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Bitcoin mining hash rate drops as blackouts instituted in China
- Lx1oG-AWb6h_ZG0 6y ago> the National Mine Safety Supervision Bureau has reported three recent coal mine accidents, including an April 10 “water penetration accident” in Xinjiang that caused 21 people to be trapped. > Significantly, the Xinjiang and Sichuan regions of China combined account for more than 50 percent of the overall Bitcoin mining hash rate This is horrific on so many levels, I’m not even sure where to begin. My heart goes out for those poor miners slaving away for... what?
- vkou 6y ago> My heart goes out for those poor miners slaving away for... what? A paycheck, typically.
- throwaway9jb6 6y agoAccidents happen everywhere including China. Shootings happen mostly in US
- gruez 6y ago>My heart goes out for those poor miners slaving away for... what? coal?
- bpodgursky 6y ago... to appease Germany's environmentalists who saw shutting down working nuclear plants as a major win. (Yes, I know it's a different source of coal. But energy, in the age of oil tankers and thousand-mile pipelines, is fungible.)
- bob29 6y agoNo. Literally Germany's coal is specifically because its their own coal, a natural resource within their own borders they control. For national security, they maintain a coal capacity. Germany's coal burning is national security, nothing to do with environmentalists.
- bpodgursky 6y agoArguments about Germany's energy independence would be far more compelling if they were not, for example, currently building giant pipelines to import Russian natural gas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream
- foepys 6y agoThat's mostly for heating, though. Heat pumps are being increasingly used in new homes but nearly all homes older than 10 years are using gas or oil furnaces. Electricity prices are also very high, amongst the highest in the world, so heat pumps aren't as cheap to run as in other countries. It's definitely a problem that needs to be fixed, potentially within the next 30 years because that's the timeframe where the law requires old furnaces to be replaced.
- bpodgursky 6y agoBut electricity would be cheaper... offsetting imported natural gas... if they left the nuclear power plants on.
- saddlerustle 6y agoAbout a third of the coal burned in germany is imported
- ulfw 6y agoNational Security. Really?! So you use up a limited resource during peace times to have less of it during war times? Is that your logic?
- derriz 6y agoWhat? This makes zero sense. Germany gets 24% of electricity from lignite/coal - down from 45% 6 or 7 years ago.
- bpodgursky 6y agoThis is a sloppy counterfactual, because that number could, and should, have been close to zero already! Yes, things are improving slowly. Yes, it is still crappy compared to the smart play.
- graeme 6y agoI don’t know why you’re being downvoted. Coal and nuclear are fairly interchangeable. Since nuclear was shut down and some coal remains, it’s fairly clear Germany chose coal over nuclear for the medium term.
- derriz 6y agoI'm guessing because it's an impossible counterfactual to suggest that an advanced industrial country could fully replace/de-carbonize 70% of their electricity production in the time span under discussion. Suggesting impossible counterfactuals doesn't advance the discussion in any way. And Germany did not "chose coal over nuclear". While they have reduced nuclear production by about 30 TWh in the last 7 years, they have slashed coal-based electricity production by far more - 140 TWh - in the same period. And it's not like Germany is bucking some trend with respect to nuclear - nuclear has been in decline globally since its peak in the mid 1980s.
- graeme 6y agoWhy is it impossible to run a counterfactual? They could have kept 100% of their nuclear and reduced their coal production by the same amount instead.
- derriz 6y agoForgot to add to my reply - why is Germany being singled out? China burns 15 times as much coal as Germany - even the USA burns 3 times as much.
- pizzapill 6y agoGermany is replacing nuclear/coal with wind/solar energy: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei:Energiemix_Deutschland.svg https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energiemix#/media/Datei:Energi... (grey = wind, red = nuclear, black/brown = coal) Both nuclear and coal are shrinking since ~ 2000 and both sources of energy have been replaced by renewables since then. Currently ~40% of power produced in Germany comes from renewables. Wind energy has become #1 source of power from 0 twenty years ago.
- ekianjo 6y agoNope Germany is massively relying on nuclear energy produced by its neighbors.
- pizzapill 6y ago2002 was the last year Germany imported more power than it exported: https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/153533/umfrage/stromimportsaldo-von-deutschland-seit-1990/ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/153533/umfrag...
