral, especially when channeled to cryptocurrency mining. Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? Not to mention the harm t…

> Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? That's some anti-renewable energy FUD I hadn't seen before... Yes, we're sure that won't cause global warming. Wind turbine operation doesn't produce greenhouse g…

I guess if we theoretically had enough wind turbines, climates could start being impacted due to winds being slowed down but not exactly sure if that would heat the earth more or not. Could an area with lots of turbines have slower wind speeds and have heat dissipate less quickly? It seems plausible, but would think it would even out with a different area getting a little cooler. But yea, don't see how that would cause the earth to warm overall.

Also, I assume wind turbines cause some emissions during manufacturing. Not sure going gang busters and making a ton to power bitcoin mining would be great for the planet.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#103

Post by SwimSwimHungry »

baron816 wrote: post #88

Easy solution: tax carbon emissions. Who cares if you’re using energy to mine Bitcoin? Or if you’re using it to play video games? Or to run the AC all day? If it you’re internalizing the cost of any emissions, then you’ll use those resources efficiently.

Hard to do this when you can have other countries with much looser regulations allow Bitcoin miners run rampant.

What probably should happen is to make converting from any cryptocurrency to major world currencies a crime. I have no delusions that this will halt activity in this sector entirely, but it will make it reasonably difficult to make any substantial money this way without raising some serious eyebrows.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#104

Post by tshaddox »

palijer wrote: post #65
gruez wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's perverse, just like almost every other form of economic activity on this planet, eg. farming (fertilizer/herbicide run-off), mining (tailing ponds), factories (air/ground/water pollution). The underlying reason is simple: externalities aren't being priced in, which allows the owners of such operations to make money while everyone pays the price.

None of what you listed are similar cases. Farming produced food to eat. Mining produces minerals to build things with. Factories produce goods. Bitcoin produces... A series of bits that some people will pay money for? It seems like bitcoin is basically fine art at this point.

Bitcoin is obviously producing money for these miners, just like farms, mines, and factories. And wait, are you suggesting that we should also ban using electricity to create art?

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#106

Post by askesisdev »

caf wrote: post #90

The Greenidge team told potential investors last month that the plant had mined 1,186 bitcoins at an average net cost of about $2,869 for the 12 months ending in February. At this week’s Bitcoin price, that would translate into a profit margin of about $60,000 per mined coin. Surely this cannot last. This kind of outsize profit ought to be bringing online enough new mining capacity to increase the block difficulty un…

Yes, the chip shortage must be preventing the manufacture of enough ASICs.

The same can be said for Ethereum. The shortage of GPUs is preventing the difficulty to raise fast enough. The profit margin has been like 5-10x the electricity cost for the last few months. If you bought a RTX 3080/3090 it would have paid itself and the electricity by now.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#107

Post by almost_usual »

SwimSwimHungry wrote: post #99
maxerickson wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reasonably likely that there will be a run on dollars at some point. If/when it happens, the bitcoin network collapsing is a pretty likely outcome. (what I mean by a run on dollars is that lots of people may decide they want dollars instead of bitcoin, so the people with dollars won't have to pay as much for bitcoin, and then the people who want dollars will have to accept less for their bitcoin, and then…)

@maxerickson That ultimately will be the end game. I'd argue that most of the folks that bought into Bitcoin do not, in fact, share in the an-cap libertarian utopia of an economy entirely detached from the US Dollar. Folks are going to want their payday, even folks like Michael Saylor and Elon Musk. These guys aren't HODLing for charity. They want to exit before the rest of the peanut gallery does.

The utopia is so mind boggling far fetched.

Suppose I have a weapon and I want to kill you unless you give me your bitcoin. How do you stop me? You either have your own weapons to defend yourself or go to an authority for help.

So unless everyone wants to build their own personal military the end game is the same.

All of these arguments boil down to one possibility that could work. Bitcoin somehow brings about world peace, which seems unlikely.

Bitcoin as an experimental protocol is interesting, as a serious currency or asset it is an environmentally dangerous joke.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#108

Post by pcthrowaway »

seoaeu wrote: post #14
pcthrowaway wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm wondering if 'carbon-neutral' energy production is really environmentally neutral, especially when channeled to cryptocurrency mining. Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? Not to mention the harm t…

> Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? That's some anti-renewable energy FUD I hadn't seen before... Yes, we're sure that won't cause global warming. Wind turbine operation doesn't produce greenhouse g…

Since I'm getting downvoted, here's a study on it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511...

Your misunderstanding seems possibly intentional. I'm very much in favour of renewable energy as an alternative to nonrenewable energy. I'm just not in favour of wasting energy for very little purpose.

Build solar/wind energy to replace fossil fuels? Great! Obviously I'm in favour of that. Built an insane amount of infrastructure for producing renewable energy so that we can piss it away? That seems incredibly wasteful!

Even if renewable energy is much better, there are still externalities to producing energy.

Re: Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

#109

Post by dang »

camgunz wrote: post #13

Every time I'm like "BTC is roasting the planet" people come out of the woodwork to remind me about renewable energy. Funny I don't see any of them here....

Please don't post supercilious dismissals, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Especially not as a shallow one-liner. It leads to shallow, uninteresting discussion and we're hoping for better than that here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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