5 ms·
Before anyone makes excuses along the lines of "it's renewable from remote dams", that energy could could have always been used for something more productive. I
by hueving 7y ago
Before anyone makes excuses along the lines of "it's renewable from remote dams", that energy could could have always been used for something more productive. If it weren't for Bitcoin, they would be incentivized to build a datacenter there, build a smelting plant there, or even just build the transmission lines to get it to the grid.
Using renewable energy for Bitcoin takes that renewable energy out of the supply. How much coal is being burned in China because electricity pours into Bitcoin miners instead of onto a grid?
- mrb 7y agoConsider this: in Sichuan and Yunnan, the two most hydro-rich provinces of China, despite the high concentration of miners over there due to cheap electricity, there is such an surplus of electricity that they abandon over a hundred TWh of hydropower every year. This abandoned water is literally run through the dam without spinning the turbines. This is more than the worldwide consumption of electricity of Bitcoin. This is a result of mostly inadequate grid infrastructure that will take decades to solve.
- verroq 7y agoNo not really, most of the hydro excess electricity would have gone to waste. They don’t just turn the rivers off.
- lordnacho 7y agoThis is a sort of lump fallacy. There's only so much energy, thus if you use some of it for something, there's that much less of it for everything else. Commonly the fallacy occurs when talking about jobs. Someone's taken this job, so there's one less job available. But like jobs, energy production is a market. Producers will build more plants if they're able to sell their current capacity. The capacity is not fixed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy