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Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

eurasianet.org

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Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#101

Post by progval »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #72
vel0city wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Resistive heaters use energy to create heat. Heat pumps use energy to move heat. For a resistive heater, its taking 1 energy unit from the wall and putting 1 energy unit into the air. A heat pump will use one unit of energy from the wall to take 3-5 units of energy from one side of the system and dump that 3-5 units of energy to the other side of the system.

I see. Heat pumps must move existing heat from somewhere though. Won't those come from burning fuels? I have a lot of solar panels in my home. I'm generating more energy than I'm using. I don't consider efficiency to be a significant concern at the moment.

It moves existing heat from the outside to the inside of the house. It works exactly like an air conditioner, but in the other direction. (And some heat pumps are reversible so they can be used as both)

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#102

Post by cletus »

_fat_santa wrote: post #88
cletus wrote: post #57

And so it begins. In the developed world in particular, we're seeing the move away from fossil-fuel power. This is good but currently relatively expensive. Crypto mining is starting to have very real impact on the ability of other people to live. It is adversely and disproportionately affecting poor people (who pay a greater share of their income for power). And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for s…

An important distinction here, this really only applies to PoW (proof of work) tokens. The original philosophy for Bitcoin being proof of work is that you had to give up something (electricity) to produce it. Your comment is very true for Bitcoin and other PoW tokens but that will soon be in the rearview mirror as more and more coins either come out as PoS (proof of stake) or migrate to it (in the case of Ethereum),…

This has been a popular defense for several years now. For awhile I too bought into it. But there are real questions about whether it can ever work and won't in fact be vulnerable to attack.

The best evidence for this is that PoS hasn't happened despite years of talk about it.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#103

Post by tablespoon »

adflux wrote: post #70
tablespoon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Computers also generate heat. Wish I could use cryptocurrency miners for my heating needs. Why burn fuel or pass current through resistances for that? Realistically? Cost. If your goal is to heat a space, it's much cheaper and more reliable to NOT use thousands of dollars of silicon. Doing calculations based on the site below, you might be able to heat a smallish bedroom with a very beefy PC. I can get a space heat…

I already have an rtx gpu. It nets about 8$ of eth a day. Uses 250w. So that's around 1$ of power a day. And enough wattage to heat my office. So I can get paid to keep my room at a nice temperature. This is why I mine now

> I already have an rtx gpu. It nets about 8$ of eth a day. Uses 250w. So that's around 1$ of power a day. And enough wattage to heat my office. So I can get paid to keep my room at a nice temperature. This is why I mine now

Unless your office is the size of a closet, that doesn't sound like it's enough to provide all of its heating needs (at least according to the formula of the website I linked).

It's certainly practical to provide to exploit heat generated by computers to partially heat a space, but I don't think it's practical to use silicon as the main heat source.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#105

Post by vel0city »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #53
vel0city wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using resistive heating, a computer is about as efficient as a space heater. I have not recently done the math, but I'm pretty sure in my area its still more economically efficient to heat my home with natural gas than resistive heat. Obviously, emissions are a concern, future price uncertainty of fossil fuels, etc. Not the best way forward. However, heat pumps in my area can make a ton of sense. They're fa…

> I have not recently done the math What calculations are these? How do I figure out if it's worth it?

Assuming you already have a gas furnace (I do, was in the house when I bought it), and the option is to either use resistive heat (space heaters, computers, inefficient lightbulbs) or the natural gas furnace, you would need to look at two main things. The cost of electricity per BTU and the cost of natural gas per BTU.

On a somewhat recent decently high gas usage month that emulated a cold winter (forgot to turn off the pool heater from spa mode on the whole pool circulation mode for a few days...oof) my $/CCF (Centi-Cubic Foot) was 1.22. Converting $/CCF to $/MMBTU, divide by 1.037 to get ~$1.176/MMBTU.

Electricity is usually billed at kWh pricing. 1MMBTU = ~293kWh. I pay ~$0.086/kWh, so 293 * .086 = $25.198/MMBTU.

