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Kazakhstan to restrict crypto miners amid power shortages

183 points by UglyToad 5y ago

vimy 5y ago
The crypto hate here is ridiculous. Every thread about crypto is the dropbox thread x 10. Unless you want to live in a dictatorship where the government dictates what is and isn’t a useful use of energy, the constant bitcoin electricity usage hysteria is a waste of everyone’s energy. :-)
- justbored123 5y ago
  Yep, sounds like the problem is that they just can't get healthy price market for electricity going to regulate consumption by just increasing cost to certain brackets. My shitty country has the same problem, too many illegal power connections that they fail to properly control and punish.
- oblio 5y ago
  Aren't there quite strict regulations about what you can use electricity for, in almost every country in the world? Especially at industrial scale. I don't think you can just start your own power plant and/or major consumer without a ton of permits.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  You're not free to use the grid as you please. That's not how freedom works anywhere. The grid can decide to subsidize some uses, tax others, and forbid some.
- malermeister 5y ago
  Why does a government that regulates energy use have to be a dictatorship? A democratically elected one could put measures in place too.
Im_your_dada 5y ago
Electricity = keeps you warm, cooks your food, powers your devices. Cryptos = suck that energy out of the power grid to gamble with one another.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Electricity = keeps you warm Computers also generate heat. Wish I could use cryptocurrency miners for my heating needs. Why burn fuel or pass current through resistances for that?
  - 0des 5y ago
    My heater doesn't become less effective each year, requiring replacement. While ASIC concretely implies this, GPU is not excluded if you want to remain competitive (read: generating profit)
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      It doesn't have to be competitive. 4+ kWh electric showers are ubiquitous in my country. Literally a dumb piece of metal resistance immersed in water. Anything is better than the current situation. What if it was a processor instead? What if a bunch of home servers could heat up stored water through their heat instead of just dissipating that energy uselessly into the air? We'd be getting the heat we need and we'd be helping build a decentralized cash network. We were gonna spend energy heating up stuff anyway. Might as well get some cryptocurrency out of that heat.
      - thinkmassive 5y ago
        This is what WiseMining.io is addressing with their Sato “bitcoin boiler.” It uses hashcards (daughterboards populated with mining ASICs) immersed in coolant to augment a typical heat pump setup.
        matheusmoreira 5y ago
        That's interesting. My search for products in this category turned up the Qarnot company which also has a "digital boiler". Apparently, it's a general purpose Linux server that can be used to mine any coin or perform any type of computation. https://qarnot.com/en/heating-water/ https://qarnot.com/en/heating-water/ Not sure if it's even available outside Europe. I wonder if it's possible to somehow replicate this with a home server. How is it pumping the heat out of the components and into the water system?
agent_simon 5y ago
Makes sense, since winter is coming and power needed to keep people warm
josephcsible 5y ago
Wouldn't it make more sense to just let the price of electricity go up?
- ctur 5y ago
  Only if you want miners to have power and residents to be without it. Capitalism is not the cookie cutter solution to all problems.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Right but that's not the problem here? If there are power shortages then the power companies should increase supply.
    - throw1234651234 5y ago
      There is no capability to increase supply. See my other post - Eastern Europe is out of coal and nat gas. Belarus has excess energy from Nuclear, but is still triaging exports. People will go without power this winter if this isn't done.
      - fastball 5y ago
        So don't rely on coal and nat gas? What about solar? Wind?
        throw1234651234 5y ago
        Europe tried that, now they are trying to buy more gas from Russia. See Poland for an example. The point of that real-time example? Wind and solar are great, but they take time and the infrastructure is not yet there. Nuclear is arguably cleaner and cheaper for the output in the long term. Of course, infrastructure for nuclear isn't there in Kazakhstan yet either.
        oblio 5y ago
        Yup, the magic pixie fairy will manage to build out electricity producing capacity that takes years to decades to build in days, weeks or months at best.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cinntaile 5y ago
I wonder if cryptominers in poorer countries speed up the buildout of more stable and robust electricity networks in the long run? I understand they sometimes stress it too much in the short run such as here and then the regulators have to take action but the interplay on a longer timescale would be interesting to see.
- nwah1 5y ago
  You could say the same about whether bridges to nowhere generate important economic robustness. The problem with this view is it ignores that such activity crowds out the ability to do something actually useful with the same resources, while also producing all the same externalities (both positive and negative).
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    You're talking about the broken window fallacy. I don't think it's immediately clear that a more robust and stable electricity network wouldn't lead to additional economical and societal benefits thus making it a positive sum game?
    - notahacker 5y ago
      I don't think it's immediately clear that cryptomining leads to a more robust and stable electricity network for the people it outcompetes on power. The evidence of Kazakhstan certainly doesn't point in that direction...
