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Given the razor thin margins of BTC the miners are heavily incented to use the cheapest energy possible. And as miners exploit cheaper energy they deploy more A
by perseusmandate 7y ago
Given the razor thin margins of BTC the miners are heavily incented to use the cheapest energy possible. And as miners exploit cheaper energy they deploy more ASICs, raising difficulty and decreasing margins for the remainder. As such miners switch to economical power sources faster than perhaps any other industry and many operations have relocated accordingly
As of 2019, the absolute cheapest subsidy free energy in the world is Chilean solar power. In the next 5 years solar will indisputably become the cheapest if you consider the proliferation in China, Saudi Arabia's plans ect.
What is unique about mining vs almost everything else is that location is irrelevant. It doesn't need to be connected to any supply chain or residential areas. Accordingly we are seeing heavy investment to exploit areas that are very well suited to wind and solar but are hard to connect to the grid, meaning there is currently no demand even though there is potential supply. One such project is in Morocco
If BTC has merit as a network it will have staying power well past 10 years, at which point the carbon output should be null.
- yvdriess 7y agoWith the additional caveat that even if the production of renewables is not emitting CO2, the production of the equipment, installation and maintenance is.
- perseusmandate 7y agoTrue but that's probably 2 orders less. Ideally it would be done with electric vehicles at carbon neutral factories
- drcross 7y agoIn an ideal scenario global solar power generation would be over produced so that it would still be of a considerable supply for wintertime use. All the summer over production could be moved to bitcoin mining, or hydrogen creation resulting in ad-hoc, free, follow the sun bitcoin mining or hydrogen storage. When summer switches to winter in the northern hemisphere then the southern hemisphere takes up the load.
- ForHackernews 7y agoI keep seeing these kind of hand-waving justifications like "Oh, BTC miners will surely incentivize renewable energy" but every reputable source that looks at the actual state of the world says that it's mostly Chinese coal powering bitcoin mining: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/
- hedora 7y agoWe’re going to need all the electricity we can get for carbon capture, ocean deacidification, and other terraforming efforts. The earth’s ecosystems are already collapsing. We’ll also need it for food production as agriculture moves toward being carbon neutral. Anyway, BTC can’t scale to a even a negligible fraction of the population on the transaction processing side, so it will keep being niche until it is significantly improved, replaced, or collapses.