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Bitcoin miners in Abkhazia are causing blackouts in remote villages [video]
- f311a 6y agoElectricity there is very cheap (ranging from 0.5 to 1.5 US cents per kWh). The government has closed around 300 mining facilities in order to reduce energy shortages. There are tens of such videos on the Youtube channel.
- WanderPanda 6y agoInstead of trying to remove the symptoms, the government should focus on increasing their peoples productivity to put them in a position to pay higher electricity prices
- ArkanExplorer 6y agoNo, the Government should petition bigger Governments to regulate (/ban) what is clearly a waste of Earth's and Humanity's resources.
- NullPrefix 6y agoAre you talking about capitalism in general or just some specific activity?
- ArkanExplorer 6y agoI am talking about Proof-of-Work being attached to an 'asset' of astronomical value. Governments should ban the transaction of PoW cryptocurrencies on environmental grounds, in addition to the misallocation of computer chips.
- disruptalot 6y agoBitcoin without PoW has no value. It's the entire reason it works. Without expending a finite resource to produce another, you can't constrain a money supply nor prevent it from attacks. Governments would be unwise to ban a voluntary system for the same reason they don't ban any other uses of energy that people question the value of (there are plenty). In any case, it will not stop, only move. If not to another massive farm in a favorable jurisdiction (that could be captured) then to smaller sections where it is unidentifiable.
- chromanoid 6y agoThere are many things governments rightfully ban for ecological reasons (e.g. energy inefficient house building, inefficient light bulbs, single-use plastic, blast fishing, many forms of waste disposal). Just because Bitcoin happens on the computer should not exempt it from that.
- codecamper 6y agoWell then if we must choose between planet, and greaseballs, we'll choose the planet any day.
- findff 6y agoCommunists hate proof of work.
- dgellow 6y ago> Bitcoin without PoW has no value Exactly. It’s broken by design. Let’s get rid of it ASAP and instead focus on blockchains that may have value without the horrible incentives of PoW. We shouldn’t keep Bitcoin alive just because it was the first successful attempt. That has been tried, it’s now clear it’s not sustainable over the long-term. We should learn the lesson and move on to a better approach.
- keymone 6y ago> It’s broken by design. it's genius by design. so far nothing other than PoW was shown to work. > We shouldn’t keep Bitcoin alive just because it was the first successful attempt. you're not keeping it alive, it exists in a free market and there is demand for it. > That has been tried, it’s now clear it’s not sustainable over the long-term. not clear at all. so far looks like it's the most sustainable system of decentralized value storage and transfer compared to all others.
- danlugo92 6y agoIf bitcoin is so bad why not let the free market tank it eventually?
- UncleMeat 6y agoBecause the free market isn't great at finding solutions that incorporate externalities, especially not quickly.
- f311a 6y agoYou can't do that in a country where $200 is considered a very good monthly salary.
- Nextgrid 6y agoThis seems like the wrong approach. I don't see how closing large-scale mining facilities will suddenly solve the problem. As long as the energy remains cheap, mining will just move underground. I could see miners offering ordinary villagers kickbacks to "host" a few miners on their premises as to conceal the energy consumption behind what appears to be legitimate usage.
- saagarjha 6y agoLaundering significant amounts of energy usage is nontrivial. Underground mining will be an order of magnitude smaller in scale.
- georgyo 6y agoWhat is the alternative? Raise energy costs for people who may not be able to afford it because of of a few abusers?
- chii 6y agoraise the price by tiers. A person can only use so much, but mining btc has infinite appetite. The price of electricity should reflect the cost, and subsidies should only be targeted at limited cases.
- em500 6y agoI'm curious why electricity is so cheap there. If it's caused by subsidies, the alternative is obviously replacing the subsidies by income transfers. If it's not caused by subsidies, there must be a better way to profit from their competitive advantage of being able to produce electricity cheaper than anyone else in the world.
- pas 6y agoUnenforced, uncollected bills. Also many mining ops just steal electricity. Why can folks get away with it? Because it's a failed state.
