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Bitcoin miners are buying power plants

xvilka 6y ago
A simple move that would ban selling fossil power plants for cryptocurrencies mining purpose BUT allowing to do so for the carbon-neutral energy would be a win-win for both sides and will help the transition from carbon-heavy energy.
- deleted 6y ago
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- pcthrowaway 6y ago
  I'm wondering if 'carbon-neutral' energy production is really environmentally neutral, especially when channeled to cryptocurrency mining. Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? Not to mention the harm to avian wildlife, as the turbines kill 5 birds per year each on average. Next you have the externalized costs of building the infrastructure. Producing the wind turbines, the power plant, and the GPUs. Is all of that really getting offset? I'm very optimistic about the potential for cryptocurrency to change the world, but I'd like that to be for the better. And when we have emerging proof-of-stake platforms that have much less of an impact on the planet because they don't by design rely on energetically inefficient ways to secure their networks, I really don't understand how we can argue that proof-of-work cryptocurrencies have any place in the future.
  - seoaeu 6y ago
    > Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? That's some anti-renewable energy FUD I hadn't seen before... Yes, we're sure that won't cause global warming. Wind turbine operation doesn't produce greenhouse gases or meaningful change the Earth's albedo.
    - bostonsre 6y ago
      I guess if we theoretically had enough wind turbines, climates could start being impacted due to winds being slowed down but not exactly sure if that would heat the earth more or not. Could an area with lots of turbines have slower wind speeds and have heat dissipate less quickly? It seems plausible, but would think it would even out with a different area getting a little cooler. But yea, don't see how that would cause the earth to warm overall. Also, I assume wind turbines cause some emissions during manufacturing. Not sure going gang busters and making a ton to power bitcoin mining would be great for the planet.
      - pcthrowaway 6y ago
        > Also, I assume wind turbines cause some emissions during manufacturing. Not sure going gang busters and making a ton to power bitcoin mining would be great for the planet. Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. If we're building wind turbines to replace energy usage that serves a purpose, that's wonderful! Building new infrastructure for energy production so that we can pass it to a bunch of computers that piss it away is still wasteful. Even if it's less wasteful than burning coal to power those computers. Bitcoin and proof-of-work were revolutionary, but now that we have better cryptocurrency technology, we should be moving away from it.
    - pcthrowaway 6y ago
      Since I'm getting downvoted, here's a study on it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830446X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511... Your misunderstanding seems possibly intentional. I'm very much in favour of renewable energy as an alternative to nonrenewable energy. I'm just not in favour of wasting energy for very little purpose. Build solar/wind energy to replace fossil fuels? Great! Obviously I'm in favour of that. Built an insane amount of infrastructure for producing renewable energy so that we can piss it away? That seems incredibly wasteful! Even if renewable energy is much better, there are still externalities to producing energy.
      - caf 6y ago
  - agravier 6y ago
    Also, the propellers get used quickly and are not recyclable AFAIK.
    - agravier 6y ago
      I would like justification for the downvotes please. Thanks.
      - agravier 6y ago
        OK, so here is my source anyway: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... I'll refrain from commenting on environmental issues in the future, it's just some sort of shit-flinging contest.
        bostonsre 6y ago
        I don't see why anyone would down vote a simple fact. Almost all issues have pros and cons, even popular ideas like wind turbines. Seems silly and tribal to down vote like that.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      It's infrastructure that lasts 20 years, not a plastic cup containing yogurt that gets thrown away within 3 days.
  - fy20 6y ago
    The impact of a wind farm is going to be very minimal compared to the waste heat generated by fossil fuel power plants. In my country (thanks to the Soviets!) a lot of the waste heat from electricity generation is captured and used to heat homes in nearby cities. One of the largest natural gas plants has a electricity output of 1800MW and a heat output of 5800MW - yet they still needed to build a massive artificial lake to provide additional cooling capacity.
- legohead 6y ago
  Simpler: ban banks and credit card companies from dealing with anything related to cryptocurrency
  - colordrops 6y ago
    What about proof of stake or off chain transactions
  - doomroot 6y ago
    That sounds rather rash.
    - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
      I thought bitcoin wanted to be outside of the traditional banking system? Or are bitcoin fans afraid they won't be able to easily get suckers to pump the coins sky high without the fiat (but mostly unbacked tethers) flowing in?
      - afc 6y ago
        I was reading a few of your comments in this thread and just figured I'd point out, as candidly as I can, that you come across as extremely biased against cryptocurrencies, using very manipulative language to advance your position (e.g., anyone who disagrees with you is "part of the circle jerk", Bitcoin fans want to "get suckers to pump the coins sky high", Bitcoin "is a symptom of human greed that must be put in check", etc.). Would you say that your goal is to advance these discussions towards the truth (i.e., to make insightful comments that may be useful)? I'm left with a strong impression that it is, rather, to advance one political position/agenda (cryptocurrencies are evil) as strongly as you can, which is neither intellectually honest nor particularly useful.
        SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
        Your assumption about me is correct. I am extremely biased against cryptocurrencies. And that's bad how? Do you have a sizable position in these instruments that you are afraid would be affected by my dialogue? And my point about circle jerks is prevalent all over social media. Open your eyes man. The Winklevoss Twins, Jack @ Twitter, Elon Musk. All of them have a vested interest in abusing their influence to push this non-productive asset to new heights, so they can then promote the greater fool theory with impressive effects. These folks, and countless others, are only interested in becoming the new 1% off the backs of others. That's not a great look.
vmception 6y ago
This is an area people should remain vigilante about. Although most bitcoin mining uses renewable energy[1][2] or reduces pollution from flaring sites by actually using the to-be-flared gas onsite, without vigilance that won't remain the case, especially if state actors begin competing. [1] https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternative-finance/publications/3rd-global-cryptoasset-benchmarking-study https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternati... a Cambridge study which corroborates and reached the same conclusion as an industry [2] study https://coinshares.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-june-2019 https://coinshares.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-june-...
- deleted 6y ago
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- nrmitchi 6y ago
  Vigilant* While someone going all Batman on a fossil fuel power plant would be interesting, it would probably end poorly.
- bottled_poe 6y ago
  Most? The linked report says 39% or did I miss something?
- de6u99er 6y ago
  The argument, that most Bitcoin mining uses renewabke energy isn't valid, because the renewable energy used for BitCoin mining could have been used for other things.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    That's why they are talking about the flaring instead of hydroelectric, to sell the idea that it's using power that wouldn't be recovered otherwise. Of course it is sort of likely that cheap hydroelectric is a much bigger component of the supply than gas power plants installed just to mine bitcoin.
    - 6y ago
eevilspock 6y ago
This is simply perverse.
- gruez 6y ago
  It's perverse, just like almost every other form of economic activity on this planet, eg. farming (fertilizer/herbicide run-off), mining (tailing ponds), factories (air/ground/water pollution). The underlying reason is simple: externalities aren't being priced in, which allows the owners of such operations to make money while everyone pays the price.
  - palijer 6y ago
    None of what you listed are similar cases. Farming produced food to eat. Mining produces minerals to build things with. Factories produce goods. Bitcoin produces... A series of bits that some people will pay money for? It seems like bitcoin is basically fine art at this point.
    - jude- 6y ago
      Bitcoin is proof that a thing can be a commodity without having a corporeal manifestation.
    - chii 6y ago
      > Bitcoin produces... trust. It's only a moral judgement that bitcoin energy use is somehow worse than say, transport, or heating, or anything else that people pay money for.
      - zepto 6y ago
        Bitcoin doesn’t produce trust. It just produces a verified log.
        chii 6y ago
        which people trust to be unmodifiable and thus, dependable. That's what it means to trust it. I have blind faith in the banking system (and blind faith that the gov't regulation keeps them honest), but i can trust the blockchain.
epinephrinios 6y ago
It would be great if the gigantic Bitcoin energy demand leads to renewable energy breakthroughs.
- 627467 6y ago
  Incentives are aligned, imo
  - bohadi 6y ago
    Could Bitcoin really bootstrap ourselves up the Kardashev scale? Amazing story. Please put tulip bubble in new context.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  ... do we really need another energy demand to drive R&D? We're already working with an energy budget equivalent to 1/3 the decay that powers the Earth's fiery core. Is it really fair to credit any new breakthroughs to the last ~12 GW of demand, instead of the first ~18 TW?
  - jude- 6y ago
    Yes, building more solar panels and and batteries gives the industry more experience at doing so, which (for a time) will allow it to refine the tech through multiple iterations, making future capacity cheaper and better-quality. EDIT: this is to say, renewable tech production is still following a learning curve (https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth)
    - wmf 6y ago
      We have plenty of work to do just replacing existing power generation with renewables, so it's not clear to me how additional demand accelerates such replacement. (This is in answer to both you and tshaddox.)
      - 6y ago
runawaybottle 6y ago
What’s the bandwidth from a probe close to the sun with a Bitcoin miner on it? Beam back the coin, we can wait. Or, mine it near the sun and then bring it back. Could take 20 years, but the returns should be better than the SPY. We’d need a spaceship I guess with the largest solar panels ever. Park it near the sun, mine Bitcoin, come back to earth.
- neolog 6y ago
  GPUs get faster over time.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    But it’s not free energy. I’m looking at it like fusion, the output needs to exceed the input (well I guess that’s how everyone is looking at it).
- amenghra 6y ago
  Mining is a race. If you have X seconds latency because you are millions of miles away, you’ll loose $Y over the long run. You can figure out the function which ties X and Y together.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    If you drop beacon towers along the way to maintain bandwidth, why wouldn’t this work?
    - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
      latency and bandwidth are two different things... speed of light is a constant.
      - mrits 6y ago
        these beacons are in worm holes, obviously
camgunz 6y ago
Every time I'm like "BTC is roasting the planet" people come out of the woodwork to remind me about renewable energy. Funny I don't see any of them here....
- lwansbrough 6y ago
  "It's renewable therefore I can waste as much of it as I want."
  - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
    It's the ultimate in handwaveism.
  - hparadiz 6y ago
    It's true though. You can throw up a 1kw system for under 1k now.
    - maccam94 6y ago
      It still generates heat, which warms the planet.
      - gonzo41 6y ago
        ummm,
      - gruez 6y ago
        Is heat generated by humans really a significant contributor to global warming compared to the warming effects of human generated greenhouse gases?
        grozzle 6y ago
        It isn't. Anthropogenic heat is about 1% as strong as the greenhouse effect, according to this article in Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata2017116 https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata2017116
trhway 6y ago
Great. There is only so many plants to go around. The fast growing energy consumption from crypto may be that real push that we need to move to renewables as no other type of energy production can be built up that much more and that fast. Nothing moves things faster than war and/or straight economic interest. Once crypto energy consumption grows an order or two of magnitude more, it would produce a real interest in space and fusion. Push for progress is coming from an unexpected side :) In the meantime i think we'll see something like large barges/platforms with wind turbines floating somewhere in windy international waters - cuts the costs of permits, etc. May be some startups around it ...
graiz 6y ago
Is it possible for people to source or certify sustainable Bitcoin? Since there is a transaction chain, can you choose to buy or boycott “dirty coins”?
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  coin taint is a real thing but ultimately your wallet just looks at your inputs and writes outputs to other wallets.
- RinTohsaka 6y ago
  There is a crypto called Monero that doesn't have this problem. it is growing fast.
  - gruez 6y ago
    AFAIK monero runs on POW as well so from an environmental impact level I don't see how it's any different. From a traceability perspective I don't see a difference either because mining can be done anonymously. You really can't track a mined block to a specific power plant. I guess you can set up some sort of voluntary program for green miners, and treat non-compliant blocks as "dirty", but with monero this wouldn't be possible so everything would be treated as "dirty".
  - mrits 6y ago
    Proof of stake is in or will be in just about every major crypto except bitcoin...
  - xur17 6y ago
    Monero uses PoW mining as well.
  - hatsunearu 6y ago
    To fix this person's comment, this comment makes sense if by "problem" they meant "defending your coins from boycotters"--Monero is (supposedly) untraceable so presumably it is impossible to boycott specific "dirty" sources of Monero.
- 6y ago
pontifier 6y ago
Do any bitcoin miners in this thread want to invest in my fusion reactor prototype?
- px43 6y ago
  Yo right here. What you got :-) Remember, fusors are losers. I wanna see lattice fusion with metallic hydrogen cores embedded in 3D printed diamonds or I'm out.
  - pontifier 6y ago
    It's a completely new concept. I've got some stuff up at http://www.DDproFusion.com http://www.DDproFusion.com I've got a bit of a simulation, not quite totally ready yet at http://www.ddprofusion.com/simulation/index.html http://www.ddprofusion.com/simulation/index.html that shows a bit of the physics. It's totally new, so no prototype exists and it may not even really work, but I'm trying to raise funds right now... I'm trying to sell some stock and I've got some other things I'm doing to raise money to really give it a good try.
MattGaiser 6y ago
I keep reading that coal is uncompetitive even to operate because of renewables. So what’s the deal here? Is it the need for consistent base load electricity that caused them to choose coal?
- hparadiz 6y ago
  No loss due to transmission by locating the equipment onsite. With that built in efficiency it probably skews the numbers in a way that utility consumers don't.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  The plant was converted to natural gas (even before it started mostly powering bitcoin hashing).
- bobby_bob 6y ago
  It's now using natural gas: > ...drawing power from the plant’s 106-megawatt generator now fueled by natural gas.
de6u99er 6y ago
This crypto-currency nonsense is getting out of hands.
- SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
