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What if you're only mining with renewables? And I'd actually like to see a study on the positive mental health benefit of gaming, because I'm skeptical. Also

What if you're only mining with renewables? And I'd actually like to see a study on the positive mental health benefit of gaming, because I'm skeptical. Also the idea that you need a primo GPU in order to game is a bit silly. And if you're the kind of person that absolutely needs the best graphics in order to enjoy gaming, please see my point no. 2 about mental health.

shagie 5y ago
> What if you're only mining with renewables? The issue isn't the "we're using renewable energy - see, this doesn't make things worse." It also doesn't make things better. Whats more, its increasing the consumption of energy which is at the core of the problem. It would have been even better to push that renewable energy out onto the grid (and also not increase the consumption of power for crypto mining). Switching all new power consumption to renewable doesn't improve things because the baseline of non-renewable is still there. We need to reduce existing and switch existing to renewable. I suspect a bit of Parkinson's law is in place with energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law -- The key is to stop making it worse (by mining crypto and trying to justify it with "but its from renewable").
- drexlspivey 5y ago
  > increasing the consumption of energy which is at the core of the problem. How is consuming energy a problem? There is a blob of infinite energy on the sky and practically all of it is wasted.
  - esyir 5y ago
    Oversimplifications like this are a fantastic way to avoid the core issues. Harvesting said ball of energy isn't free. Solar tech and near future power infra is certainly not at the maturity level for this, especially when the consumer is a power and semiconductor black hole of demand.
- onethought 5y ago
  I mine on renewables and with 3000 series gpus. I didn’t want to do any of this, I ended up here because my energy retailer decided to tax me for exporting too much energy to the grid. So short of earthing the electricity, my solution was to burn it up in mining, and improve my solar roi. The 3000 series gpus are the most efficient hashes/watt. So actually by disabling this, you are driving people towards less efficient/worse for the environment ASICS machines. Yes I batteried my home, and use my solar on everything I can first... there is still excess... especially at peak. Pretty sure this dismantled most of your argument.
  - Axien 5y ago
    Out of curiosity, has the mining yet payed for the rig/card?
    - onethought 5y ago
      No where near. But if you factor the tax I was paying (I.e assuming I didn’t earth it). It will reach cost neutral in a year and be returning margin after that. They are increasing this tax as well shortly... so it will get better.
  - istorical 5y ago
    You are the exception of all exceptions. What percentage of GPUs being purchased for the purposes of crypto are for reasons like yours vs being bought by already wealthy conglomerates and mining groups to further enrich the new crypto multi-millionaire/billionaire class.
    - onethought 5y ago
      Aren’t wealthy just buying giant TH asic machines? The gpus are good exactly because they are efficient but if you didn’t care about power consumption, ASICS are more profitable (in terms of cost of setup vs return from mining). The primary reason I went with gpus, is because I can shut them off based on solar excess in 100w increments. So if I’m 200w in excess, turn 2 cards on. 300w - 3 cards etc.
- fastball 5y ago
  It's not anyone's responsibility to make things "better" for you or anyone else. The person I was replying to said that mining was destroying the planet. This doesn't seem particularly true to me if you're mining on renewables.
  - whydoibother 5y ago
    Aren't most miners in China and use coal power? Seems like it is contributing to destroying the planet then.
    - fastball 5y ago
      Yes, but you'll note that this is an argument I never made.
  - shagie 5y ago
    If one's motivation for using green energy is to make the environment not go to crap as fast, then using green energy to mine crypto doesn't help anything and the use of green energy is nothing but a fig leaf. If one wants to mine crypto, then do it as cheaply as possible instead. It really doesn't matter what the source of energy is. The entire system of crypto mining is inherently about who can use the energy the cheapest. Whats more, if someone gets energy cheaper it forces others to consume more power too. If crypto is mined, it really doesn't matter what it uses power it - mining crypto is still increased consumption of power. Someone else is going to have to use non-green energy to do whatever they're going to do.
    - fastball 5y ago
      Hm, no, not really. Energy production is not zero-sum with some fixed amount of non-renewables. If I install solar on my house, I'm not forcing anyone else to use non-renewables. If I then use that solar to mine crypto, I'm... still not forcing anyone to use more non-renewables.