- idownvoted 6y agoAh Sweet, the old “exportweltmeister” scam never seems to get old. Germany is exporting so much energy because (and only because) without the base load provided by conventional power plants it’s energy grid routinely is on the brink of collapse, whenever there are weather based shifts in renewable energy production. This causes the electricity price to routinely go negative because our neighboring countries don’t want to have it either. What a failure. And what a failure that people still fall for that exportweltmeister lie
- pizzapill 6y agoDo you have a source for your claims? I mean its obvious that renewables are dependent on the weather, but that's no issue since a neighbour can always produce & Germany is building up power storage capacity. Including a fat line to Norway where Germany sends wind power and receives renewables power when there is a need. Additional the German power grid is super stable, black- or brownouts simply don't happen. > This causes the electricity price to routinely go negative because our neighboring countries don’t want to have it either. This has and probably will always happen. For example Aluminum smelters are getting paid to burn electricity almost since the beginning of the industrialization, otherwise this industry wouldn't exist. > What a failure. And what a failure that people still fall for that exportweltmeister lie So building up massive renewable capacity while starting to sell more and more of it is a failure to you? Either your expectations are crazy high or very low...
- taneq 6y ago> those poor miners slaving away for... what? Bitcoin, apparently.
- gruez 6y agoWhere does it say bitcoin? The quote: >three recent coal mine accidents, [...] that caused 21 people to be trapped.
- delecti 6y agoThere are a few steps in between, but if the chain of events really is: coal mine accidents > coal shortage > power blackouts > drop in bitcoin mining, then the end result is effectively they were indeed slaving away for bitcoin.
- gruez 6y agoI think you got cause and effect reversed. The correct chain of events is: coal miners slave away to produce coal, which is generally burned to produce heat. Part of that heat is used to run turbines to electric generators[1], and part of the generated electricity is used for bitcoin mining. Does this mean they're slaving away for bitcoin mining? I guess, but only partially. Saying they're slaving away for bitcoin mining is as correct as saying they're slaving away for steel smelting. [1] there are other uses, like for cooking or for heating a house
- delecti 6y agoI suppose inherent in my argument that they're slaving away for bitcoin is how lowly I view bitcoin.
- elefanten 6y agoWithout the bitcoin driven demand, there would be less pressure to mine faster than feasible and fewer accidents. The pressure would still be there... but there are cost-related reasons the mining is colocated with the power generation. Seems a reasonable guess that this virtuous cycle of coal-and-crypto mining synergy resulted in some soylent externalities.
- shp0ngle 6y agoThis is actually good for bitcoin
- lovecg 6y agoYou’re getting downvotes, but I think (correct me if I’m wrong) you meant something like the hash difficulty will adjust down if this is an extended downtime. So we would have fewer miners, easier hash difficulty and the same block rate. This would indeed be better for the environment, at least for the short term. This and the reduction in centralization could be argued as being “good” for Bitcoin.
- sashimi-houdini 6y ago... because it reduces the power China has over Bitcoin ... because it attracts new players to the mining game ... because it will make the argument that bitcoin is bad for the environment weaker I agree, the "any news is good news" is a fun game to play.
- swinglock 6y agoIt hurts short term. This means the fees for Bitcoin transactions increase. If not by the old mining power coming back online, it will be solved either by the next difficulty change, after which the Bitcoin network will again operate at full speed but using less energy, or by market powers if there are miners standing by due to not being profitable, which they now may be due to fewer miners to share the rewards with.
- ChainOfFools 6y agoThe Center of Decentralization sneezes and all of Bitcoin catches a cold
- jachee 6y agoThe article ends weirdly abruptly: > It should also be noted that a mining difficult adjustment <EOF> ... what?
- blondie9x 6y agoCrazy. Wondering why they got cut off? Here is more info https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-mining-pool-hashrates-plummet-110000621.html https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-mining-pool-hashra...
- almost_usual 6y agoMaybe govts don’t like a currency created to subvert govts.
- blondie9x 6y agoUnless it subverts a perceived adversarial agent though.
- 2bitencryption 6y ago> Significantly, the Xinjiang and Sichuan regions of China combined account for more than 50 percent of the overall Bitcoin mining hash rate I don't get it, doesn't this effectively mean China can force a 51% attack by just strongarming the pools that operate there?
- CharlesW 6y agoYes.
- mrits 6y agoI'm not sure about that. Most miner operations in the US run only a fraction of the day to take advantage of electrical savings that a lot of operations in China wouldn't be doing. So if miners started returning higher yields we would output a larger hash rate. If we actually needed to protect against a 51% attack we could ramp up accordingly.
- gruez 6y agoThe difficulty adjustment only happens every 2016 blocks (~2 weeks), so the higher yields wouldn't happen unless they're down for an extended period of time.
- mrits 6y agoThat is correct but I don't see why you are pointing it out.