- codecamper 6y ago
- thresh 6y agoThe electricity there isnt just cheap, it's virtually free. They just dont shut you off it you don't pay.
- tomcooks 6y agoIn some parts of Italy it's 0.042 USD/kWh (so I assume it's much cheaper there)
- lanevorockz 6y agoBitcoin is so inefficient that it is hilarious that people complaining about the environment also buy bitcoin. If you want to buy into crypto at least go for ethereal
- user-the-name 6y agoEthereum is as inefficient as Bitcoin, just at a slightly smaller scale.
- ddeyar 6y agoIt looks like the nft scene on ethereum is starting to migrate to tezos, because gas is cheap there and it is PoS since the beginning. I wonder how that would influece the ethereum commmunity.
- PretzelPirate 6y agoSmall migrations to other chains doesn’t affect the Ethereum community. Multiple cheap NFT solutions exist on Ethereum (such as Immutable X) that keep NFTs in the larger Ethereum ecosystem instead of isolating them on a less used chain.
- poontang1 6y agoEthereum also uses Proof Of Work mining....
- shawabawa3 6y agoit's at least planning to switch over to proof of stake though
- TeMPOraL 6y agoHow's that going? Been hearing that it's happening "really soon now" for at least 3 years.
- f311a 6y agoRelated article: https://www.trtworld.com/asia/bitcoin-miners-blamed-for-energy-crisis-in-abkhazia-44622 https://www.trtworld.com/asia/bitcoin-miners-blamed-for-ener...
- Jonnax 6y agoHow does the network protocol of bitcoin work? Would governments be able to block it? Can it be DDoS-ed?
- mrweasel 6y agoWithout knowing for sure, I think you could just block port 8333. The individual miners could surely be DDoS, if you know their IP. I wonder if it's possible to just generate junk transactions and throw them at miners.
- rand49an 6y agoThat would close things off for most nodes but there are lots of nodes running on Tor or custom ports. Not to mention other channels like satellites that are used for transaction distribution. Junk transactions could stop a few nodes but all transactions are verified locally on nodes and won't be broadcast if they turn out to be junk.
- Nextgrid 6y agoYou can probably fingerprint the protocol and block it, but then it will just turn into a game of cat and mouse.
- viraptor 6y agoThey can't realistically block it. Normally the miners are trivial "structure in, best hash out" functions. The logic of choosing the transactions and preparing new blocks can be completely independent and distribute the work over any number of remote miners. (That's pretty much how mining pools work) The network transport would be trivial to change, or tunnel over (for example) SSH. DoS also wouldn't be likely - if you have power to do that and can identify the connection, you're likely to have access to the physical address.
- postalrat 6y agoFind where a lot of power is used. Go in with guns.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoI've never heard of Abkhazia before, so I had to look it up. It's a partially recognized state, part of Georgia [0]. There's even been a war in 1992-1993, after the collapse of the USSR [1]. Sometimes I'm still surprised of my ignorance about important facts that happened during my lifetime. Anyway, the next question for me was: why is electricity so cheap there, and should I assume it's cheap 24/7, and therefore generated with hydro? Electricity is largely supplied by the Inguri hydroelectric power station located on the Inguri River between Abkhazia and Georgia there's even a study on Electricty consumption, if you really want to dig deeper into it. [2]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhazia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abkhazia [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Abkhazia_(1992%E2%80%931993) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Abkhazia_(1992%E2%80%93... [2]: http://iccn.ge/files/energy_study_results_abkhazia_2019_eng_-_e-book.pdf http://iccn.ge/files/energy_study_results_abkhazia_2019_eng_...
- theragra 6y agoPeople are pretty poor there, and Russia supports them a lot (you can have russian passport if you live there). I assume most infrastructure is supported using russian help. It is logical Russia does not want her money spent by miners, who are probably not even from Abkhazia.
- eingaeKaiy8ujie 6y agoAbkhazia is a Georgian territory occupied by Russia. Russia is the #1 reason for poverty in the region.
- refraincomment 6y agoMind to explain? Russia uses electromagnetics do diminish the rate of ideas of the population?