  When profits are being made, who cares what happens to future generations. Cryptocurrency is, for the most part, a contagion. We opened Pandora's box and the genie is out of the bottle. Short of some kind of cataclysmic black swan event, I'm not sure this insanity will end anytime soon. :(
  - meowface 6y ago
    This is one of the few energy consumers that has a pretty straightforward solution: switch to proof of stake. You can't magically switch all existing cars to be 100% electric, but you actually can kind of magically switch all cryptocurrencies to consume orders of magnitude less energy. The question is if Bitcoin will ever try to switch to it. Unfortunately, it seems like they probably won't anytime soon.
    - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
      As much as I loathe cryptocurrency as a concept, a switch across the board to PoS would certainly be a welcome change to massively decrease this abhorrent waste in energy.
    - _carbyau_ 6y ago
      Ethereum 2.0 is POS apparently. I haven't figure out how to get onboard yet though. I have to do a bunch of homework to figure out what the hell means what. I don't have 32 ETH ($70k odd USD) so I have to join a staking pool but then that means I won't be running a validator I think. In which case this seems like simply just buying some ETH2.0 but it clearly isn't... so I have no idea honestly... More homework required on my part. Anyone have a good link with an overview of the moving parts AND motivations of the ETH2.0 structure?
      - 6y ago
endisneigh 6y ago
Turns out if you can make money burning stuff people will buy stuff to burn as long as the cost to burn is less than money earned. Who knew! Of course this won’t be a problem until it is.
- crumbshot 6y ago
  This reminds me of the "Cash for Ash" scandal in Northern Ireland, where people were doing exactly that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scand...
caterama 6y ago
Who cares? Everyone is fixated on Bitcoin... there are tons of energy inefficient processes out there. The solution has nothing to do with Bitcoin... environmental impact needs to be priced into energy itself, whatever the application. This is a failure of the markets (and therefore ourselves). Bitcoin is a scapegoat.
- SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
  Here's the problem with this sentiment. Bitcoin isn't replacing anything. Not pre-existing fiat currency, not banks, nothing. Bitcoin only adds to the problem at an alarming rate. Bitcoin is certainly not a scapegoat. It's a massive problem and, largely, a symptom of human greed that must be put in check.
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    I think that’s highly unlikely. Surely the people mining Bitcoin would be doing something else if Bitcoin didn’t exist. Or to think of it the other way, if there was some better way of making money with electricity then the Bitcoin miners would be doing that instead.
    - zepto 6y ago
      Have you considered that they wouldn’t be trying to turn electricity into money and might be making money some other way?
      - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
        And to your point, likely a way that doesn't have global implications? Even other bubbles of the past didn't have quite the reach that the likes of Bitcoin has (maybe with the exception of the entire stock market in the Roaring 20s leading right up to the crash of 1929). That's why this time, this is much more dangerous in the long run.
        6y ago
SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
The more I see stories like this, the more I've come to realize that we really screwed up by allowing this technological experiment to get out of hand. Not to sound pedantic, but our future generations are going to come to regret this when our planet is a toasted marshmallow, because we couldn't stop being greedy.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  It's reasonably likely that there will be a run on dollars at some point. If/when it happens, the bitcoin network collapsing is a pretty likely outcome. (what I mean by a run on dollars is that lots of people may decide they want dollars instead of bitcoin, so the people with dollars won't have to pay as much for bitcoin, and then the people who want dollars will have to accept less for their bitcoin, and then…)
  - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
    @maxerickson That ultimately will be the end game. I'd argue that most of the folks that bought into Bitcoin do not, in fact, share in the an-cap libertarian utopia of an economy entirely detached from the US Dollar. Folks are going to want their payday, even folks like Michael Saylor and Elon Musk. These guys aren't HODLing for charity. They want to exit before the rest of the peanut gallery does.
    - almost_usual 6y ago
      The utopia is so mind boggling far fetched. Suppose I have a weapon and I want to kill you unless you give me your bitcoin. How do you stop me? You either have your own weapons to defend yourself or go to an authority for help. So unless everyone wants to build their own personal military the end game is the same. All of these arguments boil down to one possibility that could work. Bitcoin somehow brings about world peace, which seems unlikely. Bitcoin as an experimental protocol is interesting, as a serious currency or asset it is an environmentally dangerous joke.
    - seibelj 6y ago
o_p 6y ago
Well its the cost of a decentralized safe currency, at the end of the day its the users who pay for it, and I gladly pay for it. Keep using your fiat if you want.
- SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
  Sorry my dude, but we are all paying for this in the ridiculous carbon emissions, whether we we are part of this experiment or not. Save the snark.
  - o_p 6y ago
    Its not BTC miners fault that energy is priced incorrectly. We shouldnt waste any energy into powering the armies of the world, lets just not fight, right? But here we are.
    - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
      I'm not fighting here. Your comment came off as dismissive to some growing and legitimate concerns. And don't forget. Bitcoin is not replacing these other institutions that need energy. Stop handwaving away the problem, because it's inconvenient for you to hear.
      - o_p 6y ago
        BTC miners buy the energy to power their nodes and that cost is passed to the users in transaction fees. The only legitimate criticism here may be that energy prices dont account for the externalities of carbon emissions. But thats irrelevant of how the energy is actually used
        SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
        You're missing the point. We shouldn't be using the energy period. Like, regardless of where we are getting our energy from, we should be making efforts to massively reduce consumption across the board. Bitcoin mining doesn't help this at all. Capitalism be damned. I've realized that you likely have made up your mind on this and my arguments won't sway you. That's fine by me, as long as others that have read can get it.
Taniwha 6y ago
Fuckers are literally burning the planet to power their pyramid scheme
- dang 6y ago
  Ok, but please don't fulminate on Hacker News.
baron816 6y ago
Easy solution: tax carbon emissions. Who cares if you’re using energy to mine Bitcoin? Or if you’re using it to play video games? Or to run the AC all day? If it you’re internalizing the cost of any emissions, then you’ll use those resources efficiently.
- SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
  Hard to do this when you can have other countries with much looser regulations allow Bitcoin miners run rampant. What probably should happen is to make converting from any cryptocurrency to major world currencies a crime. I have no delusions that this will halt activity in this sector entirely, but it will make it reasonably difficult to make any substantial money this way without raising some serious eyebrows.
  - jude- 6y ago
    > Hard to do this when you can have other countries with much looser regulations allow Bitcoin miners run rampant. You tariff their imports and apply economic sanctions. > What probably should happen is to make converting from any cryptocurrency to major world currencies a crime. Why cryptocurrencies? There are plenty of things that pollute far more.
    - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
      Why are you handwaving away my concerns? You do realize cryptocurrencies (and to be specific, PoW ones) aren't replacing any of these so called other things that pollute. Speaking of which, can you quantify what things pollute more? At any rate, I get the feeling we are going to be talking past each other and wasting time and energy (heh) on this conversation.
      - px43 6y ago
        What's your bias? You seem to have created your HN account 8 months ago and comment almost exclusively about trying to get cryptocurrencies banned. We don't need a world with more Luddites trying to outlaw math. The future will be secured and cryptographically verified, and there's not anything you can do to stop it.
caf 6y ago
The Greenidge team told potential investors last month that the plant had mined 1,186 bitcoins at an average net cost of about $2,869 for the 12 months ending in February. At this week’s Bitcoin price, that would translate into a profit margin of about $60,000 per mined coin. Surely this cannot last. This kind of outsize profit ought to be bringing online enough new mining capacity to increase the block difficulty until that margin erodes away - is it the worldwide chip shortage preventing that from happening?
- askesisdev 6y ago
  Yes, the chip shortage must be preventing the manufacture of enough ASICs. The same can be said for Ethereum. The shortage of GPUs is preventing the difficulty to raise fast enough. The profit margin has been like 5-10x the electricity cost for the last few months. If you bought a RTX 3080/3090 it would have paid itself and the electricity by now.
  - jessaustin 6y ago
    Could mining itself be a cause of this chip shortage?
- wmf 6y ago
  Even in 2017 when AFAIK there wasn't a general chip shortage there was still a shortage of crypto ASICs because the lead time is months and Bitmain can't know how much demand there will be for mining. I doubt mining will ever reach an equilibrium.
- vmception 6y ago
  > is it the worldwide chip shortage preventing that from happening? yes, feel free to start a new fabrication line to arbitrage away the margin lol.
- bb88 6y ago
  That's at 19 megawatts burning natural gas. So that means they spend about 140MWh of energy for one BTC. I calculate that comes to around $20/MWh, which seems to be on the low side of energy production. Coal is $40 to $143 per MWh. Edited to add: That's roughly 60 tons of CO2 emissions per BTC mined. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 The other aspect here is let's say you're a speculator and you think the price of BTC can go up another 50x or roughly $1M/BTC. Then even spending any amount less than the BTC spot price now is a bargain.
bransonf 6y ago
It’s a simple equation: So long as there is more money in mining BTC than there is cost in energy to mine it, mining will proceed. No entity in the world can control the price of crypto. But, we can and already do regulate energy production. I think we need a carbon tax, that is specifically a financial disincentive towards any means of energy production that directly pollutes the atmosphere. Seriously, what are the current best arguments against levying such a disincentive? Moreover, if energy were priced correctly (its toll on the climate priced in) would BTC become higher in value? That is, we have a supply, increasing at a rate fixed between the arbitrage of energy and mining efficiency. If energy were to become more expensive, the growth in supply would slow. Assuming demand remains constant or continues to grow as well, the only way for price to go is up.
- deleted 6y ago
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- px43 6y ago
  Mining difficulty tends to be a lagging indicator of price, not the other way around. I doubt that a price increase in power would have much affect on the price of the currency itself. We 100% need massive carbon taxes right now. It's really telling how the energy industry is trying to push blame to consumers, especially cryptocurrency miners, in order to distract from the discussion of real carbon taxes to force polluters to pay for the damage they're causing. I'm sure I'm one of the largest supporters of cryptocurrency in this thread so far, and I'm perfectly comfortable stating the obvious that mining with fossil fuels is an abomination. It's going to keep happening though until regulators get serious about reigning in the fossil fuel industry.
  - paulgb 6y ago
    Would you support a carbon import tariff for PoW cryptocurrencies mined outside of countries that implement a carbon tax? Because otherwise I can just imagine mining moving to countries without one, as is already happening with regards to other climate-based restrictions.
    - 6y ago
kfarr 6y ago
The story kept getting worse when they explain that state grants covered all the money spent by lobbyists to help the new owners pay a tiny fraction of taxes compared to the old ones.
px43 6y ago
Just to point out the obvious, the headline is heavily editorialized and misleading. Current HN headline: "Bitcoin miners are buying power plants" Actual headline: "A New Threat to New York’s Clean Energy Goals: Bitcoin Mining" It's trying to imply that buying power plants is some hot new trend, but the article is about a single crazy dude in New York buying a single plant.
- le-mark 6y ago
  I have sources who have purchased hydro plants in South America and refineries with installed power production and use the excess capacity for mining. My feeling it’s more common than a single crazy dude.
  - matheusmoreira 6y ago
    > hydro plants in South America Which?
- Black101 6y ago
  The mods only force you to use the article's headline when it fits closer to their ideologies.
londons_explore 6y ago
What is the advantage to owning your own power plants over just buying power from the grid? Does the grid have substantial fees or taxes?
- yetihehe 6y ago
  Yeah, you typically pay for transfer and upkeep of that grid. It's included in your electtricity bill, sometimes even as a separate item.
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    But isn't the cost of that <5% of the generated power? Sure, it's a benefit of not using the grid, but it seems a pretty small one.
netforay 6y ago
Are there any estimates on how much power Bitcoin consumed so far?
Animats 6y ago
Why not locate in Texas where oil wells are flaring off natural gas because they have no way to deliver it, but can still deliver the oil?
- nightski 6y ago
  They have already been doing this in ND. There are shipping containers with mining equipment inside set up next to flares. The oil companies are catching on to how much they are making though and want in on the action (since they provide access to the flare). It's in the tens to hundreds of thousands per month in profit iirc.
- bob1029 6y ago
  Some of us in Texas have already been cooking up some really fantastical energy market schemes involving crypto mining... I've been thinking about putting together trailers that contain a 2MWe gas turbine genset, switch gear, ups and crypto mining system. These could be towed out to arbitrary locations and used to burn surplus gas supply. Remember, CO2 is much better than CH4 when dealing with greenhouse gasses. Might as well make some extra $$$ while we are converting it...
- deleted 6y ago
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chroem- 6y ago
For all the pearl clutching about bitcoin, I find it humorous that computer games still consume more energy. [1] [1] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/introducing-cbei-a-new-way-to-measure-bitcoin-network-electrical-consumption https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/introducing-cbei-a-new-...
- Vibrelli 6y ago
  Yes exactly - is gaming/personal entertainment a "good" use of energy?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- foepys 6y ago
  There are no sources for the numbers other than another crypto blog. This other blog then uses "Negligible" as a unit.
pauljurczak 6y ago
"its price has risen from $3,729 in December 2018 to more than $62,000 this week." Nice advertising. How about: "its price has risen from $19,650 in December 2017 to more than $62,000 this week."
- spiorf 6y ago
  Its price was $19,650 only for a brief moment. Why pick that particular moment for the range instead of the minimum and maximum as per "range" definition?
  - pauljurczak 6y ago
    Because min/max per range is for complete suckers, who think it is feasible to buy at minimum and sell at maximum price. Definitely not practical for mere mortals trading a volatile "asset". I chose a biased $19,650 value to make a point. Anyone who bought Bitcoin in the month of December 2017 or January 2018 paid over $10K a piece. The price was over $6K for more than one year, before it dropped shortly to $4K neighborhood. $3,729 is not a representative number. BTW, 3 days after my comment "more than $62,000" is no longer there, either.
jfrunyon 6y ago
Vertical integration at its best.
monkeycantype 6y ago
If you're a miner considering this, can I suggest you investigate decommissioned mothballed plants in new zealand. I don't know whats happening with wye creek plant, but my understanding is that there are hydro plants in nz that were built to provide power to alcoa aluminium smelters that are now unused.
admax88q 6y ago
All this talk about Bitcoin causing global warming is starting to feel like a targetted misinformation campaign. Yes it's wasteful, and yes it's using a fair amount of energy at the moment. But all estimates show it's still a very small fraction of the problem. It feels like we spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about bitcoins carbon footprint for its size.
- originalvichy 6y ago
  How can it be interpreted as misinformation if the information is pretty solidly based? Everyone is looking for low hanging fruit in the race to slow down the climate disaster and it’s an easy target. I’m glad online currencies exist as a technology but I’m not glad an energy intensive one is currently #1 when at the same time the entire tech is taken over by investors/speculators instead of users. And if calculations about Bitcoin’s footprint are true it uses up as much energy as Argentina. An entire country. I don’t think that for the use Bitcoin gets in the developed world it justifies energy uses at that level. It’s far from a small little thing to not care about.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    > And if calculations about Bitcoin’s footprint are true it uses up as much energy as Argentina. An entire country. I don’t think that for the use Bitcoin gets in the developed world it justifies energy uses at that level. Compare for example with MGM's properties in Las Vegas which they claim consume 171 MW. That's not quite as much as Bitcoin, but it's still higher than 65 of the countries listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... So it's actually pretty easy to surpass the usage of "an entire country". And that to me seems like a much more useless waste than Bitcoin, which has significant uses besides entertainment
    - propertymagnate 6y ago
      To rephrase that, Bitcoin uses more energy that all of MGM's properties in Las Vegas.
kemonocode 6y ago
Some people throw hissy fits about how polluting cryptocurrencies supposedly are yet they remain silent about the perverse incentives that spurred their creation and use. It's the war on drugs all over again, and getting angry about crypto and trying to outlaw it is just treating a symptom and not the disease.
- Jyaif 6y ago
  Can you elaborate on the perverse incentives that spurred cryptocurrencies?
  - imtringued 6y ago
    The Fed failed to create inflation and that means low interest rates. The Bitcoin bugs are saying that the real reason is that the purchasing power of the dollar is eroding, but in reality it is too stable.
    - mateuszf 6y ago
      It seems stable if you measure with CPI inflation, but then check real estate prices, healthcare and education prices, stock prices.
      - machiaweliczny 6y ago
        Yeah so inflation is only on suff owned by rich (thus giving them more money) while normal folks have food and energy sources subsidised so they don't revolt and labor costs don't rise. Now you know who controls the government. This gap in real demand expression is skewing markets and might backfire. IMO workers are beeing ripped off by finance class and recently quite hard. So I support some kind of better money. Beside this higher land & property ownership tax and reduced work hours might help IMO.
  - mateuszf 6y ago
    I guess OP means long term declining interest rates and their effect on wealth distribution.
knorker 6y ago
To every cryptocurrency advocate: This is YOUR fault. And we told you for years.
thrower123 6y ago
This makes a good deal of sense for plants that have considerable ramp up costs during times of off-peak demand. I worked at a biomass plant once where it took hours to go from cold to get the boiler fired and get steam pressure up. They cut back production when power prices were low or negative, but they had to run at a minimum capacity all the time because they couldn't just stop and start on a dime.
chakhs 6y ago
HN logic: Berlin rent cap => market always wins, let the market rule Mining bitcoin => let's regulate
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  I wouldn't say HN is generally libertarian leaning (calls for regulation of everything are quite common among well educated techies) - rent caps are probably such an authoritarian and foreign concept that even HN is rebelling to it. As a libertarian (pro free market, pro private property for everything), I'm in favour of removing rent caps. On pollution, that's a bit harder. The problem is that the environment is a resource shared by everyone and everyone should privately own a little part of it. Polluting is damaging everyone's stake in the environment and the individuals living in it should have a right to compensation. I think the best model should be leaving it up to the communities to establish what the limits are in each community. Some can have no limits, some will have higher limits. It will be a tradeoff between cheaper cost of living / profitability, after all. Then we would see places with higher or lower limits according to what people wish and need.
strogonoff 6y ago
It felt like the lede is buried at the end of the article, and signals a deeper institutional issue. It looks like the Department of Environmental Conservation was petitioned to take a look at the permit for the plant claimed to be damaging lake’s environment. Meanwhile, DEC didn’t consider environmental damage when reviewing plant’s permit, wants to ignore (seemingly on a technicality) the evidence for one particular kind of damage, and furthermore last year it has discontinued the funding for tests for that kind of damage. Encouraging more coal plant construction seems strange in this age, even if we forget about this particular use case.
bawolff 6y ago
I'm surprised nuclear isn't used more here. My understanding that one of the problems of nuclear is you cant turn it on/off quickly. So why not just mine crypto at low load times?
- jobigoud 6y ago
  I think most miners (i.e Chinese ones) are using hydro which is already more sustainable and flexible than nuclear or coal.
- dragonelite 6y ago
  People are already thinking about using over capacity for mining. I think some ideas were being thrown around of using run off gas during pumping oil to power crypto mining.
ddeyar 6y ago
I don't know. Eth is switching to PoS. Tezos, cardano and many others are PoS. Is there any plan for bitcoin to switch to PoS? When there are a lot of more environmental friendly crypto alternatives, what should stop governments to ban bitcoin mining?
- drexlspivey 6y ago
  How do you distribute the initial coins with PoS? Like who gets the first coin? The person who gets the first one will also get all the subsequent ones since he controls all the supply until he sells? How would that even work?
  - ddeyar 6y ago
    The tezos foundation for example made a crowdfunding some years ago. People who donated in the project received an amount written in the genesis block. The foundation started the mainnet in a beta phase with some initial validators. Holders started to participate in the PoS process until it was decentralized.
collyw 6y ago
Maybe get rid of bitcoin before limiting everyone ability to travel. I don't hear Greta screaming about that, or population growth.
nathias 6y ago
the problem are externalities as such, bitcoin just makes the problem obvious
ozy 6y ago
This might be a good thing. There are a few responses possible: 1. Do nothing, public gets angry. 2. Make bitcoin, or its mining, illegal. However, what is the criteria? All blockchains? Should google be illegal too? Both are just a digital product that the public wants. 3. Tax CO2 production by data centers, that might have a chance it can be coordinated broadly between nations, there is enough money there to tax, and bitcoin adds some urgency. While doubtful CO2 can be taxed globally, without coordination, big companies play governments against each other.
- kevingadd 6y ago
  "Should google be illegal too?" is a pretty ridiculous extrapolation. Nobody would go that far, a regulation like that doesn't achieve any climate goals and would have massive economic impact. You can probably provide an example that isn't wholly implausible like online banking? Even then, it is possible to draw a line.
  - totony 6y ago
    Who draws that line? Corrupt politicians? Million dollar lobbying? Lines are smokescreen in front of the real problem. They mostly serve to protect the establishment. Ok, no more bitcoin, but what about the heavily subsidized dairy industry, the oil industry, and all the other that pollute heavily? If a solution requires a "line" or makes no sense at the extreme, it's most likely not a solution.
elitan 6y ago
Solution: Carbon emission tax.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  If using a GPU to mine crypto is unethical shouldn't using a GPU to do things like videogames and rending hollywood super hero movies should also be taxed I mean they both run GPUs at 100% for hundreds of hours. Perhaps computing power in general should be capped so it can only use small amounts of power.
  - dukeyukey 6y ago
    If they use fossil-fuel plants, yes, though the tax would be applied to the energy generation, not energy use.
  - totony 6y ago
    Carbon tax is not about making something illegal. You playing a game 4h/day is nothing compared to 1000 gpus mining 24/7. One is pennies in tax and the other would (presumably) be way more significant.
    - EdwinLarkin 6y ago
      Even today carbon taxes are the stupidest idea people from rich nations thought about. Around 5BN from the developing world will laugh at this proposal. They will not be able to trade with you? Oh well they might trade among themselves and dont have to face competition from rich countries. I call this win win.
      - totony 6y ago
        Do you honestly believe (let's say) the USA cutting all economic ties/imposing tariffs is insignificant? Of course they can trade with the others who don't care about pollution. That doesn't mean the costs of a carbon tax don't outweigh the benefits of having economic ties with the countries that have that tax.
utf_8x 6y ago
I'm starting to hope that crypto is a bubble and will burst soon... Massive environmental issues aside, I'd like to be able to buy a GPU at MSRP sometime in the next 5 years...
- idnefju 6y ago
  Isn’t just miners, car industry fucked it as well
  - certifiedloud 6y ago
    What car companies are buying GPUs in large quantities?
    - sahkopoyta 6y ago
      Not GPUs specifically but shortage of chips as a whole is causing some problems
scotty79 6y ago
Since renewables are already cheaper than coal power and mining is inherently flexible load I think bitcoin miners will me building and building way more renewables. Especially when mining hardware stagnates and cost of mining bitcoin will be dominated by price of energy and of ensuring energy supply, as opposed to ensuring posession mining hardwarr. Although I hope one day I read about Bitcoin miner building nuclear power plant and using it to mine bitcoin with all the spare power but selling energy into the grid when energy usage peaks and price rises above what mining can bring.
aero-glide2 6y ago
Can Bitcoin make sustainable energy cheaper? Buy solar panels, wind turbines, etc. Mine Bitcoin, recover capital costs sooner. Then use the electricity for normal purposes.
- dylkil 6y ago
  This is already the case. Renewables are increasingly becoming the most popular option for mining, and not because of the Eco-positive effects of using renewables, but because they are getting cheaper to mine with than other sources. Regardless, my thoughts on pow is it is inefficient and wasteful. PoS is the future of consensus mechanisms.
throwaway346434 6y ago
Many of the comments here are asking the wrong question - its not a matter of whether miners should be able to buy power plants and licences; so much as why it was cost effective for a disused coal plant to be acquired instead of a purchase of 25% of a specific wind farm's output, for example - the latter would drive renewable expansion, and the energy industry is already all over the fact this is the most cost effective way forward.
- MrMan 6y ago
  Bitcoin is making coal economical whereas a year ago coal was on the way out because it was not cheaper than wind and solar. So we are headed backwards. Very frightening
sunsipples 6y ago
I enjoy the "bitcoin is a fuck you to the rich" but mining/management/use of bitcoin/crypto are not for poor people or even poor countries, they use both as a resource and as a get rich quick scheme, deliver a lot interest but have no actual value beyond a half billion dollar pizza.
obelos 6y ago
And we had imagined we'd all die in a flood of something vaguely cool, like nanotech grey goo. But no, it's going to be something as stupid as a conflagration of SHA-256 hashes.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  It was always paperclip maximizers.
rpaddock 6y ago
The Scrub Grass Power Plant near me has been pushing Cryptomining for a while. http://www.scrubgrass.com http://www.scrubgrass.com
vegetish 6y ago
Use solar, dudes. You can even run crypto rigs directly on 12 volts, which saves you the hassle of getting costly inverters and PSUs
agentultra 6y ago
Cool, who could have predicted this? /s The governments of the world could shut it down. A drop in the bucket of their vast collective wealth could buy the majority of the network, legislation to criminalize mining and trading, and just wait until it becomes unprofitable. There are plenty of good reasons to do it, environmental concerns being only (very good) one.
blondie9x 6y ago
Please can we regulate the carbon use of cryptocurrencies. This is getting out of control and governments are too slow. Bitcoin mining consumes more energy than the entire country of Argentina uses now. I do not want to hate on Bitcoin but climate change is getting out of control and there is little time left to reverse course. Last year with a global pandemic CO2 still rose by near record amounts. Bitcoin mining does have something to do with this. There is a connection. Please be open to the idea that we need to regulate the energy that Proof of Work mining cryptocurrencies use. I don't want to stop crypto. I just want us to use types that require less energy to mine. The planet is running out of time and this is FACT offsetting lots of progress on reducing emissions. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html Please don't downvote because you love crypto. I do too. I just want us to do better at preventing CO2 emissions from rising because of its mining.
andrewla 6y ago
This is painted as a disaster, but I think all we're doing is cutting through to get at a consistent valuation for energy. In order for Bitcoin to every achieve any long-term viability, in my opinion, it needs to stabilize its pricing. Practically speaking, the route to do that is through a combination of supply chain pricing and credit markets. Pricing energy in Bitcoin (which is really all this is doing) is an interesting step towards the supply chain problem. This power plant, in all likelihood, would be happy to sell the power to another bidder if the price per Joule is higher than the expected price per Bitcoin per Joule. The natural next step is to just price electricity directly in Bitcoin. The question then becomes how viable it is to move down the chain -- pricing natural gas or coal in Bitcoin, and putting pricing pressure on the supply chain for more complex energy products (turbines, solar panels, etc.) to match this pricing. If this is feasible (and that's a big "if") then there is a chance that we start to flip the equation -- energy prices in dollars are simply too volatile and Bitcoin becomes a standard option for international settlement.
roguson 6y ago
There are no signs that cryptocurrency mining will stop. As long as it is profitable, more and more miners will enter the mining industry. Each miner requires an extensive amount of electricity to successfully mine cryptocurrencies. I can say that mining cryptocurrencies are now profitable than ever. Thanks to the Bull Market, a lot of new players are going to enter this sphere.
crypot 6y ago
What technological innovation would disrupt bitcoin at this point? It feels like crypto reached a terminal state in its first iteration.
Crye 6y ago
It makes me think of the billions that flooded into fiber optic networks to arbitrage the information asymmetry between markets across geographic areas. Maybe we'll be thanking these defunct Bitcoin farmers for invesing so much into the grid. I know the utilities are forcing the farms to put up all the money to tie into the grid. I guess this goes the same goes for the demand for silicon fab.

