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The real solution here is not complaining about individual use cases of energy, but effective carbon pricing. Wit cap & trade on a global level, this wouldn't b

• kevingadd 6y ago
  In some cases miners literally steal electricity or other resources to mine, so carbon pricing won't affect scenarios like that [1]. Maybe we can treat those as a rounding error... At the point where miners are willing to do things like build a transformer station you're in wild territory way beyond a neighbor tapping into your cable line for free TV. If the money's good, what's stopping a connected miner from bribing the right people to get a discount on electricity and skip the carbon tax? [1] https://modernconsensus.com/cryptocurrencies/bitcoin/russian-power-firm-illegal-crypto-miners-steal-9-5m/ https://modernconsensus.com/cryptocurrencies/bitcoin/russian...
  • wmf 6y ago
    what's stopping a connected miner from bribing the right people to get a discount on electricity and skip the carbon tax? International sanctions. Civilize or die.
• vinger 6y ago
  The big miners in China and Iceland are using hydro and geothermal. Pricing the other miners out might have some interesting side effects.
  • exyi 6y ago
    China is relying heavily on coal power (AFAIK, can't find reliable source quickly). Iceland has clean energy, but in contrary to the popular wisdom "only" ~30% is geothermal, most is hydro. See https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/IS https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/IS for more detail.
    • hulahoof 6y ago
      They are taking about the miners, not the grid as a whole. There are some massive operation utilising hydro setups in the middle of nowhere that were otherwise unused