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>> Proof-of-work incentivizes cheap & renewable energy investment. > Cheap yes, renewable no. Complete non sequitur there. That's the main point. There's no i
by dmos62 6y ago
>> Proof-of-work incentivizes cheap & renewable energy investment.
> Cheap yes, renewable no. Complete non sequitur there.
That's the main point. There's no inherent incentive to use clean energy for mining. There's opposite stories about obsolete aluminum plants staying alive in China by just using their energy allocations to mine Bitcoin.
- no_wizard 6y agoI have to call this out as google didn’t back this claim up readily. Do you have a source? I Cabot believe an aluminum plant could make Enough money off of Bitcoin mining to subsidize its operations like that at first blush. I’m very interested in reading about it though
- minitoar 6y agoI would imagine they stop making any significant amount of Aluminum at that point.
- dmos62 6y agoThis is what I've been referencing: https://blog.bitmex.com/mining-incentives-part-2-why-is-china-dominant-in-bitcoin-mining/ https://blog.bitmex.com/mining-incentives-part-2-why-is-chin... I've read it some time ago. I recalled it as less speculative than it seems now. The premise is that energy is a large part of aluminium production cost and the plants work on small margins. An over-investment into energy production provides cheap energy and allows the aluminium plants to improve their margins via crypto mining.
- latchkey 6y agoCoinmint took over a very large, shut down, aluminum plant in upstate NY. This plant is powered by a dam that was built to provide power to that plant. These dams are built in such a way that they need to continue to provide power or the equipment starts to fail. It is also literally too expensive to build and maintain the lines to ship the power elsewhere. Alcoa was more than happy to lease their space to someone who was going to use the power going to their facilities. There isn't much industry at this point that would fit. All of the successful facilities that I know of (including my own) seek out cheap power... which happens to also be clean power. Hydropower. Most use existing facilities that were otherwise going to waste.
- latchkey 6y agoLarge scale (>2MW++) (ethereum) miner here. We use hydropower because it is clean and cheap. Those are the incentives. The aluminum plants shut down... not stay running. Both mining and plants use huge amounts of continuous power. Bitcoin mining is far more profitable... no need to keep the aluminum going.