A simple move that would ban selling fossil power plants for cryptocurrencies mining purpose BUT allowing to do so for the carbon-neutral energy would be a win-win for both sides and will help the transition from carbon-heavy energy.

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pcthrowaway 6y ago
I'm wondering if 'carbon-neutral' energy production is really environmentally neutral, especially when channeled to cryptocurrency mining. Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? Not to mention the harm to avian wildlife, as the turbines kill 5 birds per year each on average. Next you have the externalized costs of building the infrastructure. Producing the wind turbines, the power plant, and the GPUs. Is all of that really getting offset? I'm very optimistic about the potential for cryptocurrency to change the world, but I'd like that to be for the better. And when we have emerging proof-of-stake platforms that have much less of an impact on the planet because they don't by design rely on energetically inefficient ways to secure their networks, I really don't understand how we can argue that proof-of-work cryptocurrencies have any place in the future.
- seoaeu 6y ago
  > Take wind turbines: they've found that harvesting wind actually increases the temperature in an area. Do enough of this, coupled with channeling the energy into heat-producing machines, are we sure this isn't gong to contribute to global warming at scale? That's some anti-renewable energy FUD I hadn't seen before... Yes, we're sure that won't cause global warming. Wind turbine operation doesn't produce greenhouse gases or meaningful change the Earth's albedo.
  - bostonsre 6y ago
    I guess if we theoretically had enough wind turbines, climates could start being impacted due to winds being slowed down but not exactly sure if that would heat the earth more or not. Could an area with lots of turbines have slower wind speeds and have heat dissipate less quickly? It seems plausible, but would think it would even out with a different area getting a little cooler. But yea, don't see how that would cause the earth to warm overall. Also, I assume wind turbines cause some emissions during manufacturing. Not sure going gang busters and making a ton to power bitcoin mining would be great for the planet.
    - pcthrowaway 6y ago
      > Also, I assume wind turbines cause some emissions during manufacturing. Not sure going gang busters and making a ton to power bitcoin mining would be great for the planet. Yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about. If we're building wind turbines to replace energy usage that serves a purpose, that's wonderful! Building new infrastructure for energy production so that we can pass it to a bunch of computers that piss it away is still wasteful. Even if it's less wasteful than burning coal to power those computers. Bitcoin and proof-of-work were revolutionary, but now that we have better cryptocurrency technology, we should be moving away from it.
  - pcthrowaway 6y ago
    Since I'm getting downvoted, here's a study on it: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511830446X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243511... Your misunderstanding seems possibly intentional. I'm very much in favour of renewable energy as an alternative to nonrenewable energy. I'm just not in favour of wasting energy for very little purpose. Build solar/wind energy to replace fossil fuels? Great! Obviously I'm in favour of that. Built an insane amount of infrastructure for producing renewable energy so that we can piss it away? That seems incredibly wasteful! Even if renewable energy is much better, there are still externalities to producing energy.
    - caf 6y ago
- agravier 6y ago
  Also, the propellers get used quickly and are not recyclable AFAIK.
  - agravier 6y ago
    I would like justification for the downvotes please. Thanks.
    - agravier 6y ago
      OK, so here is my source anyway: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turbine-blades-can-t-be-recycled-so-they-re-piling-up-in-landfills https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb... I'll refrain from commenting on environmental issues in the future, it's just some sort of shit-flinging contest.
      - bostonsre 6y ago
        I don't see why anyone would down vote a simple fact. Almost all issues have pros and cons, even popular ideas like wind turbines. Seems silly and tribal to down vote like that.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    It's infrastructure that lasts 20 years, not a plastic cup containing yogurt that gets thrown away within 3 days.
- fy20 6y ago
  The impact of a wind farm is going to be very minimal compared to the waste heat generated by fossil fuel power plants. In my country (thanks to the Soviets!) a lot of the waste heat from electricity generation is captured and used to heat homes in nearby cities. One of the largest natural gas plants has a electricity output of 1800MW and a heat output of 5800MW - yet they still needed to build a massive artificial lake to provide additional cooling capacity.
legohead 6y ago
Simpler: ban banks and credit card companies from dealing with anything related to cryptocurrency
- colordrops 6y ago
  What about proof of stake or off chain transactions
- doomroot 6y ago
  That sounds rather rash.
  - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
    I thought bitcoin wanted to be outside of the traditional banking system? Or are bitcoin fans afraid they won't be able to easily get suckers to pump the coins sky high without the fiat (but mostly unbacked tethers) flowing in?
    - afc 6y ago
      I was reading a few of your comments in this thread and just figured I'd point out, as candidly as I can, that you come across as extremely biased against cryptocurrencies, using very manipulative language to advance your position (e.g., anyone who disagrees with you is "part of the circle jerk", Bitcoin fans want to "get suckers to pump the coins sky high", Bitcoin "is a symptom of human greed that must be put in check", etc.). Would you say that your goal is to advance these discussions towards the truth (i.e., to make insightful comments that may be useful)? I'm left with a strong impression that it is, rather, to advance one political position/agenda (cryptocurrencies are evil) as strongly as you can, which is neither intellectually honest nor particularly useful.
      - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
        Your assumption about me is correct. I am extremely biased against cryptocurrencies. And that's bad how? Do you have a sizable position in these instruments that you are afraid would be affected by my dialogue? And my point about circle jerks is prevalent all over social media. Open your eyes man. The Winklevoss Twins, Jack @ Twitter, Elon Musk. All of them have a vested interest in abusing their influence to push this non-productive asset to new heights, so they can then promote the greater fool theory with impressive effects. These folks, and countless others, are only interested in becoming the new 1% off the backs of others. That's not a great look.

