It's more like "embodied energy" than battery
If you have embodied energy in something of no intrinsic value except as proof that you wasted some electricity, what you have is mere entropy. Burned toast.
Bitcoin as a Battery
71–80 of 319 posts
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#72This 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?
Depends. Could those renewables go to other applications? If so, then using them for BTC means that somebody else must use carbon. If instead the renewables were located in places where it was not possible to move the energy to more useful locations or if the entire world ran on zero-emission power, then it'd be much less of a concern.
I'm happy to let BTC win if it means that global warming is halted. But if worldwide net zero emissions is a prerequisite for BTC being considered non-wasteful then that's a tall order.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#73I 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.
The problem with analogizing Bitcoin mining to gold mining is that Bitcoin mining secures value in the past and gold mining secures value in the future. If you stopped mining Bitcoin, all previously mined Bitcoin would lose value due to the decreased security of the block chain.
It's like if gold began to sink into the ground the moment you stopped mining it, and you had to keep mining and smelting it at a ever-more furious rate to keep it above ground.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#74This 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.
> 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.
Building renewable energy sources in the middle of nowhere to power nothing also appears nonsensical at first glance, yet it actually happens to the point that energy prices can go negative.
For one, some forms of renewable energy are highly volatile and can not just be made to match demand under any circumstance. Hence there is a need for batteries to store this otherwise worthless energy. Today, these batteries just don't exist, wind farms are ideally backed up by gas plants, whose output can be regulated to even out wind volatility. In other cases, wind is backed up by coal or nuclear plants which can not be regulated as well, hence more of that wind energy goes to waste.
Secondly, especially in the case of China, these renewable energy projects are meant to raise the domestic product and production capacity numbers, with little regard to actual demand. The electricity grid to deliver all that energy to actual consumers is an afterthought.
In due time, these problems shall be solved. Better ways to store volatile renewable energy will emerge, better transmission infrastructure will arise. Bitcoin could be a stepping stone to solve the hen-egg part of that problem.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#75I am a cryptocurrency enthusiast (disclaimer: I even own some). But I find this article fallacious.
> if we think of Bitcoin as a battery, what can we do with it? The key properties of Bitcoin’s battery are: 1) always on and permissionless (no need to find customers, just plug and go)
I think it is a very wasteful transformation of the power put in. You can get it to be always on and "permissionless" without burning this much energy: check out [Bitcoin Cash, Dash, ZCash](https://www.crypto51.app/) and other, cheaper-to-mine (still proof-of-work) currencies.
The actual benefit you get is security via out-costing: "you have to burn up this many resources to double-spend".
Because of the simplicity of this out-costing, lots of people trust it, because they can understand it (even though it's wasteful).
> and 2) naturally seeking low-cost electricity: it will always buy when the price is right.
Just because electricity is cheap in some places doesn't mean we should bid it up pointlessly.
----
I would love to see a PoS scheme that I could understand enough to trust. But they are much harder to create, and until then, I keep my money in PoW ones, in spite of the cost of transacting.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bitcoin mining is good for the environment https://pomp.substack.com/p/bitcoin-mining-is-good-for-the-e...
I can't really follow the logic in this article – maybe I don't get it? The article states that Bitcoin uses a lot of energy and as miners want to maximize profit, they want cheap energy. This is good for renewables as that is cheaper than other forms of energy generation. Doesn't everyone want cheap energy, like factories or heavy industry? Are Bitcoin miners really more eager to push for clean energy than other ind…
That’s exactly what it is - any energy demand, under this worldview, is good because it means more demand for clean energy.
In a world that’s already struggling with this, it makes no sense at all.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#77This 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.
> This seems like a pretty flawed idea and an attempt to justify the incredible amount of electricity required by bitcoin.
It's not "required", it's only that high because it has so much success. Bitcoin would be working with only one miner running, the first blocks were minted on a private computer.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#78I 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 point is, why do you store energy at all. It's not because you'll need it later. It's because you can sell it later. If there's no way to monetize excess energy (because we lack storage), people won't invest into making excess energy. And since renewables produce a lot of excess energy it makes them less desirable than they should be. Analogy to broken window fallacy is totally warranted. But please notice that w…
It's not because you'll need it later. It's because you can sell it later.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#79I am a cryptocurrency enthusiast (disclaimer: I even own some). But I find this article fallacious. > if we think of Bitcoin as a battery, what can we do with it? The key properties of Bitcoin’s battery are: 1) always on and permissionless (no need to find customers, just plug and go) I think it is a very wasteful transformation of the power put in. You can get it to be always on and "permissionless" without burning…
The energy usage of a PoW scheme is in direct proportion to its usage (transaction fees), block reward and price of the underlying.
As such, I don't see that Bitcoin Cash, Dash or ZCash would be fundamentally more efficient if these factors were to rival Bitcoin, even if parameters such as block size were to change. For the longest time, Ethereum transactions were far cheaper than Bitcoin transactions, but today they rival Bitcoin.
Re: Bitcoin as a Battery
#80Cheap energy into aluminium results in useful material to build things with. Cheap energy into bitcoin results in some more bitcoins of questionable use?
It doesn’t even result in more bitcoins. The emission rate is fixed.