- gruez 6y agoIt's a reply at this part of GP's comment: >So if miners started returning higher yields we would output a larger hash rate
- mrits 6y agoThat statement was to show why there is room to increase hash rate and not how you'd defend against a 51% attack. Most of the miners in the US are not mining for a significant portion of the day.
- almost_usual 6y agoSomething something bitcoin transcends govts
- gruez 6y agoBut the network is still operating despite government intervention? If the government sent Men With Guns to SWIFT headquarters then it will be actually down.
- almost_usual 6y agoMen With Guns control land, Men With Guns control power. Men With Guns is not Bitcoin. Men With Guns is govt. Bitcoin is a fiat leech with no real power.
- fiachamp 6y agoActually, it’s people with computers and internet...
- colordrops 6y agoSo far it has.
- almost_usual 6y agoSo far it’s been irrelevant to govt and enjoying free rent. Guess we’ll see how many people are willing to die on this hill. Shifts in power shed blood.
- rantwasp 6y agoeveryone is a bitcoin expert nowadays. everything has a straightforward explanation. we know a bit about everything and are experts in nothing. for people looking at this and scratching their heads: buy the dip
- de6u99er 6y agoPower outages could be qctuqlly used as a tool to localize miners.
- impulser_ 6y agoIs bitcoin really decentralized if mining and nodes are centralized?
- anonytrary 6y agoNo. True decentralization requires proof of person. Proof of work, stake, capacity, etc. all make it possible for a single person to buy their way into higher voting power.
- runeks 6y agoYou can always buy people’s votes. Regardless of who holds the voting power.
- anonytrary 6y agoYou are right... I think it might be unsolvable. Nothing stops two people from conspiring to vote in the same direction. Either party A and B decide (off-network) to vote together, or party A pays party B to vote in the same direction. I don't see a way to solve the problem. Crypto is next-generation wealth redistribution technology, but it is likely that "true decentralization" is a utopia. At the end of the day, people are gonna listen to their family and friends before anyone else, hence vote polarization and pockets of centralization.
- emerged 6y agoI don’t know if you’ve caught the memo, but cryptocurrency is a Ponzi scheme at a scale we haven’t seen before with a side effect of actively contributing to the most significant existential threat since and including nuclear Holocaust.
- _heimdall 6y agoModern financial markets are Ponzi schemes, and they are much larger than bitcoin. How did you decide to compare the risk of nuclear holocaust to global warming? Anecdotally, I'd rather see temperatures rise over time and have a chance to adjust for it rather than die in a nuclear blast or issues immediately after.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- oefrha 6y agoA good reminder that Bitcoin runs on cheap renewables is BS. See also miners buying gas power plants in New York.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26828479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26828479
- mr_woozy 6y agosure if you're suddenly not counting China's hydropower as renewables suddenly.
- soperj 6y agoDepending on what's flooded Hydro can actually be the dirtest power out there. There's a hydro plant in brazil that contributes 3 times the number of ghg emissions as it's equivalent coal plant.
- edoceo 6y agoBelo Monte? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belo_Monte_Dam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belo_Monte_Dam
- turbinerneiter 6y agoThat is due to the construction? Just wondering nif there are any hidden runtime emissions you are refering to.
- dehrmann 6y agoOne of the reasons I'm bearish on Bitcoin in the long term is there are systemic risks like this around miners.
- RotaryTelephone 6y agoMy family has been bearish on the dollar since the 70s. I'm typing this from a computer at a local library.
- dehrmann 6y agoEven if you're bearish on the dollar, owning assets is still reasonable, and most millionaires don't just hold cash. Real estate (foreign and domestic) and equities have done will since the 70's. The other difference is Bitcoin is less like a currency and more like baseball cards in how people are using it. It's already failed as a currency because its price is too unstable.
- New_California 6y agoSystemic risks in Bitcoin do exist but primarily around fungibility and privacy. Risks strictly related to PoW, hashrate volatiliy, or "51% attacks" are not existential by any means. We do know how to mitigate them and multiple examples exist how altcoins managed to survive such attacks.
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- zoshi 6y agoBitcoin's hash rate has always been volatile, and it doesn't cause problems. Look at the raw values at <https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate https://www.blockchain.com/charts/hash-rate>.
- loceng 6y agoIndeed, though it's a nice flex/wink to show their current CCP controlled Bitcoin mining capacity; Peter Thiel's stated dislike of Bitcoin is for exactly this reason, international security and integrity.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoDoesn't cause problems? The average cost of a single transaction is over $50 now. The cost of a single transaction is the same as a hard drive that could store the entire bitcoin chain 4-5 times over. https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html#3m https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees...