vmception 6y ago

This is an area people should remain vigilante about. Although most bitcoin mining uses renewable energy[1][2] or reduces pollution from flaring sites by actually using the to-be-flared gas onsite, without vigilance that won't remain the case, especially if state actors begin competing. [1] https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternative-finance/publications/3rd-global-cryptoasset-benchmarking-study https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/faculty-research/centres/alternati... a Cambridge study which corroborates and reached the same conclusion as an industry [2] study https://coinshares.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-june-2019 https://coinshares.com/research/bitcoin-mining-network-june-...

deleted 6y ago
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nrmitchi 6y ago
Vigilant* While someone going all Batman on a fossil fuel power plant would be interesting, it would probably end poorly.
bottled_poe 6y ago
Most? The linked report says 39% or did I miss something?
de6u99er 6y ago
The argument, that most Bitcoin mining uses renewabke energy isn't valid, because the renewable energy used for BitCoin mining could have been used for other things.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  That's why they are talking about the flaring instead of hydroelectric, to sell the idea that it's using power that wouldn't be recovered otherwise. Of course it is sort of likely that cheap hydroelectric is a much bigger component of the supply than gas power plants installed just to mine bitcoin.
  - 6y ago

eevilspock 6y ago

This is simply perverse.

gruez 6y ago
It's perverse, just like almost every other form of economic activity on this planet, eg. farming (fertilizer/herbicide run-off), mining (tailing ponds), factories (air/ground/water pollution). The underlying reason is simple: externalities aren't being priced in, which allows the owners of such operations to make money while everyone pays the price.
- palijer 6y ago
  None of what you listed are similar cases. Farming produced food to eat. Mining produces minerals to build things with. Factories produce goods. Bitcoin produces... A series of bits that some people will pay money for? It seems like bitcoin is basically fine art at this point.
  - jude- 6y ago
    Bitcoin is proof that a thing can be a commodity without having a corporeal manifestation.
  - chii 6y ago
    > Bitcoin produces... trust. It's only a moral judgement that bitcoin energy use is somehow worse than say, transport, or heating, or anything else that people pay money for.
    - zepto 6y ago
      Bitcoin doesn’t produce trust. It just produces a verified log.
      - chii 6y ago
        which people trust to be unmodifiable and thus, dependable. That's what it means to trust it. I have blind faith in the banking system (and blind faith that the gov't regulation keeps them honest), but i can trust the blockchain.

epinephrinios 6y ago

It would be great if the gigantic Bitcoin energy demand leads to renewable energy breakthroughs.

627467 6y ago
Incentives are aligned, imo
- bohadi 6y ago
  Could Bitcoin really bootstrap ourselves up the Kardashev scale? Amazing story. Please put tulip bubble in new context.
saalweachter 6y ago
... do we really need another energy demand to drive R&D? We're already working with an energy budget equivalent to 1/3 the decay that powers the Earth's fiery core. Is it really fair to credit any new breakthroughs to the last ~12 GW of demand, instead of the first ~18 TW?
- jude- 6y ago
  Yes, building more solar panels and and batteries gives the industry more experience at doing so, which (for a time) will allow it to refine the tech through multiple iterations, making future capacity cheaper and better-quality. EDIT: this is to say, renewable tech production is still following a learning curve (https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth)
  - wmf 6y ago
    We have plenty of work to do just replacing existing power generation with renewables, so it's not clear to me how additional demand accelerates such replacement. (This is in answer to both you and tshaddox.)
    - 6y ago

runawaybottle 6y ago

What’s the bandwidth from a probe close to the sun with a Bitcoin miner on it? Beam back the coin, we can wait. Or, mine it near the sun and then bring it back. Could take 20 years, but the returns should be better than the SPY. We’d need a spaceship I guess with the largest solar panels ever. Park it near the sun, mine Bitcoin, come back to earth.

neolog 6y ago
GPUs get faster over time.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  But it’s not free energy. I’m looking at it like fusion, the output needs to exceed the input (well I guess that’s how everyone is looking at it).
amenghra 6y ago
Mining is a race. If you have X seconds latency because you are millions of miles away, you’ll loose $Y over the long run. You can figure out the function which ties X and Y together.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  If you drop beacon towers along the way to maintain bandwidth, why wouldn’t this work?
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    latency and bandwidth are two different things... speed of light is a constant.
    - mrits 6y ago
      these beacons are in worm holes, obviously

camgunz 6y ago

Every time I'm like "BTC is roasting the planet" people come out of the woodwork to remind me about renewable energy. Funny I don't see any of them here....

lwansbrough 6y ago
"It's renewable therefore I can waste as much of it as I want."
- SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
  It's the ultimate in handwaveism.
- hparadiz 6y ago
  It's true though. You can throw up a 1kw system for under 1k now.
  - maccam94 6y ago
    It still generates heat, which warms the planet.
    - gonzo41 6y ago
      ummm,
    - gruez 6y ago
      Is heat generated by humans really a significant contributor to global warming compared to the warming effects of human generated greenhouse gases?
      - grozzle 6y ago
        It isn't. Anthropogenic heat is about 1% as strong as the greenhouse effect, according to this article in Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata2017116 https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata2017116

trhway 6y ago

Great. There is only so many plants to go around. The fast growing energy consumption from crypto may be that real push that we need to move to renewables as no other type of energy production can be built up that much more and that fast. Nothing moves things faster than war and/or straight economic interest. Once crypto energy consumption grows an order or two of magnitude more, it would produce a real interest in space and fusion. Push for progress is coming from an unexpected side :) In the meantime i think we'll see something like large barges/platforms with wind turbines floating somewhere in windy international waters - cuts the costs of permits, etc. May be some startups around it ...

graiz 6y ago

Is it possible for people to source or certify sustainable Bitcoin? Since there is a transaction chain, can you choose to buy or boycott “dirty coins”?