Obviously, you're not getting 100% efficiency with the natural gas furnace. I think the one I have in my attic which is almost a decade old is rated at like 85% efficient. 90% efficient furnaces are available, some of them don't even require a metal chimney as the resulting air isn't even that hot.

But even at only 85% efficiency, you're still taking more than 10x less dollars per heat.

This math changes when thinking about buying new equipment and other factors. I haven't looked at equipment pricing so it would be hard for me to say how expensive it would be compared to alternatives. This can also vary a good bit from your local market. Energy is stupid cheap in my area, natural gas is a good bit cheaper here than a good chunk of the US while electricity prices are about median, maybe a bit lower.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#106

Post by bobcostas55 »

paganel wrote: post #65
cletus wrote: post #57

And so it begins. In the developed world in particular, we're seeing the move away from fossil-fuel power. This is good but currently relatively expensive. Crypto mining is starting to have very real impact on the ability of other people to live. It is adversely and disproportionately affecting poor people (who pay a greater share of their income for power). And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for s…

> Crypto-mining apologists will point to figures that say "crypto-mining uses mostly renewable energy". Which is a shit take anyway because that means that non-renewable energy (plus the renewable energy non-consumed by the miners) is now more expensive for everyone else, it's the basic law of supply and demand. And in the process those miners are also making non-renewable energy a more desirable investment because i…

Energy is not fungible. Just because you have electricity in place A doesn't mean you can get it to place B in a cost-effective way, so mining next to, say, a hydro station with spare capacity (where electricity is cheap) doesn't necessarily have any impact at all elsewhere.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#107

Post by matheusmoreira »

throwaway946513 wrote: post #68
matheusmoreira wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electricity = keeps you warm Computers also generate heat. Wish I could use cryptocurrency miners for my heating needs. Why burn fuel or pass current through resistances for that?

There was a video I've seen someone, a year ago, setup a 'pre-heater' for their home heating system with a mining rig, so that the home heater doesn't have to use nearly as much fuel/electricity to warm the home. I forget how efficient it was, but the summary was that the net decrease in cost to run the heater was observable but not significant enough to justify everyone doing so.

That sounds freaking awesome. Do you know how to find it? I found a company called Qarnot that's offering products along those lines but they're probably extremely expensive. A home project would be ideal.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#108

Post by eldaisfish »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #106
paganel wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Crypto-mining apologists will point to figures that say "crypto-mining uses mostly renewable energy". Which is a shit take anyway because that means that non-renewable energy (plus the renewable energy non-consumed by the miners) is now more expensive for everyone else, it's the basic law of supply and demand. And in the process those miners are also making non-renewable energy a more desirable investment because i…

Energy is not fungible. Just because you have electricity in place A doesn't mean you can get it to place B in a cost-effective way, so mining next to, say, a hydro station with spare capacity (where electricity is cheap) doesn't necessarily have any impact at all elsewhere.

What you must also mention is that electricity is a finite resource. Consuming electrical energy - even at a hydro power station - means the energy you used isn't delivered to somewhere else.

Re: Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

#109

Post by rfd4sgmk8u »

Fiahil wrote: post #93
cletus wrote: post #57

And so it begins. In the developed world in particular, we're seeing the move away from fossil-fuel power. This is good but currently relatively expensive. Crypto mining is starting to have very real impact on the ability of other people to live. It is adversely and disproportionately affecting poor people (who pay a greater share of their income for power). And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for s…

I'm a bit of a crypto enthusiast, but I generally agree that crypto-mining suck too much power out of the grid for it's current utility level. However, your comment is a bit short-sighted and doesn't account for the switch of Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake algorithms that is currently happening. PoS use A LOT less power and doesn't need extensive mining farms. See also: https://blog.ethereum.org/2021/05/18/country-p…

No, never. Bitcoin will be PoW forever. PoS is and will never have the same security properties of PoW. Its bad for decentralization, its bad for censorship resistance, and its bad for the free world.
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