- SXX 6y agoI'm in no way supporter of Putins regime and I totally agree that he'll do everything to keep all countries around poor and unstable, but come on. Original war in Abkhazia happened when USSR crashed and it was your usual ethnic conflict. Not some orchestrated hybrid war like in Ukraine, but real civil war. I've been in both Abkhazia and Georgia and people of both countries relise that and count themself the righteous side. Yeah it's obvious that Russian establishment have all reason sto keep this conflict unresolved as it's prevent Gerogia from joining NATO or EU. But even if regime in Russia gonna change there is no easy solution because ethnic conflict didn't go anywhere.
- 7_my_mind 6y agoSo now the developing world will start using their energy to mine BTC instead of manufacturing goods for us to consume. Will this ultimately cause inflation then? Because demand for goods will not be met? This crypto experiment keeps yielding more interesting results.
- eejjjj82 6y ago"This crypto experiment keeps yielding more interesting results." I completely agree. I don't pay attention to a lot (or any) online economic circles, but I'm astounded at the pushback of high profile economists (Krugman, et al) against the shear novelty of the moment for their discipline. Regardless of whether or not someone "believes" in bitcoin, the reality of the times is that cryptocurrencies are creating fantastically interesting economic experiemnts right under our noses. This seems like it would be the dream come true for an economist from an observational/curiosity perspective
- dgellow 6y agoThese “experiments” have real life consequences on ”subjects” who never agreed to be part of it. We should maybe create a crypto-country where crypto-currencies fanatics are free to experiment all of this on themselves instead of all of us… (it’s a joke, please don’t create a crypto country!)
- maxerickson 6y agoIndustry that needs lots of energy already locates in places with stable grids.
- Proven 6y agoRemote villages are also causing blackouts to bitcoin miners. The problem is (as almost always) incompetent and/or corrupt government officials. Why can't they manage? They either won't (getting paid in BTC to mismanage) or can't. Perhaps they should replace those bums or privatize power utilities. Or give up independence, if they can't manage themselves. Another way is simply increase the price to everyone to whatever is going rate in that wider area plus 10%, and the miners will likely move out in no time. Although it'd be better to privatize everything.
- tho234234987 6y agoI'm surprised the rich farmers of India (yes, the kind "protesting" recently) haven't started Bitcoin mining - electricity for agriculture is free in much of India (along with a lot more freebies, and no taxes). I guess it's mostly the intermittent state of the supply that's the problem.
- abledon 6y agoAren't those people struggling to buy food? How are they gonna afford an antminer?
- known 6y agoIndia is intentionally keeping its people poor/starving with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_in_circulation#Total_currency_in_circulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_in_circulation#Total_... and https://www.businessinsider.com/india-malnutrition-a-story-of-rotting-crops-and-rotten-bureaucracy-2012-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/india-malnutrition-a-story-o...
- codecamper 6y agoThis is awesome. I just wish more governments would wake up to the fact that crypto does nothing beyond suck resources and warm the planet. If you want to bet on things that go up & down, there is the stock market where things go up and down 20%+ every single day.
- solosoyokaze 6y agoBitcoin has provided the non-boomer generations an investment vehicle and inflation harbor that has no competition. I know so many younger people who now have some semblance of retirement savings due to crypto. Fiscal policy and wealth inequality have made crypto the only option for savings in 2021.
- _Microft 6y agoWe should define something like a "Nakamoto scale". A Nakamoto Type I civilization would be one that converts all available power of a planet into waste heat and funny numbers, a Nakamoto Type II civilization does that with all the power output of a star and so on... basically the Kardashev scale [0] but with the restriction that useful output SHOULD NOT be produced [1]. Edit: lowered requirement level from MUST NOT to SHOULD NOT to allow for situations in which a limited amount of energy could be expended to either increase the hashrate further or to get closer to the limits of computation [2]. Edit 2: the more I think about it, the more it reminds me of the Universal Paperclips game. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale [1] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2119 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_of_computation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_of_computation
- wyldfire 6y agoThere is a unit named after Nakamoto [1] referring to decentralization, adding another might get confusing. [1] https://news.earn.com/quantifying-decentralization-e39db233c28e https://news.earn.com/quantifying-decentralization-e39db233c...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Isinlor 6y agoThis is basically what all life does. Thermodynamically, life can be described as an open system which makes use of gradients in its surroundings to create imperfect copies of itself. Crypto currencies still have a problem with creating copies of itself, but humans are happy to oblige.