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
coin taint is a real thing but ultimately your wallet just looks at your inputs and writes outputs to other wallets.
RinTohsaka 6y ago
There is a crypto called Monero that doesn't have this problem. it is growing fast.
- gruez 6y ago
  AFAIK monero runs on POW as well so from an environmental impact level I don't see how it's any different. From a traceability perspective I don't see a difference either because mining can be done anonymously. You really can't track a mined block to a specific power plant. I guess you can set up some sort of voluntary program for green miners, and treat non-compliant blocks as "dirty", but with monero this wouldn't be possible so everything would be treated as "dirty".
- mrits 6y ago
  Proof of stake is in or will be in just about every major crypto except bitcoin...
- xur17 6y ago
  Monero uses PoW mining as well.
- hatsunearu 6y ago
  To fix this person's comment, this comment makes sense if by "problem" they meant "defending your coins from boycotters"--Monero is (supposedly) untraceable so presumably it is impossible to boycott specific "dirty" sources of Monero.
6y ago

pontifier 6y ago

Do any bitcoin miners in this thread want to invest in my fusion reactor prototype?

px43 6y ago
Yo right here. What you got :-) Remember, fusors are losers. I wanna see lattice fusion with metallic hydrogen cores embedded in 3D printed diamonds or I'm out.
- pontifier 6y ago
  It's a completely new concept. I've got some stuff up at http://www.DDproFusion.com http://www.DDproFusion.com I've got a bit of a simulation, not quite totally ready yet at http://www.ddprofusion.com/simulation/index.html http://www.ddprofusion.com/simulation/index.html that shows a bit of the physics. It's totally new, so no prototype exists and it may not even really work, but I'm trying to raise funds right now... I'm trying to sell some stock and I've got some other things I'm doing to raise money to really give it a good try.

MattGaiser 6y ago

I keep reading that coal is uncompetitive even to operate because of renewables. So what’s the deal here? Is it the need for consistent base load electricity that caused them to choose coal?

hparadiz 6y ago
No loss due to transmission by locating the equipment onsite. With that built in efficiency it probably skews the numbers in a way that utility consumers don't.
maxerickson 6y ago
The plant was converted to natural gas (even before it started mostly powering bitcoin hashing).
bobby_bob 6y ago
It's now using natural gas: > ...drawing power from the plant’s 106-megawatt generator now fueled by natural gas.

de6u99er 6y ago

This crypto-currency nonsense is getting out of hands.

SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
When profits are being made, who cares what happens to future generations. Cryptocurrency is, for the most part, a contagion. We opened Pandora's box and the genie is out of the bottle. Short of some kind of cataclysmic black swan event, I'm not sure this insanity will end anytime soon. :(
- meowface 6y ago
  This is one of the few energy consumers that has a pretty straightforward solution: switch to proof of stake. You can't magically switch all existing cars to be 100% electric, but you actually can kind of magically switch all cryptocurrencies to consume orders of magnitude less energy. The question is if Bitcoin will ever try to switch to it. Unfortunately, it seems like they probably won't anytime soon.
  - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
    As much as I loathe cryptocurrency as a concept, a switch across the board to PoS would certainly be a welcome change to massively decrease this abhorrent waste in energy.
  - _carbyau_ 6y ago
    Ethereum 2.0 is POS apparently. I haven't figure out how to get onboard yet though. I have to do a bunch of homework to figure out what the hell means what. I don't have 32 ETH ($70k odd USD) so I have to join a staking pool but then that means I won't be running a validator I think. In which case this seems like simply just buying some ETH2.0 but it clearly isn't... so I have no idea honestly... More homework required on my part. Anyone have a good link with an overview of the moving parts AND motivations of the ETH2.0 structure?
    - 6y ago

endisneigh 6y ago

Turns out if you can make money burning stuff people will buy stuff to burn as long as the cost to burn is less than money earned. Who knew! Of course this won’t be a problem until it is.

crumbshot 6y ago
This reminds me of the "Cash for Ash" scandal in Northern Ireland, where people were doing exactly that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_Heat_Incentive_scand...

caterama 6y ago

Who cares? Everyone is fixated on Bitcoin... there are tons of energy inefficient processes out there. The solution has nothing to do with Bitcoin... environmental impact needs to be priced into energy itself, whatever the application. This is a failure of the markets (and therefore ourselves). Bitcoin is a scapegoat.

SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
Here's the problem with this sentiment. Bitcoin isn't replacing anything. Not pre-existing fiat currency, not banks, nothing. Bitcoin only adds to the problem at an alarming rate. Bitcoin is certainly not a scapegoat. It's a massive problem and, largely, a symptom of human greed that must be put in check.
- tshaddox 6y ago
  I think that’s highly unlikely. Surely the people mining Bitcoin would be doing something else if Bitcoin didn’t exist. Or to think of it the other way, if there was some better way of making money with electricity then the Bitcoin miners would be doing that instead.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Have you considered that they wouldn’t be trying to turn electricity into money and might be making money some other way?
    - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
      And to your point, likely a way that doesn't have global implications? Even other bubbles of the past didn't have quite the reach that the likes of Bitcoin has (maybe with the exception of the entire stock market in the Roaring 20s leading right up to the crash of 1929). That's why this time, this is much more dangerous in the long run.
      - 6y ago

SwimSwimHungry 6y ago

The more I see stories like this, the more I've come to realize that we really screwed up by allowing this technological experiment to get out of hand. Not to sound pedantic, but our future generations are going to come to regret this when our planet is a toasted marshmallow, because we couldn't stop being greedy.

maxerickson 6y ago
It's reasonably likely that there will be a run on dollars at some point. If/when it happens, the bitcoin network collapsing is a pretty likely outcome. (what I mean by a run on dollars is that lots of people may decide they want dollars instead of bitcoin, so the people with dollars won't have to pay as much for bitcoin, and then the people who want dollars will have to accept less for their bitcoin, and then…)
- SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
  @maxerickson That ultimately will be the end game. I'd argue that most of the folks that bought into Bitcoin do not, in fact, share in the an-cap libertarian utopia of an economy entirely detached from the US Dollar. Folks are going to want their payday, even folks like Michael Saylor and Elon Musk. These guys aren't HODLing for charity. They want to exit before the rest of the peanut gallery does.
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    The utopia is so mind boggling far fetched. Suppose I have a weapon and I want to kill you unless you give me your bitcoin. How do you stop me? You either have your own weapons to defend yourself or go to an authority for help. So unless everyone wants to build their own personal military the end game is the same. All of these arguments boil down to one possibility that could work. Bitcoin somehow brings about world peace, which seems unlikely. Bitcoin as an experimental protocol is interesting, as a serious currency or asset it is an environmentally dangerous joke.
  - seibelj 6y ago

o_p 6y ago

Well its the cost of a decentralized safe currency, at the end of the day its the users who pay for it, and I gladly pay for it. Keep using your fiat if you want.

SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
Sorry my dude, but we are all paying for this in the ridiculous carbon emissions, whether we we are part of this experiment or not. Save the snark.
- o_p 6y ago
  Its not BTC miners fault that energy is priced incorrectly. We shouldnt waste any energy into powering the armies of the world, lets just not fight, right? But here we are.
  - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
    I'm not fighting here. Your comment came off as dismissive to some growing and legitimate concerns. And don't forget. Bitcoin is not replacing these other institutions that need energy. Stop handwaving away the problem, because it's inconvenient for you to hear.
    - o_p 6y ago
      BTC miners buy the energy to power their nodes and that cost is passed to the users in transaction fees. The only legitimate criticism here may be that energy prices dont account for the externalities of carbon emissions. But thats irrelevant of how the energy is actually used
      - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
        You're missing the point. We shouldn't be using the energy period. Like, regardless of where we are getting our energy from, we should be making efforts to massively reduce consumption across the board. Bitcoin mining doesn't help this at all. Capitalism be damned. I've realized that you likely have made up your mind on this and my arguments won't sway you. That's fine by me, as long as others that have read can get it.

Taniwha 6y ago

Fuckers are literally burning the planet to power their pyramid scheme

dang 6y ago
Ok, but please don't fulminate on Hacker News.

baron816 6y ago

Easy solution: tax carbon emissions. Who cares if you’re using energy to mine Bitcoin? Or if you’re using it to play video games? Or to run the AC all day? If it you’re internalizing the cost of any emissions, then you’ll use those resources efficiently.

SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
Hard to do this when you can have other countries with much looser regulations allow Bitcoin miners run rampant. What probably should happen is to make converting from any cryptocurrency to major world currencies a crime. I have no delusions that this will halt activity in this sector entirely, but it will make it reasonably difficult to make any substantial money this way without raising some serious eyebrows.
- jude- 6y ago
  > Hard to do this when you can have other countries with much looser regulations allow Bitcoin miners run rampant. You tariff their imports and apply economic sanctions. > What probably should happen is to make converting from any cryptocurrency to major world currencies a crime. Why cryptocurrencies? There are plenty of things that pollute far more.
  - SwimSwimHungry 6y ago
    Why are you handwaving away my concerns? You do realize cryptocurrencies (and to be specific, PoW ones) aren't replacing any of these so called other things that pollute. Speaking of which, can you quantify what things pollute more? At any rate, I get the feeling we are going to be talking past each other and wasting time and energy (heh) on this conversation.
    - px43 6y ago
      What's your bias? You seem to have created your HN account 8 months ago and comment almost exclusively about trying to get cryptocurrencies banned. We don't need a world with more Luddites trying to outlaw math. The future will be secured and cryptographically verified, and there's not anything you can do to stop it.

caf 6y ago

The Greenidge team told potential investors last month that the plant had mined 1,186 bitcoins at an average net cost of about $2,869 for the 12 months ending in February. At this week’s Bitcoin price, that would translate into a profit margin of about $60,000 per mined coin. Surely this cannot last. This kind of outsize profit ought to be bringing online enough new mining capacity to increase the block difficulty until that margin erodes away - is it the worldwide chip shortage preventing that from happening?

askesisdev 6y ago
Yes, the chip shortage must be preventing the manufacture of enough ASICs. The same can be said for Ethereum. The shortage of GPUs is preventing the difficulty to raise fast enough. The profit margin has been like 5-10x the electricity cost for the last few months. If you bought a RTX 3080/3090 it would have paid itself and the electricity by now.
- jessaustin 6y ago
  Could mining itself be a cause of this chip shortage?
wmf 6y ago
Even in 2017 when AFAIK there wasn't a general chip shortage there was still a shortage of crypto ASICs because the lead time is months and Bitmain can't know how much demand there will be for mining. I doubt mining will ever reach an equilibrium.
vmception 6y ago
> is it the worldwide chip shortage preventing that from happening? yes, feel free to start a new fabrication line to arbitrage away the margin lol.
bb88 6y ago
That's at 19 megawatts burning natural gas. So that means they spend about 140MWh of energy for one BTC. I calculate that comes to around $20/MWh, which seems to be on the low side of energy production. Coal is $40 to $143 per MWh. Edited to add: That's roughly 60 tons of CO2 emissions per BTC mined. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 The other aspect here is let's say you're a speculator and you think the price of BTC can go up another 50x or roughly $1M/BTC. Then even spending any amount less than the BTC spot price now is a bargain.

bransonf 6y ago

It’s a simple equation: So long as there is more money in mining BTC than there is cost in energy to mine it, mining will proceed. No entity in the world can control the price of crypto. But, we can and already do regulate energy production. I think we need a carbon tax, that is specifically a financial disincentive towards any means of energy production that directly pollutes the atmosphere. Seriously, what are the current best arguments against levying such a disincentive? Moreover, if energy were priced correctly (its toll on the climate priced in) would BTC become higher in value? That is, we have a supply, increasing at a rate fixed between the arbitrage of energy and mining efficiency. If energy were to become more expensive, the growth in supply would slow. Assuming demand remains constant or continues to grow as well, the only way for price to go is up.

deleted 6y ago
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px43 6y ago
Mining difficulty tends to be a lagging indicator of price, not the other way around. I doubt that a price increase in power would have much affect on the price of the currency itself. We 100% need massive carbon taxes right now. It's really telling how the energy industry is trying to push blame to consumers, especially cryptocurrency miners, in order to distract from the discussion of real carbon taxes to force polluters to pay for the damage they're causing. I'm sure I'm one of the largest supporters of cryptocurrency in this thread so far, and I'm perfectly comfortable stating the obvious that mining with fossil fuels is an abomination. It's going to keep happening though until regulators get serious about reigning in the fossil fuel industry.
- paulgb 6y ago
  Would you support a carbon import tariff for PoW cryptocurrencies mined outside of countries that implement a carbon tax? Because otherwise I can just imagine mining moving to countries without one, as is already happening with regards to other climate-based restrictions.
  - 6y ago

kfarr 6y ago

The story kept getting worse when they explain that state grants covered all the money spent by lobbyists to help the new owners pay a tiny fraction of taxes compared to the old ones.

px43 6y ago

Just to point out the obvious, the headline is heavily editorialized and misleading. Current HN headline: "Bitcoin miners are buying power plants" Actual headline: "A New Threat to New York’s Clean Energy Goals: Bitcoin Mining" It's trying to imply that buying power plants is some hot new trend, but the article is about a single crazy dude in New York buying a single plant.

le-mark 6y ago
I have sources who have purchased hydro plants in South America and refineries with installed power production and use the excess capacity for mining. My feeling it’s more common than a single crazy dude.
- matheusmoreira 6y ago
  > hydro plants in South America Which?
Black101 6y ago
The mods only force you to use the article's headline when it fits closer to their ideologies.

londons_explore 6y ago

What is the advantage to owning your own power plants over just buying power from the grid? Does the grid have substantial fees or taxes?

yetihehe 6y ago
Yeah, you typically pay for transfer and upkeep of that grid. It's included in your electtricity bill, sometimes even as a separate item.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  But isn't the cost of that <5% of the generated power? Sure, it's a benefit of not using the grid, but it seems a pretty small one.

netforay 6y ago

Are there any estimates on how much power Bitcoin consumed so far?

Animats 6y ago

Why not locate in Texas where oil wells are flaring off natural gas because they have no way to deliver it, but can still deliver the oil?

nightski 6y ago
They have already been doing this in ND. There are shipping containers with mining equipment inside set up next to flares. The oil companies are catching on to how much they are making though and want in on the action (since they provide access to the flare). It's in the tens to hundreds of thousands per month in profit iirc.
bob1029 6y ago
Some of us in Texas have already been cooking up some really fantastical energy market schemes involving crypto mining... I've been thinking about putting together trailers that contain a 2MWe gas turbine genset, switch gear, ups and crypto mining system. These could be towed out to arbitrary locations and used to burn surplus gas supply. Remember, CO2 is much better than CH4 when dealing with greenhouse gasses. Might as well make some extra $$$ while we are converting it...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

chroem- 6y ago

For all the pearl clutching about bitcoin, I find it humorous that computer games still consume more energy. [1] [1] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/introducing-cbei-a-new-way-to-measure-bitcoin-network-electrical-consumption https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/introducing-cbei-a-new-...

Vibrelli 6y ago
Yes exactly - is gaming/personal entertainment a "good" use of energy?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
foepys 6y ago
There are no sources for the numbers other than another crypto blog. This other blog then uses "Negligible" as a unit.

pauljurczak 6y ago

"its price has risen from $3,729 in December 2018 to more than $62,000 this week." Nice advertising. How about: "its price has risen from $19,650 in December 2017 to more than $62,000 this week."

spiorf 6y ago
Its price was $19,650 only for a brief moment. Why pick that particular moment for the range instead of the minimum and maximum as per "range" definition?
- pauljurczak 6y ago
  Because min/max per range is for complete suckers, who think it is feasible to buy at minimum and sell at maximum price. Definitely not practical for mere mortals trading a volatile "asset". I chose a biased $19,650 value to make a point. Anyone who bought Bitcoin in the month of December 2017 or January 2018 paid over $10K a piece. The price was over $6K for more than one year, before it dropped shortly to $4K neighborhood. $3,729 is not a representative number. BTW, 3 days after my comment "more than $62,000" is no longer there, either.

jfrunyon 6y ago

Vertical integration at its best.

monkeycantype 6y ago

If you're a miner considering this, can I suggest you investigate decommissioned mothballed plants in new zealand. I don't know whats happening with wye creek plant, but my understanding is that there are hydro plants in nz that were built to provide power to alcoa aluminium smelters that are now unused.

admax88q 6y ago

All this talk about Bitcoin causing global warming is starting to feel like a targetted misinformation campaign. Yes it's wasteful, and yes it's using a fair amount of energy at the moment. But all estimates show it's still a very small fraction of the problem. It feels like we spend a disproportionate amount of time talking about bitcoins carbon footprint for its size.

originalvichy 6y ago
How can it be interpreted as misinformation if the information is pretty solidly based? Everyone is looking for low hanging fruit in the race to slow down the climate disaster and it’s an easy target. I’m glad online currencies exist as a technology but I’m not glad an energy intensive one is currently #1 when at the same time the entire tech is taken over by investors/speculators instead of users. And if calculations about Bitcoin’s footprint are true it uses up as much energy as Argentina. An entire country. I don’t think that for the use Bitcoin gets in the developed world it justifies energy uses at that level. It’s far from a small little thing to not care about.
- shawnz 6y ago
  > And if calculations about Bitcoin’s footprint are true it uses up as much energy as Argentina. An entire country. I don’t think that for the use Bitcoin gets in the developed world it justifies energy uses at that level. Compare for example with MGM's properties in Las Vegas which they claim consume 171 MW. That's not quite as much as Bitcoin, but it's still higher than 65 of the countries listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... So it's actually pretty easy to surpass the usage of "an entire country". And that to me seems like a much more useless waste than Bitcoin, which has significant uses besides entertainment
  - propertymagnate 6y ago
    To rephrase that, Bitcoin uses more energy that all of MGM's properties in Las Vegas.

kemonocode 6y ago

Some people throw hissy fits about how polluting cryptocurrencies supposedly are yet they remain silent about the perverse incentives that spurred their creation and use. It's the war on drugs all over again, and getting angry about crypto and trying to outlaw it is just treating a symptom and not the disease.

Jyaif 6y ago
Can you elaborate on the perverse incentives that spurred cryptocurrencies?
- imtringued 6y ago
  The Fed failed to create inflation and that means low interest rates. The Bitcoin bugs are saying that the real reason is that the purchasing power of the dollar is eroding, but in reality it is too stable.
  - mateuszf 6y ago
    It seems stable if you measure with CPI inflation, but then check real estate prices, healthcare and education prices, stock prices.
    - machiaweliczny 6y ago
      Yeah so inflation is only on suff owned by rich (thus giving them more money) while normal folks have food and energy sources subsidised so they don't revolt and labor costs don't rise. Now you know who controls the government. This gap in real demand expression is skewing markets and might backfire. IMO workers are beeing ripped off by finance class and recently quite hard. So I support some kind of better money. Beside this higher land & property ownership tax and reduced work hours might help IMO.
- mateuszf 6y ago
  I guess OP means long term declining interest rates and their effect on wealth distribution.

knorker 6y ago

To every cryptocurrency advocate: This is YOUR fault. And we told you for years.

thrower123 6y ago

This makes a good deal of sense for plants that have considerable ramp up costs during times of off-peak demand. I worked at a biomass plant once where it took hours to go from cold to get the boiler fired and get steam pressure up. They cut back production when power prices were low or negative, but they had to run at a minimum capacity all the time because they couldn't just stop and start on a dime.

