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> In Upstate New York, where a quarter of US crypto mining takes place, the researchers find that electricity rates have gone up in response to rising demand. T
by aazaa 5y ago
> In Upstate New York, where a quarter of US crypto mining takes place, the researchers find that electricity rates have gone up in response to rising demand. Their study demonstrates that because of bitcoin mining’s power usage, households paid an additional $165 million a year in energy costs, while businesses paid an extra $79 million. In China, where more than two-thirds of the world’s crypto mining took place over the past decade, electricity rates are set by the government and inflexible to demand. Crypto miners there were crowding other industries out of the market and forcing electricity to be rationed, the research suggests.
So correlation implies causation?
I'm not sure if the study is just flawed or the article is doing an especially bad job of explaining it.
I won't be reading the paper because of this:
> Benetton and Compiani received financial support from Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative. Ripple Labs supports the cryptocurrency XRP.
XRP is a scam run by Ripple labs. The company routinely mis-states the utility of XRP.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- blackbear_ 5y ago> So correlation implies causation? Well, would you argue that people started mining bitcoins because energy became more expensive? The other direction looks more plausible, especially if you consider basic economic theory: as demand goes up, prices also go up.
- hervature 5y agoNot knowing which direction of the causation what “correlation does not mean causation” means. It means there are possible confounders. A simple one here being a policy change at the federal level like reduced subsidies. So all the states that had cheap power (and hence attracted mining) had to raise prices. Of course, the supply-demand mechanism is a pretty strong argument though.
- blackbear_ 5y agoYes, that is a very good point.
- savant_penguin 5y agoDo pirates cause global warming or does global warming cause pirates? I mean it can't be pirates cause global warming, they use wind energy after all. So we conclude global warming cause pirates https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/PiratesVsTemp(en).svg/1024px-PiratesVsTemp(en).svg.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/Pi... Edit: it's the other way around, global warming eliminates pirates
- GavinMcG 5y agoIronic that you identify (but don't evaluate) a possible flaw in mixing up correlation and causation, then turn around and refuse to even read something because of a bias that you simply assume.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- YungMoolah 5y agoYour first quote appears after the part about XRP, so you did keep reading after that. Seems like you just tacked on some commentary on XRP for no reason then. Why are you posting your opinions on something you claim you never read?