4 ms·

How many megawatts are being consumed by electric heaters up north? Replacing those heaters with GPUs seems to be a “green” mining strategy.

mankyd 9y ago
All you're suggesting is replacing an electric heater with ... an electric heater. That's not "green". It is perhaps more practical, assuming one considers crypto-mining practical, but not green.
- derefr 9y ago
  It’s green if the 1:1 conversion of a “useless” heater into a money-generating heater, partially displaces the logistics pipeline of the US Mint, no? No matter how efficient it is to dig up/farm materials and process them into coins and bills, it can’t be 100% efficient.
  - mankyd 9y ago
    Until cryptocurrency proves that it can use less energy than our current system while being equally useful at the same time, it's hard to argue that it's an improvement. The same can be said of this new "Chia" network, but it's much easier to call it "green" in relative terms compared to other existing crypotcurrencies, at least.
obmelvin 9y ago
while computers give off heat, they are terribly inefficient creators of heat and in no way make a good replacement for dedicated electric heaters
- scatters 9y ago
  Computers are well over 99% efficient as heaters. The only energy they emit is a tiny amount of EM from LEDs, clock signal and the transformer, and a minuscule amount of fan noise (which is almost all absorbed by the immediate environment anyway). Electric heaters similarly emit EM and noise, so I wouldn't be surprised if some are actually less efficient as heaters than the average computer. It is possible for a heater to be over 100% efficient by removing heat from an external environment, but heat pumps require significant supporting infrastructure.
mangecoeur 9y ago
Or you could do the same with a data centre or supercomputer that runs useful services, like hosting websites or doing research (in fact there are already projects to use heat from servers for district heating).
- shock 9y ago
  > Or you could do the same with a data centre or supercomputer that runs useful services, like hosting websites or doing research (in fact there are already projects to use heat from servers for district heating). That depends on your definition of "useful". It looks like you don't think bitcoin adds value, but I'm pretty sure many people think the opposite and as such bitcoin is useul.

mankyd 9y ago

All you're suggesting is replacing an electric heater with ... an electric heater. That's not "green". It is perhaps more practical, assuming one considers crypto-mining practical, but not green.

derefr 9y ago
It’s green if the 1:1 conversion of a “useless” heater into a money-generating heater, partially displaces the logistics pipeline of the US Mint, no? No matter how efficient it is to dig up/farm materials and process them into coins and bills, it can’t be 100% efficient.
- mankyd 9y ago
  Until cryptocurrency proves that it can use less energy than our current system while being equally useful at the same time, it's hard to argue that it's an improvement. The same can be said of this new "Chia" network, but it's much easier to call it "green" in relative terms compared to other existing crypotcurrencies, at least.

obmelvin 9y ago

while computers give off heat, they are terribly inefficient creators of heat and in no way make a good replacement for dedicated electric heaters

scatters 9y ago
Computers are well over 99% efficient as heaters. The only energy they emit is a tiny amount of EM from LEDs, clock signal and the transformer, and a minuscule amount of fan noise (which is almost all absorbed by the immediate environment anyway). Electric heaters similarly emit EM and noise, so I wouldn't be surprised if some are actually less efficient as heaters than the average computer. It is possible for a heater to be over 100% efficient by removing heat from an external environment, but heat pumps require significant supporting infrastructure.

mangecoeur 9y ago

Or you could do the same with a data centre or supercomputer that runs useful services, like hosting websites or doing research (in fact there are already projects to use heat from servers for district heating).

shock 9y ago
> Or you could do the same with a data centre or supercomputer that runs useful services, like hosting websites or doing research (in fact there are already projects to use heat from servers for district heating). That depends on your definition of "useful". It looks like you don't think bitcoin adds value, but I'm pretty sure many people think the opposite and as such bitcoin is useul.