shagie 5y ago

> What if you're only mining with renewables? The issue isn't the "we're using renewable energy - see, this doesn't make things worse." It also doesn't make things better. Whats more, its increasing the consumption of energy which is at the core of the problem. It would have been even better to push that renewable energy out onto the grid (and also not increase the consumption of power for crypto mining). Switching all new power consumption to renewable doesn't improve things because the baseline of non-renewable is still there. We need to reduce existing and switch existing to renewable. I suspect a bit of Parkinson's law is in place with energy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law -- The key is to stop making it worse (by mining crypto and trying to justify it with "but its from renewable").

drexlspivey 5y ago
> increasing the consumption of energy which is at the core of the problem. How is consuming energy a problem? There is a blob of infinite energy on the sky and practically all of it is wasted.
- esyir 5y ago
  Oversimplifications like this are a fantastic way to avoid the core issues. Harvesting said ball of energy isn't free. Solar tech and near future power infra is certainly not at the maturity level for this, especially when the consumer is a power and semiconductor black hole of demand.
onethought 5y ago
I mine on renewables and with 3000 series gpus. I didn’t want to do any of this, I ended up here because my energy retailer decided to tax me for exporting too much energy to the grid. So short of earthing the electricity, my solution was to burn it up in mining, and improve my solar roi. The 3000 series gpus are the most efficient hashes/watt. So actually by disabling this, you are driving people towards less efficient/worse for the environment ASICS machines. Yes I batteried my home, and use my solar on everything I can first... there is still excess... especially at peak. Pretty sure this dismantled most of your argument.
- Axien 5y ago
  Out of curiosity, has the mining yet payed for the rig/card?
  - onethought 5y ago
    No where near. But if you factor the tax I was paying (I.e assuming I didn’t earth it). It will reach cost neutral in a year and be returning margin after that. They are increasing this tax as well shortly... so it will get better.
- istorical 5y ago
  You are the exception of all exceptions. What percentage of GPUs being purchased for the purposes of crypto are for reasons like yours vs being bought by already wealthy conglomerates and mining groups to further enrich the new crypto multi-millionaire/billionaire class.
  - onethought 5y ago
    Aren’t wealthy just buying giant TH asic machines? The gpus are good exactly because they are efficient but if you didn’t care about power consumption, ASICS are more profitable (in terms of cost of setup vs return from mining). The primary reason I went with gpus, is because I can shut them off based on solar excess in 100w increments. So if I’m 200w in excess, turn 2 cards on. 300w - 3 cards etc.
fastball 5y ago
It's not anyone's responsibility to make things "better" for you or anyone else. The person I was replying to said that mining was destroying the planet. This doesn't seem particularly true to me if you're mining on renewables.
- whydoibother 5y ago
  Aren't most miners in China and use coal power? Seems like it is contributing to destroying the planet then.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Yes, but you'll note that this is an argument I never made.
- shagie 5y ago
  If one's motivation for using green energy is to make the environment not go to crap as fast, then using green energy to mine crypto doesn't help anything and the use of green energy is nothing but a fig leaf. If one wants to mine crypto, then do it as cheaply as possible instead. It really doesn't matter what the source of energy is. The entire system of crypto mining is inherently about who can use the energy the cheapest. Whats more, if someone gets energy cheaper it forces others to consume more power too. If crypto is mined, it really doesn't matter what it uses power it - mining crypto is still increased consumption of power. Someone else is going to have to use non-green energy to do whatever they're going to do.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Hm, no, not really. Energy production is not zero-sum with some fixed amount of non-renewables. If I install solar on my house, I'm not forcing anyone else to use non-renewables. If I then use that solar to mine crypto, I'm... still not forcing anyone to use more non-renewables.