It's more like "embodied energy" than battery
Bitcoin as a Battery
21–30 of 319 posts
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#22A bit nonsensical imho. A battery by definition has to be able to produce the same type of energy that was put into it. While correlating crypto with something random every week (Easter bunnies next Sunday?) can be marginally interesting, this instance makes no sense. We can't extract electricity from aluminum or Satoshis, we can buy it though, but that's outside of the battery scope.
Actually we can extract electricity from aluminium. A while ago someone proposed a "battery" that would consume aluminium as it provides electricity. Supposedly this battery was going to have 10x the energy density of today's li-ion batteries.
Edit:as for crypto you're completely correct. If one set out to invent the most inefficient energy use possible in computing the result would be crypto proof of work that grows all the time.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#23A bit nonsensical imho. A battery by definition has to be able to produce the same type of energy that was put into it. While correlating crypto with something random every week (Easter bunnies next Sunday?) can be marginally interesting, this instance makes no sense. We can't extract electricity from aluminum or Satoshis, we can buy it though, but that's outside of the battery scope.
Refined aluminum is in quite a high-energy state. Chemically you could extract energy or make electricity from aluminum. It's used in some types of military explosives. Because the refining takes so much electricity, some well-meaning people suggest running it at times of low demand to balance the grid. But refining is capital intensive so you don't want to turn it off or you miss out on the returns from the investme…
You're right.
If we further expand the idea we can extract energy from anything flammable or otherwise reactant. I'll refrain from calling my dog a battery though.
Now excuse me while I go feed little Duracell. Good girl!
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that said thing produces a lot of CO2 is not going to stop anyone from doing said thing if they enjoy it. Source: population growth.
That cannot continue, pop will drop significantly if we don’t stop producing so much CO2.
> will drop significantly if we don’t stop producing so much CO2
Next Tuesday? Sometime this summer? Next year? A decade from now? 2070?
Everybody knows there are problems with producing too much CO2. However, nearly everyone’s hoping (but not saying) that the bill doesn’t come fully due until they’re dead. And by “fully due” I mean “directly effects their day-to-day life in a truly drastic way.”
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#25Bitcoin is more like a black hole than a battery
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#26Cheap energy into aluminium results in useful material to build things with.
Cheap energy into bitcoin results in some more bitcoins of questionable use?
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#27The only way PoW crypto is superceded is if someone finally implements PoS. There is a lot of hope in ethereum "moving to" proof of stake, but I think a move will never happen. Miners will not allow it. It'll be a fork.
Then, if it has to be forked why not start from scratch with something better? I imagine/hope many people are working on better crypto protocols at the moment.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#28I'm so happy that other people start to notice this dynamic.
Why are we not yet fully running on renewables? Why don't we have trillions of dollars pouring into solar panels and wind turbines and pumped storage hydroelectricity and battery storage?
The answer is there's not enough demand for excess electricity to create and keep excess electricity. I read about new pumped storage hydroelectricity installation closed due to lack of demand. There are too few ways to turn excess electricity into money. If we are going to have fully renewable energy in the future, we need to produce way more energy than we need so when conditions are bad for power generation we still have enough. And for that we need incentives. We are struggling to create artificial, law based incentives on global scale.
Cryptos are currently the best way we have to organically create those incentives. There were already instances of crypto miners selling energy they contracted, back to the grid, when price of energy briefly exceeded the gain they could have by burning that energy to mine.
When prices of crypto rise again in few years and hardware hashrate plateaus we may reach a point when miners will be building/buying new windmill and solar panel installations on mass scale, because their costs will be dominated by the energy costs and the cheapest energy will be excess energy renewables produce.
We don't lack resources to reach the green future, we lack incentives, and if we are lucky meteoric rise of price of crypto can provide those.
EDIT: And the post is flagged into oblivion. I'm no longer happy because interesting observation got silenced. Well I guess see you all in few years.
EDIT2: .... and now it's unflagged. :-) A hot topic.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#29This is a joke, right? You can’t convert Bitcoin back into energy no matter how you look at it.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#30GD... why did anyone bother reading this crap. Excessive energy usage from my made up currency is driving innovation. Gah. Crypto and the people hyping it need to be quiet or at least be honest about what is going on. We are draining energy really quickly so we can make sure someone isn't double spending the imaginary money... What a horrible article.
I thought the article is bad. But what you said is also not true. It sounds like you are complaining about the high energy use of Bitcoin. Crypto does not have to use a lot of energy to work, it just happens that bitcoin uses a proof of work algorithm.