3 ms·
Yes, but it undermines the point of energy production, because the energy produced is not going to existing consumers of energy, it's going to feed the insatiab
by geofft 5y ago
Yes, but it undermines the point of energy production, because the energy produced is not going to existing consumers of energy, it's going to feed the insatiable-by-design blockchain.
Imagine if there were a cryptocurrency based on proof-of-driving-things-between-cities with a mining reward, and Los Angeles invested in it. There would be an incredible incentive for expanding LA's highway infrastructure, and you'd expect LA to get a lot more highways, to but there would be no positive impact on actual commuters trying to use those highways to get around greater LA, and quite possibly a negative impact, because the more direct incentive is to use whatever highways are there - building more highways is an indirect incentive.
- defgeneric 5y agoThat analogy would hold if the additional energy produced for bitcoin mining had some negative impact on the existing energy infrastructure. It doesn't. If anything it creates an incentive for making energy production more efficient. The fact that energy is produced and consumed is not bad in itself. The Sun could be said to be "wasting" energy by sending it off into space.
- bootlooped 5y ago> If anything it creates an incentive for making energy production more efficient. How is this different from any other consumer of electricity? Every consumer wants to buy the cheapest electricity, and every producer wants to produce the most of it per energy input.
- geofft 5y agoI'm not disputing that it creates an incentive for making energy production more efficient. It does! In the analogy I gave, there's definitely an incentive for building more highways ("There would be an incredible incentive for expanding LA's highway infrastructure") - it's just that this incentive is, at best, completely useless to existing commuters taking the highways. I'm also not claiming that it's bad for energy to be produced and consumed. It's not! It's just irrelevant if you're looking to consume electricity, and someone else is producing and immediately consuming it. And it's bad for you as a consumer if production goes up and consumption goes up by even more. I have no idea what your point is about the Sun.