chakhs 6y ago

HN logic: Berlin rent cap => market always wins, let the market rule Mining bitcoin => let's regulate

jokethrowaway 6y ago
I wouldn't say HN is generally libertarian leaning (calls for regulation of everything are quite common among well educated techies) - rent caps are probably such an authoritarian and foreign concept that even HN is rebelling to it. As a libertarian (pro free market, pro private property for everything), I'm in favour of removing rent caps. On pollution, that's a bit harder. The problem is that the environment is a resource shared by everyone and everyone should privately own a little part of it. Polluting is damaging everyone's stake in the environment and the individuals living in it should have a right to compensation. I think the best model should be leaving it up to the communities to establish what the limits are in each community. Some can have no limits, some will have higher limits. It will be a tradeoff between cheaper cost of living / profitability, after all. Then we would see places with higher or lower limits according to what people wish and need.

strogonoff 6y ago

It felt like the lede is buried at the end of the article, and signals a deeper institutional issue. It looks like the Department of Environmental Conservation was petitioned to take a look at the permit for the plant claimed to be damaging lake’s environment. Meanwhile, DEC didn’t consider environmental damage when reviewing plant’s permit, wants to ignore (seemingly on a technicality) the evidence for one particular kind of damage, and furthermore last year it has discontinued the funding for tests for that kind of damage. Encouraging more coal plant construction seems strange in this age, even if we forget about this particular use case.

bawolff 6y ago

I'm surprised nuclear isn't used more here. My understanding that one of the problems of nuclear is you cant turn it on/off quickly. So why not just mine crypto at low load times?

jobigoud 6y ago
I think most miners (i.e Chinese ones) are using hydro which is already more sustainable and flexible than nuclear or coal.
dragonelite 6y ago
People are already thinking about using over capacity for mining. I think some ideas were being thrown around of using run off gas during pumping oil to power crypto mining.

ddeyar 6y ago

I don't know. Eth is switching to PoS. Tezos, cardano and many others are PoS. Is there any plan for bitcoin to switch to PoS? When there are a lot of more environmental friendly crypto alternatives, what should stop governments to ban bitcoin mining?

drexlspivey 6y ago
How do you distribute the initial coins with PoS? Like who gets the first coin? The person who gets the first one will also get all the subsequent ones since he controls all the supply until he sells? How would that even work?
- ddeyar 6y ago
  The tezos foundation for example made a crowdfunding some years ago. People who donated in the project received an amount written in the genesis block. The foundation started the mainnet in a beta phase with some initial validators. Holders started to participate in the PoS process until it was decentralized.

collyw 6y ago

Maybe get rid of bitcoin before limiting everyone ability to travel. I don't hear Greta screaming about that, or population growth.

nathias 6y ago

the problem are externalities as such, bitcoin just makes the problem obvious

ozy 6y ago

This might be a good thing. There are a few responses possible: 1. Do nothing, public gets angry. 2. Make bitcoin, or its mining, illegal. However, what is the criteria? All blockchains? Should google be illegal too? Both are just a digital product that the public wants. 3. Tax CO2 production by data centers, that might have a chance it can be coordinated broadly between nations, there is enough money there to tax, and bitcoin adds some urgency. While doubtful CO2 can be taxed globally, without coordination, big companies play governments against each other.

kevingadd 6y ago
"Should google be illegal too?" is a pretty ridiculous extrapolation. Nobody would go that far, a regulation like that doesn't achieve any climate goals and would have massive economic impact. You can probably provide an example that isn't wholly implausible like online banking? Even then, it is possible to draw a line.
- totony 6y ago
  Who draws that line? Corrupt politicians? Million dollar lobbying? Lines are smokescreen in front of the real problem. They mostly serve to protect the establishment. Ok, no more bitcoin, but what about the heavily subsidized dairy industry, the oil industry, and all the other that pollute heavily? If a solution requires a "line" or makes no sense at the extreme, it's most likely not a solution.

elitan 6y ago

Solution: Carbon emission tax.

whywhywhywhy 6y ago
If using a GPU to mine crypto is unethical shouldn't using a GPU to do things like videogames and rending hollywood super hero movies should also be taxed I mean they both run GPUs at 100% for hundreds of hours. Perhaps computing power in general should be capped so it can only use small amounts of power.
- dukeyukey 6y ago
  If they use fossil-fuel plants, yes, though the tax would be applied to the energy generation, not energy use.
- totony 6y ago
  Carbon tax is not about making something illegal. You playing a game 4h/day is nothing compared to 1000 gpus mining 24/7. One is pennies in tax and the other would (presumably) be way more significant.
  - EdwinLarkin 6y ago
    Even today carbon taxes are the stupidest idea people from rich nations thought about. Around 5BN from the developing world will laugh at this proposal. They will not be able to trade with you? Oh well they might trade among themselves and dont have to face competition from rich countries. I call this win win.
    - totony 6y ago
      Do you honestly believe (let's say) the USA cutting all economic ties/imposing tariffs is insignificant? Of course they can trade with the others who don't care about pollution. That doesn't mean the costs of a carbon tax don't outweigh the benefits of having economic ties with the countries that have that tax.

utf_8x 6y ago

I'm starting to hope that crypto is a bubble and will burst soon... Massive environmental issues aside, I'd like to be able to buy a GPU at MSRP sometime in the next 5 years...

idnefju 6y ago
Isn’t just miners, car industry fucked it as well
- certifiedloud 6y ago
  What car companies are buying GPUs in large quantities?
  - sahkopoyta 6y ago
    Not GPUs specifically but shortage of chips as a whole is causing some problems

scotty79 6y ago

Since renewables are already cheaper than coal power and mining is inherently flexible load I think bitcoin miners will me building and building way more renewables. Especially when mining hardware stagnates and cost of mining bitcoin will be dominated by price of energy and of ensuring energy supply, as opposed to ensuring posession mining hardwarr. Although I hope one day I read about Bitcoin miner building nuclear power plant and using it to mine bitcoin with all the spare power but selling energy into the grid when energy usage peaks and price rises above what mining can bring.

aero-glide2 6y ago

Can Bitcoin make sustainable energy cheaper? Buy solar panels, wind turbines, etc. Mine Bitcoin, recover capital costs sooner. Then use the electricity for normal purposes.

dylkil 6y ago
This is already the case. Renewables are increasingly becoming the most popular option for mining, and not because of the Eco-positive effects of using renewables, but because they are getting cheaper to mine with than other sources. Regardless, my thoughts on pow is it is inefficient and wasteful. PoS is the future of consensus mechanisms.

throwaway346434 6y ago

Many of the comments here are asking the wrong question - its not a matter of whether miners should be able to buy power plants and licences; so much as why it was cost effective for a disused coal plant to be acquired instead of a purchase of 25% of a specific wind farm's output, for example - the latter would drive renewable expansion, and the energy industry is already all over the fact this is the most cost effective way forward.

MrMan 6y ago
Bitcoin is making coal economical whereas a year ago coal was on the way out because it was not cheaper than wind and solar. So we are headed backwards. Very frightening

sunsipples 6y ago

I enjoy the "bitcoin is a fuck you to the rich" but mining/management/use of bitcoin/crypto are not for poor people or even poor countries, they use both as a resource and as a get rich quick scheme, deliver a lot interest but have no actual value beyond a half billion dollar pizza.

obelos 6y ago

And we had imagined we'd all die in a flood of something vaguely cool, like nanotech grey goo. But no, it's going to be something as stupid as a conflagration of SHA-256 hashes.

marcosdumay 6y ago
It was always paperclip maximizers.

rpaddock 6y ago

The Scrub Grass Power Plant near me has been pushing Cryptomining for a while. http://www.scrubgrass.com http://www.scrubgrass.com

vegetish 6y ago

Use solar, dudes. You can even run crypto rigs directly on 12 volts, which saves you the hassle of getting costly inverters and PSUs

agentultra 6y ago

Cool, who could have predicted this? /s The governments of the world could shut it down. A drop in the bucket of their vast collective wealth could buy the majority of the network, legislation to criminalize mining and trading, and just wait until it becomes unprofitable. There are plenty of good reasons to do it, environmental concerns being only (very good) one.

blondie9x 6y ago

Please can we regulate the carbon use of cryptocurrencies. This is getting out of control and governments are too slow. Bitcoin mining consumes more energy than the entire country of Argentina uses now. I do not want to hate on Bitcoin but climate change is getting out of control and there is little time left to reverse course. Last year with a global pandemic CO2 still rose by near record amounts. Bitcoin mining does have something to do with this. There is a connection. Please be open to the idea that we need to regulate the energy that Proof of Work mining cryptocurrencies use. I don't want to stop crypto. I just want us to use types that require less energy to mine. The planet is running out of time and this is FACT offsetting lots of progress on reducing emissions. https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html Please don't downvote because you love crypto. I do too. I just want us to do better at preventing CO2 emissions from rising because of its mining.

andrewla 6y ago

This is painted as a disaster, but I think all we're doing is cutting through to get at a consistent valuation for energy. In order for Bitcoin to every achieve any long-term viability, in my opinion, it needs to stabilize its pricing. Practically speaking, the route to do that is through a combination of supply chain pricing and credit markets. Pricing energy in Bitcoin (which is really all this is doing) is an interesting step towards the supply chain problem. This power plant, in all likelihood, would be happy to sell the power to another bidder if the price per Joule is higher than the expected price per Bitcoin per Joule. The natural next step is to just price electricity directly in Bitcoin. The question then becomes how viable it is to move down the chain -- pricing natural gas or coal in Bitcoin, and putting pricing pressure on the supply chain for more complex energy products (turbines, solar panels, etc.) to match this pricing. If this is feasible (and that's a big "if") then there is a chance that we start to flip the equation -- energy prices in dollars are simply too volatile and Bitcoin becomes a standard option for international settlement.

roguson 6y ago

There are no signs that cryptocurrency mining will stop. As long as it is profitable, more and more miners will enter the mining industry. Each miner requires an extensive amount of electricity to successfully mine cryptocurrencies. I can say that mining cryptocurrencies are now profitable than ever. Thanks to the Bull Market, a lot of new players are going to enter this sphere.

crypot 6y ago

What technological innovation would disrupt bitcoin at this point? It feels like crypto reached a terminal state in its first iteration.

Crye 6y ago

It makes me think of the billions that flooded into fiber optic networks to arbitrage the information asymmetry between markets across geographic areas. Maybe we'll be thanking these defunct Bitcoin farmers for invesing so much into the grid. I know the utilities are forcing the farms to put up all the money to tie into the grid. I guess this goes the same goes for the demand for silicon fab.