Typical case with russia occupied territories, no law, criminal business. They supply electricity to this region but locals just do not pay and do illegal connections. Mining business controlled by Russia-Abkhazian criminal clans and FSB-backed pseudogovernment structures, so this video is an episode of internal war between them.
Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
151–160 of 209 posts
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comparing life itself to crypto is ridiculous.
From the outside view of an alien observer, is there any difference to us plastering mars with solar panels for crypto mining vs plastering mars with suburban developments? Would we, had we a powerful telescope pointed at a neighbouring solar system, be able to tell the difference?
Can I be clear you cannot find a clear distinction between a made up currency and places where humans live?
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is basically what all life does. Thermodynamically, life can be described as an open system which makes use of gradients in its surroundings to create imperfect copies of itself. Crypto currencies still have a problem with creating copies of itself, but humans are happy to oblige.
Not really. Life transforms matter and energy into increasing structure and complexity. A classic pathological life-like process is the paperclip maximizer. The paperclip maximizer transforms matter and energy into a regular structure of low complexity. Crypto is one step worse than the paperclip maximizer. It converts matter and energy into pseudo-random numbers. The only structure discernible within the randomness…
Hear hear, can I get an amen for Komolgorov?
https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/C... https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/rob/Courses/InformationInSpeech/C...
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#154We should define something like a "Nakamoto scale" . A Nakamoto Type I civilization would be one that converts all available power of a planet into waste heat and funny numbers, a Nakamoto Type II civilization does that with all the power output of a star and so on... basically the Kardashev scale [0] but with the restriction that useful output SHOULD NOT be produced [1]. Edit: lowered requirement level from MUST NOT…
I am curious how long after renewable energy displaces conventional methods combined with the predicted big reduction in pricing before heat becomes the next pollution bogey. the cheaper it gets will just increase its use which for much of the world is a great improvement in quality of life but there is always some costs involved
Renewable energy is heat-neutral, at least the solar/wind types. The electricity is created from heat. Energy in photons that would otherwise strike the planet and become heat is turned into electrical power. In converting fast moving air to slower moving air a wind turbine extracts heat from the atmosphere and turns it into electricity. So now matter how many turbines and solar panels we build, they aren't pumping out any net heat.
I believe this holds true for hydro, but not so for geothermal as it moves net heat into the biosphere.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#155Idea to solve the crypto energy problem - sell space heaters as dual purpose crypto miners. People need space heaters. They buy them, but they also mine crypto (as a free byproduct of the space heating). The number of crypto mining space heaters out there dilute the value of dedicated mining so much that people don't bother with it anymore. Even buying the space heater to make money from mining crypto doesn't make th…
I live in an area of Canada where home heat is pretty much provided exclusively by natural gas but electricity comes mainly from nuclear and hydroelectric sources. Interesting to think about, but by firing up a miner on my graphics card at off hours I'd probably lower my overall fossil fuel consumption and make some money on the side. Anything I'm missing here?
plug a usb thermometer and write a script to throttle the hash rate when the temperature is high
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#156Isn't the real issue here one of incentives? BTC is of obvious criminal use in regards to laundering money and trading in blackmarket goods and services, but clearly there is a much broader appeal to more mainstream use as well. Activists, journalists, dissidents all need to have lines of cash and stores of value that cannot be taken down with one phone call to Chase bank.
For someone in a relatively free Western country, BTC looks like a ridiculous waste of energy. However, from the perspective of people hiding from political and state oppression BTC is a godsend. Refugees can safely and securely liquidate their assets before fleeing a country as one example. This gives them more freedom to choose where they want to re-locate to and allows them to use some saved wealth to get up and running faster once they find a new place to live.
On HN I get that this view on the matter will not be popular, but I think BTC and Proof of Work generally have attached something very much like a market price to the cost of state overreach. If governments had acted better, BTC would never have reach the height it is at today. It would still be a hobbyist curiosity with a substantial but fringe criminal interest.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#157We should define something like a "Nakamoto scale" . A Nakamoto Type I civilization would be one that converts all available power of a planet into waste heat and funny numbers, a Nakamoto Type II civilization does that with all the power output of a star and so on... basically the Kardashev scale [0] but with the restriction that useful output SHOULD NOT be produced [1]. Edit: lowered requirement level from MUST NOT…
Can we please start regulating crypto currency mining? This is insane. I think it needs to be global mining regulation. Can the UN do anything else? If we start taking all the energy used to mine a given cryptocurrency it aggregates to more than most countries per cryptocurrency. Not ok. I know this is controversial but we have to at least debate this subject as we face an existential threat from climate change and yes cryptocurrencies are contributing to the climate crisis.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#158We should define something like a "Nakamoto scale" . A Nakamoto Type I civilization would be one that converts all available power of a planet into waste heat and funny numbers, a Nakamoto Type II civilization does that with all the power output of a star and so on... basically the Kardashev scale [0] but with the restriction that useful output SHOULD NOT be produced [1]. Edit: lowered requirement level from MUST NOT…
Can we please start regulating crypto currency mining? This is insane. I think it needs to be global mining regulation. Can the UN do anything else? If we start taking all the energy used to mine a given cryptocurrency it aggregates to more than most countries per cryptocurrency. Not ok. I know this is controversial but we have to at least debate this subject as we face an existential threat from climate change and y…
The entire purpose of cryptocurrencies that they and their economies cannot be regulated by any government. A regulated cryptocurrency is just fiat with more steps and a contradiction in terms.
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can we please start regulating crypto currency mining? This is insane. I think it needs to be global mining regulation. Can the UN do anything else? If we start taking all the energy used to mine a given cryptocurrency it aggregates to more than most countries per cryptocurrency. Not ok. I know this is controversial but we have to at least debate this subject as we face an existential threat from climate change and y…
The entire purpose of cryptocurrencies that they and their economies cannot be regulated by any government. A regulated cryptocurrency is just fiat with more steps and a contradiction in terms.
What about mining? We regulate gold / silver mining. Why not crypto mining? It consumes more energy than the gold or silver mining industries.
https://coincentral.com/bitcoin-mining-trumps-gold-mining-en...
Re: Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comparing life itself to crypto is ridiculous.
Isn't crypto ridiculous too? Rai stones look objectively more sensible and they are ridiculous. I'm not saying the technology is ridiculous, I'm just saying the overall implementation and outcomes would look like a madness to someone from the past or indeed the future.
Rai stones are less weird than they look once you learn that some super expensive art is held in freeport warehouses and stays there even when bought and sold to different owners. Valuing a painting you own but never see at millions of dollars that gets bought and sold to others who never see it isn’t that much different than saying a certain immobile Rai stone is worth X of Y.
Cryptocurrency is more ridiculous than both of the above, imo. Rai stones can be used as material, art can be looked at and enjoyed, cryptocurrency is random numbers controlling access to a ledger.