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Bitcoin Miners Are Giving New Life to Old Fossil-Fuel Power Plants
- abriosi 5y agoHere we go again
- nahuel0x 5y agoSomebody did the calculation of how many bitcoins we can mine with the energy released by burning the entire planet? That would be great
- Avshalom 5y agowell seeing as mining difficulty scales with the amount of mining being done... 1. 1 bitcoin would be mined.
- NullPrefix 5y agoCurrent block reward is 6.25BTC and you can't exactly mine a partial block.
- vmception 5y agoThat numbers adjusts upwards and downwards every 2016 blocks. So if we burned the entire planet the recipient will mine most of the bitcoin for a maximum of 2016 blocks at a faster rate than before they started mining, and then the difficulty will adjust upwards reverting the block creation time to 10 minutes per block. When the planet extinguishes, blocks will be found much slower or cease being found at all, until the end of the 2016 block period where difficulty will drop much lower, allowing people to earn bitcoin using an abacus and negligible amounts of power. So there is no absolute need for bitcoin to use a lot of power and it scales up and down.
- paul_f 5y agoThink bigger. A Dyson Sphere would maximize bitcoin mining
- techrat 5y ago(Not much) additional discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27243814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27243814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27234948 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27234948 With more said under a different submitted link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26828479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26828479
- rapind 5y agoBitcoin: Dumbest clever invention ever.
- haram_masala 5y agoTo quote an old joke: they’re Dunning-Krugerrands.
- cyphertruck 5y agoThe irony of this joke is very intense, but you won’t get it. The thing that is most clever about bitcoin is that hating it only affects your well-being, it doesn’t affect bitcoin. Bitcoin will continue, it is inevitable.
- CPLNTN 5y agoUntil you can buy things with actual Bitcoin, its value is gonna be determined only by market sentiment. So yeah, hating it actually affect it
- doggosphere 5y agoI have a shocking proposal that may seem too good to be true: 1) Stop subsidizing fossil fuels. [0] 2) Tax carbon emissions. Bonus: 3) Incentivize clean energy. [0]: https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs#1 https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...
- hannob 5y agoGreat idea. Not gonna happen quickly, particularly worldwide. So now what do we do about Bitcoin in the meantime?
- gruez 5y agoPerpetually being stuck in a cycle of implementing politically expedient but half-assed measures? See also: "oh no, there's too much plastic! let's uh... ban plastic straws!"
- ixacto 5y agoMore like perpetually being stuck in a cycle of voter appeasement to get re-elected because they are “doing something”...
- vanusa 5y agoSo now what do we do about Bitcoin in the meantime? Exactly as the commenter above proposes: "Change the subject"
- paul_f 5y agoNot sure why the downvotes. It is not realistic for every country in the world to pass an equivalent carbon tax. The mining will just move to he locations with no (or lowest) carbon tax
- carlob 5y ago> 2) Tax carbon emissions. Progressively. Not a detail at all.
- rnxt 5y agoWe no longer need the paperclip maximizing AI from Adams' novel. Turn all resources into beautiful hashes and HODL!
- jshen 5y agoBut Jack Dorsey said that crypto is good for the environment!!! /sarcasm
- cyphertruck 5y agoThis is basically fake news. The plant serves regular customers, and since it costs a lot to fire it up or shut it down, during the period where there is excess supply of electricity it is used to mine bitcoin. Unless you have a huge expensive and unavailable (due to constrained supply of cells) mega battery pack you cannot store that energy. Globally, bitcoins’ entire energy usage is equal to just 1/6th of the surplus energy that is THROWN AWAY. All this Bitcoin energy usage nonsense is FUD to keep people oppressed and using a currency that the politicians can inflate at will. Due to the cantillon effect it is very profitable for wall street and politicians like congress to steal from the masses this way. This is the primary cause of wealth inequality. Bitcoin fixes this, it gives regular people an escape, so they publish FUD against it.
- thatfrenchguy 5y agoI don’t think you understand how power plants work
- thrower123 5y agoThis is exactly how old coal and biomass plants work. You can throttle them back when power prices are bad, but shutting down and restarting are expensive, multi-hour processes. Sometimes the spot price is negative, and dumping that electricity into anything is better than putting it on the grid. In some cases before bitcoin they've located aluminum smelters nearby to use excess generating capacity in the same way.
- iamben 5y ago"Bitcoin fixes this, it gives regular people an escape" Really? It seems to have made a small group of early adopters very rich, a small group of insiders very rich, and a large group of people suckered into buying at 60k+ very poor. I'm not really bullish or bearish on cryptocurrency, but it has a long way to go until it's something for "regular people".
- 8fGTBjZxBcHq 5y agoI don't think you understand. The mere fact that it COULD potentially be used by anyone is a defense against all complaints. Because democracy. Like a magic charm you see. No I have never read any theory or heard the phrase "material conditions" why do you ask. I'm exaggerating but I fucking swear this is the level of sophistication we get from actual crypto fiends in here.
- nagarc 5y agois it progressive or regressive
- nagarc 5y agoIs it progressive or regressive
- sb1752 5y ago"All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer We are currently in the second stage for Bitcoin. Based on the comments here, in social media and from news outlets, seems more time is needed before its better understood and appreciated broadly. I and many others continue to believe a sound money settlement layer technology divorced from arbitrary government intervention is of enormous value to society. One need only look at wtfhappenedin1971.com to understand why. But until then, narratives that cherrypick data and paint Bitcoin in a negative light will continue to dominate. Patience. HODL. And continue to hope for a better world on the other side of all of this.
- stopping 5y ago> One need only look at wtfhappenedin1971.com to understand why. A bunch of scary-looking graphs haphazardly thrown together with huge ads abutting either end is not an argument. This comment is guilty of its own accusation: cherry-picking data to paint a dishonest narrative.
- sb1752 5y agoOf course these charts are only a starting point of inquiry. Several scholars, philosophers and intellectuals have both predicted such trends and provided rigorous intellectual analysis of their underlying causes.
- bogota 5y agoI don’t know the answer to this but most crypto related post on this site generate super low quality discussion. Mostly echoing points that are provably debunked or really don’t do anything other than echo the sentiment of HN from past threads. For people on mobile does any way exist to filter out posts like this that we know will produce disappointing conversations. I like conversations opposing my view points but not when its uneducated or just pandering.
- _Algernon_ 5y agoYou would make your point better by pointing out the "low quality discussion" and explaining why it's wrong. That way you would also be contributing to better discussion, and others will learn something.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Juntu 5y agoWall Street journal made paper and printed letters own by the company itself high competition with nasdaq and Dow Jones. It creates high generated intellectual substantial human being worked as slaves in news or in office. One created bill gates as the highest Bitcoin miners nevertheless the unbeliever will forever suffer some smart reluctant heart aching payments that middle class people live their lives as middle. What god created is himself and the less and more old fossil fuel power plants high energy cost is saved by petite company like solar city a peanut in a jar cherry on top or a nail in a coffin. WSJ means William Says Juntu or giving brain to my dearest friend a pat on the back because no way in Jesus grave can relate how computive and unique it can mean. High power is a start