- jf22 6y agoComparing life itself to crypto is ridiculous.
- 6y ago
- trixie_ 6y agoIdea to solve the crypto energy problem - sell space heaters as dual purpose crypto miners. People need space heaters. They buy them, but they also mine crypto (as a free byproduct of the space heating). The number of crypto mining space heaters out there dilute the value of dedicated mining so much that people don't bother with it anymore. Even buying the space heater to make money from mining crypto doesn't make that much money - due to the fact that so many space heaters are crypto miners. Problem solved? Edit/Multi-Reply: Heat pumps are efficient, but they don't replace all practical use cases for a space heater.
- monkeycantype 6y agopeople do that, but it's not an efficient way to heat. The most efficient heaters pump heat from somewhere else, even when the source has a lower temperature, like the way a fridge pumps heat from inside the cold fridge to the air in your house. (my apologies for assuming you live in a house if you are actually a 12 dimensional entity that lives on a space whale)
- _Microft 6y agoHeat pumps are approximately three times as efficient as electric heating.
- pas 6y agoThat needs good insulation first, or am I missing something? Usually space heaters are warmer, but less efficient. Heat pumps are great if you have time to warm up the space but if it's insulated like an open field, you'll be always cold.
- _Microft 6y agoWhy wouldn't one insulate the space? Heating is no end in itself.
- zejn 6y agoHeat pump is essentially a "reverse mount of a refrigerator", putting heat in and throwing cold out. In the worst case, the pump will degrade into a heating element, only outputting heat from electricity (which is what a regular electric heater does). Insulation is not a requirement, but will lower your energy needs to keep a steady temperature.
- EGreg 6y agoI warned about this a few weeks ago, and people were skeptical. But sadly “in retrospect it is inevitable”. Where is the flaw? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26220992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26220992 Let me refine my prediction to describe the transition period. Bitcoin will actually deepen inequality in the world, by robbing the third world countries of electricity first, and no one in first world countries will care. The politicians of the third world countries would be paid off similarly to how Nestle or CocaCola buys up lakes and pollutes them. And privately owned infrastructure and lakes will fall even faster.
- tgv 6y agoThe flaw is greed.
- EGreg 6y agoOkay but the question is, about the flaw in the argument that Bitcoin will increasingly cause blackouts in third world countries and poor towns?
- tgv 6y agoIt's not a flaw in the sense that your scenario is unrealistic. But people are not going to point at Bitcoin or undertake action. You can see that in the replies of the cryptobelievers here: BTC cannot do wrong.
- meerita 6y agoI've thought mining wasn't profitable anymore.
- cosarara 6y agoIf your electricity is free, it's all profit after you pay for the hardware.
- kvakva 6y agoTo what degree is the Bitcoin problem here and to what degree the electrical grid?
- firstSpeaker 6y agoPlague of our time. Same thing has been happening in other countries, e.g. Iran [1]. Blackouts, climate impact, electronic waste, etc. 1- https://www.coindesk.com/inside-irans-onslaught-on-bitcoin-mining https://www.coindesk.com/inside-irans-onslaught-on-bitcoin-m...
- ryanmarsh 6y agoLook over here at the electricity use of Bitcoin peasant, not over there at what Wall St does to the world.
