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> Bitcoin miners are no less motivated by profit, so it stands to reason that they will seek to become more efficient and employ the cheapest energy available,
by apendleton 9y ago
> Bitcoin miners are no less motivated by profit, so it stands to reason that they will seek to become more efficient and employ the cheapest energy available, which generally means hydroelectric plants and other renewable sources
My sense was that this was only the case in countries that have effective environmental regulation, and that coal was cheaper in countries where you could legally operate super-dirty plants. Is this no longer the case?
- eberkund 9y agoWell China is no longer allowing energy plants to sell power to miners which is probably a majority portion of the problem you are referring to.
- lightbyte 9y agoHow does a plant know the person it is selling power to is using it to mine?
- agumonkey 9y agomaybe it's obvious relatively to the history of a plan. if one residential building takes N times more than others 24/7 you can assume mining
- derefr 9y agoUsually, when a regulator imposes a constraint, it's up to the constrained party to (figure out how to) gather the intelligence required to follow the constraint. It may turn out that there are other regulations (e.g. privacy regulations) preventing a company from gathering that information about individuals, though. At which point the power company would probably have to stop selling to individuals altogether (i.e. provide no residential power service any more, just private commercial/industrial service to other companies, because companies have a lot fewer privacy protections so it's easy enough to figure out whether they're mining.)
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoHow do they stop them?
- nicky0 9y agoLaw enforcement?
- dmurray 9y agoThe marginal cost of hydro energy is nearly nothing. If you build a dam but the local city or factory no longer needs the energy, it costs you nothing to keep sending the water down the turbines. The coal plant might have been cheaper to build, but to produce electricity you need to keep on mining coal for it. An even better scenario is if the government subsidizes the building of the hydro plant - then you get cheaper up front cost and cheaper recurring costs. This is the case in Austria, according to HydroMiner[0]. [0]https://www.hydrominer.org/faq/ https://www.hydrominer.org/faq/