- everfree 6y agoThe cost of transactions is not directly related to hashrate in the way you imply.
- CyberDildonics 6y agoChanges in hash rate (volatility) are linked to transaction cost for reasons I explained in detail in a reply to the other person who said the same thing. Hash rates dropping suddenly means transaction throughput drops suddenly, which makes transaction costs go up. That is the dynamic and that is exactly what happened.
- zoshi 6y agoTransaction cost isn’t determined by hash rate. The difficulty adjusts to the hash rate such that a block is mined every X minutes. Because the block size is fixed, transaction fees are determined by the market for being included in a block, so the more transactions the higher the fees. An alternative to Bitcoin’s fixed size is Monero’s adaptive block sizing. Monero blocks expand to fit more transactions, resulting in lower fees and higher throughput.
- kaliali 6y agoUse proof of stake coins like Cardano and Polkadot They use 10000 to a million times less energy than bitcoin to process payments!
- ilaksh 6y agoPolkadot is terrific and has a place, especially in private blockchains. Cardano is interesting but much less inspiring to me. But I still think that Ethereum 2.0 will be the public blockchain of choice down the line.
- companyhen 6y agoDon't forget about Kusama. Expect Chaos... ;)
- asenna 6y agoGenuine question, what do you mean by "use Cardano"? Use it for what? Can I create borrowing/lending decentralized platforms? Can I launch my NFT marketplace on it (at this moment)? Or perhaps create a DAO for the governance of a Dapp? I don't understand how Cardano is even a choice right now.
- goblin89 6y agoI know it’s a flawed analogy, but considering the influence China has on Bitcoin, on some level buying into Bitcoin seems not unlike shorting the US dollar.
- nlitened 6y agoIf you live in the US, your real estate is in the US, your salary is in US dollars, and your pension is in US stocks, you are already pretty deep in long US dollar. Might as well diversify your egg basket a bit, just from financial risk management perspective.
- herbst 6y agoCompared to CHF the dollar looks like a sad piece of currency for the past months and even years. So shorting USD sounds like a pretty good idea
- andxor 6y agoShorting the USD seems like a pretty good idea given the insane amount of money printing.
- numbers_guy 6y agoAccording to the article the majority of hashing power is situated in China, so China does control Bitcoin after all. So people are gambling their life savings on a coin controlled by the CCP.
- herbst 6y agoKinda far stretched for a decentralized curreny to call it controlled by someone. Everbody of us can see themselfs that there hasnt been a 51% attack next to many reasons why we likely wont see one with BTC
- NicoJuicy 6y agoHe's talking about >51% is mined by chinese miners. It's not farfetched, because it's true. There were already measures to prevent a 51% attack https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHash.io https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHash.io Just because it happened yet, doesn't mean it's not possible. They are currently earning plenty with it. You're free to explain "next to many reasons", what those are...
- sunsipples 6y agofrustrating that the ongoing use of bitcoin is never going to require less power. transactions take ages because of how much work is required to update the chain. when the imaginary currency goes away, maybe we can move onto something more efficient like giant rocks with holes drilled in them?
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- jbverschoor 6y agoDidn’t Enron do this too?
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- joering2 6y agoCan some explain what's happening better than I understand bitcoin? Wouldn't the idea that there is less miners be a positive for the price point? Supply and Demand? I mean if you have market of frozen orange juice, and they announce dry season will produce LESS juice, the price will skyrocket. So wouldn't less miners for something like Bitcoin with hard set limit of coins, be a positive for its price?
- fuzzybear3965 6y agoIANACryptoExpert, but: The production rate of BTC does not depend on the number of miners as long as there's one miner (with zero miners no BTC is produced). A block is produced every 10 minutes by a computer that produces the smallest hash for a randomly arranged set of inputs (transactions and previous block's hash). This lowest hash serves as an identifier for that block and all input transactions are recorded on the new block with that hash and appended/linked in the chain. Currently, each mined block is associated with a miner reward of 6.25 BTC (I think) that's given to the computer which produced the lowest hash. It doesn't change if there are more/less miners in the network. So, there's no "dry season" just because the mining rate cut in half. There's just less energy being spent competing to generate the lowest hash and get block rewards. So, all the miners not running are failing to potentially earn money and the system is, theoretically, less decentralized, now. But, there's no change to the rate of production.
- mshumi 6y agoFork BTC to Pure Proof of Stake consensus. Balances mapped 1:1. No Environmental problems, no scalability problems, no latency problems. It's not a question of if this fork happens, but when.
- OnlyRepliesToBS 6y agowhat's the difficulty