- wruza 6y agoThe speaker doesn’t mention any blackouts, she only describes how they shut down few illegal crypto farms (only 230 units of unspecified model or power consumption). I believe there is more to the story and that doesn’t mean that there is no blackouts, but for completeness sake this video is incoherent with this thread’s headline. Blackouts may be caused by e.g. shitty, cheap, unmaintainable grid, or by local corruption that feeds from these farms and doesn’t officially demand higher loads from energy providers to cover the difference. My (completely subjective) opinion is that not taking it at the face value is a pretty safe move. (Disclosure: russian, non pro-crypto guy)
- f311a 6y agoThat’s true, they didn’t mention blackouts in this particular video, but that’s one of the reasons they have been doing this for more than a year. There are a lot of articles in Russian on this subject. In English: https://www.rferl.org/a/bitcoin-blackouts-russian-cryptocurrency-miners-minting-millions-sucking-abkhazia-electricity-grid-dry/30968307.html https://www.rferl.org/a/bitcoin-blackouts-russian-cryptocurr...
- aeturnum 6y agoI think some of the furor over bitcoin power usage is overblown. It's true, as crypto folks say, that the power is doing "something." It's more that...a system where you will pay anyone who finds any cheap power source anywhere in the internet-connected world no matter how they get it is obviously going to have awful externalities. Even though most people will be reasonably ok about it, enough people we be shitty enough to turn any worldwide no-checks system into a hellscape.
- fredfoobar 6y agoSomething = securing the network. Not with armies, but with math and computation.
- ArkanExplorer 6y agoIts not just power usage - GPUs are essentially unavailable due to Ethereum mining right now, which has broader societal implications given the limited fab capacity. So we have a giant misallocation of energy, and a giant misallocation of computer hardware. Trolley-bus and tram companies in my Eastern European city are increasing fare pricing due to electricity price increases - how much of that is due to increased demand from mining? The very real, and very negative, implications of PoW mining are becoming apparent.
- joshsyn 6y agoCrypto is the best financial system designed. Period.
- speransky 6y agoTypical case with russia occupied territories, no law, criminal business. They supply electricity to this region but locals just do not pay and do illegal connections. Mining business controlled by Russia-Abkhazian criminal clans and FSB-backed pseudogovernment structures, so this video is an episode of internal war between them.
- bruiseralmighty 6y agoIsn't the real issue here one of incentives? BTC is of obvious criminal use in regards to laundering money and trading in blackmarket goods and services, but clearly there is a much broader appeal to more mainstream use as well. Activists, journalists, dissidents all need to have lines of cash and stores of value that cannot be taken down with one phone call to Chase bank. For someone in a relatively free Western country, BTC looks like a ridiculous waste of energy. However, from the perspective of people hiding from political and state oppression BTC is a godsend. Refugees can safely and securely liquidate their assets before fleeing a country as one example. This gives them more freedom to choose where they want to re-locate to and allows them to use some saved wealth to get up and running faster once they find a new place to live. On HN I get that this view on the matter will not be popular, but I think BTC and Proof of Work generally have attached something very much like a market price to the cost of state overreach. If governments had acted better, BTC would never have reach the height it is at today. It would still be a hobbyist curiosity with a substantial but fringe criminal interest.
- silentsea90 6y agoTrillions of dollars get printed diluting your wealth and you have a problem with the hardest form of wealth known to man. I boldly predict that you or your progeny (depending on your age) will realize in 10 years that you should have bought BTC. I encourage you to research why non money launderers like Jack Dorsey, Elon etc. are buying BTC.
- hoppla 6y agoEU regulates how much power my vacuum cleaner and my lightbulb can use. And to what end? So that some greedy miner can buy cheaper electricity to make numbers and heat! The only way I can see that the environmental problem called Bitcoin can end, is to make it a more expensive. Power prices could be increased by usage to motivate consuming less and punish those who use too much. There will still be countries that mine and burn coal so that others can mine Bitcoin. But I believe there are more sustainable industries that could benefit from these wasted resources
- pinoli 6y agoPlease, I know you are all smart, think about this: 2009-2011: it is a stupid internet currency with no value 2012-2015: it is used for drugs and other crimes 2016-2018: it is for tax evaders, money launderers and terrorists 2019-2021: it is bad for the environment I am starting to see a pattern here, don't you?
- anoncake 6y agoAll of these things are true?