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Bitcoin as a Battery

nickgrossman.xyz

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Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#31

Post by nickez »

PeterBarrett wrote: post #17

This seems like a pretty flawed idea and an attempt to justify the incredible amount of electricity required by bitcoin. If bitcoin was changed to require a fraction the amount of electricity all of these ideas would suddenly fall apart. Building renewable energy sources in the middle of nowhere to power a bitcoin farm is just completely nonsensical and does noting to help with the shift to renewables.

If bitcoin would be fully powered by renewables, do you still think its energy consumption would be a problem?

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#32

Post by mrmanner »

gus_massa wrote: post #20

I like the analogy with Aluminum, but I don't like the title. As far as I know nobody oxidize Aluminum to get electricity back. And nobody undo Bitcoins mining (whatever that means). So Aluminum and Bitcoins are really similar, but not a battery.

Aluminium and BTC are not at all similar. Aluminium is a useful commodity. It's used to build things people need and want, and to wrap falafel rolls. BTC is a currency with no value in and of itself.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#33

Post by merlinscholz »

nickez wrote: post #31
PeterBarrett wrote: post #17

This seems like a pretty flawed idea and an attempt to justify the incredible amount of electricity required by bitcoin. If bitcoin was changed to require a fraction the amount of electricity all of these ideas would suddenly fall apart. Building renewable energy sources in the middle of nowhere to power a bitcoin farm is just completely nonsensical and does noting to help with the shift to renewables.

If bitcoin would be fully powered by renewables, do you still think its energy consumption would be a problem?

Not the energy consumption in itself, but the amount of heat and physical electronic waste generated certainly is.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#35

Post by delaaxe »

PeterBarrett wrote: post #17

This seems like a pretty flawed idea and an attempt to justify the incredible amount of electricity required by bitcoin. If bitcoin was changed to require a fraction the amount of electricity all of these ideas would suddenly fall apart. Building renewable energy sources in the middle of nowhere to power a bitcoin farm is just completely nonsensical and does noting to help with the shift to renewables.

Bitcoin mining is good for the environment https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoin-mining-is-good-for-the-e...

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#36

Post by osrec »

fsh wrote: post #18

I don't buy the argument in the article. The purpose of a battery is to store energy to be used later and potentially elsewhere. There is no way to regain the energy that was turned into heat while mining bitcoins, so bitcoin is not a battery. The comparison with aluminum production is also quite weak, since aluminum has an intrinsic economic value, whereas cryptocurrencies don't. Most of the arguments given in the a…

How much of the energy used by a processor is dissipated as heat? If it's a significant amount, perhaps it could be recovered in some way?

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#37

Post by whb07 »

fsh wrote: post #18

I don't buy the argument in the article. The purpose of a battery is to store energy to be used later and potentially elsewhere. There is no way to regain the energy that was turned into heat while mining bitcoins, so bitcoin is not a battery. The comparison with aluminum production is also quite weak, since aluminum has an intrinsic economic value, whereas cryptocurrencies don't. Most of the arguments given in the a…

The tangible hard money equivalent is gold. It is also a battery one can store value across time. Yes, the raw energy that went in to feed the miners was lost via heat etc but the brunt of it was stored.

Re: Bitcoin as a Battery

#39

Post by mojomark »

>>And in a way, aluminum is a battery. Of course, while traditional batteries start and end with energy directly, aluminum’s battery is economic, converting energy to value. And that value can be re-used elsewhere (even converted back into energy!)

To the authors latter point, Aluminum isn't just 'like' an energy battery - it IS in fact a very energy dense battery. Aluminum alloys are used to liberate large amounts of Hydrogen at the point of use, which can be used in fuel cells. This is currently used as an air independant energy source for some underwater vehicles. The oxidized byproduct (which is about 8X less dense than the Al3 alloy itself) can be re-smelted to "recharge" the Al3+ battery. Apple actually developed a very low-Carbon aluminum smelting process, so the total cycle is very clean as long as renewable energy is used in the smelting process.

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