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        What do you mean by outcompeting? I don't know the answer of course otherwise I wouldn't have posed the question but I guess asking questions qualifies for getting downvoted to -3. Some of you are clearly sitting on all the answers but you're not sharing them with the rest of us. We see the short term results, my question was directed at the long term. I don't think it really matters if it's crypto mining or aluminum melters or any other energy intensive industry, it just happens to be crypto mining in Kazakhstan. It just seems plausible since higher energy usage correlates with BNP. (I know, I know tax havens are exceptions to that rule.) If mining sticks around then this may turn out well for Kazakhstan, from an economical perspective.
cletus 5y ago
And so it begins. In the developed world in particular, we're seeing the move away from fossil-fuel power. This is good but currently relatively expensive. Crypto mining is starting to have very real impact on the ability of other people to live. It is adversely and disproportionately affecting poor people (who pay a greater share of their income for power). And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for society. Crypto-mining apologists will point to figures that say "crypto-mining uses mostly renewable energy". What this actually means is that crypto-mining is focused on areas that have hydroelectric power because it's the cheapest, generally. While you might say that's still good, it's starting to raise prices for other people. this has been an issue in towns on the Hudson Valley in New York, for example. Even if you believe the overall impact of crypto-mining is small I guarantee you it's only a matter of time before politicians start using crypto-mining as a convenient whipping boy.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for society. This is true for bitcoin. It failed at everything it set out to be and yet it is the most mined coin. Truly a waste of energy. There are better projects out there which actually provide value and utility. Monero is an example. It's pretty sad that bitcoin is still number one despite the existence of these projects.
  - rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
    Monero is a proof of work cryptocurrency. I like PoW, it is the most secure distributed consensus algorithm we have discovered. If Monero was as popular as Bitcoin, it would use something similar to the energy. None of it is a 'waste of energy'.
    - matheusmoreira 5y ago
      I agree with you. It's a waste of energy because that energy is being spent mining BTC, a useless coin that isn't anonymous, private, decentralized, fungible, it isn't even an actual currency. It should be spent mining Monero instead which actually does have all of those properties.
ineedasername 5y ago
The general public doesn't have the best grasp on crypto to begin with. If it starts messing with their ability to go about their daily lives with consistently available electricity at inflated prices then mining in those impacted areas may die a quick political death. Or have their facilities burned down by mobs that need those fires to keep them warm.
thomcano 5y ago
I didn't realized that Kazakhstan is one of the top giant miners in the world. Is there any reason for this one?
- baybal2 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostochny_Coal_Mine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostochny_Coal_Mine
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  It shares border with China. Mining has been forbidden in China recently, Kazakhstan has cheap electricity, they flocked here.
webinvest 5y ago
Crypto helps accelerate the growth, demand, and build-out of renewable energy.
- FriedrichN 5y ago
  Which will be totally useless if it's completely consumed by cryptocurrencies, thus only adding to further destruction of the climate.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  That doesn't really help if crypto is also consuming the renewable energy it "helps" build-out. The problem isn't that the relative proportion of renewable energy is too low, but that the consumption of non-renewable energy is too high. It doesn't matter if renewables make up 10% or 90% if that number doesn't mean a large reduction in the consumption of fossile fuels.
obiwan14 5y ago
Is Texas next? Given that several mining companies have set up or about to set up shop on Rockdale and Pyote. And this is a state that endured a major grid crisis early this year.
- hanniabu 5y ago
  That'd be tough, they'd need to figure out the mental gymnastics with their muh freedom narratives, especially since this is something that'd be good for the environment which it seems they're adamantly against.
DonHopkins 5y ago
Don't ever let any Bitcoin or NFT shills get away with lying to you that their cryptocurrencies and CryptoKitties and Digital Pet Rocks run on renewable energy. And never let any of those get-rich-quick pyramid scheme shills get away without forcing them to openly admit that even though they're burning coal, wasting electricity, destroying the environment, causing climate change, cancer, and heart disease, they simply don't give a flying fuck about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Kazakhstan#Electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Kazakhstan#Electrici... >In 2013, the country produced 93.76 billion kWH - 70 billion kWh (81%) from coal, 8 from gas and 8 from hydro. The country has 71 power stations, including 5 hydro power plants located on the Irtysh river, which translates to total installed generating capacity of 19.6 GW. 75 percent of electricity generated is consumed by industry, 11 percent by households, 2 percent by transportation.[25]
- sparksparkapach 5y ago
  There are quite a few carbon neutral chains that people do launch on. Most businesses do require energy but they try to offset it. People are trying to shift away from mining for the largest NFT blockchain though, ethereum.
  - sparksparkapach 5y ago
    This is just one and I'm sure there are more to come because if the practice is unsustainable a large part of the community would not support it in the long term. https://medium.com/celoorg/a-carbon-negative-blockchain-its-here-and-it-s-celo-60228de36490 https://medium.com/celoorg/a-carbon-negative-blockchain-its-...
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  I wonder how much coal China burned to fabricate all the computers necessary for you to post this and for everyone else to read it.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
ravenstine 5y ago
Why not create incentives to mine crypto with solar? Lower or eliminate any sort of capitol gains taxes on crypto mined with solar, make solar panels tax free for companies that mine crypto, and crypto would not only go up in value but the solar industry would also be supported. Oh yeah. The Federal Reserve and the central banks need fiat.
- rank0 5y ago
  Is this a serious suggestion? Us peasants have to work for the government 4 months a year and even after our take home we eat taxes on purchases, investments and property. But yeah, let’s give crypto miners the tax breaks surely they deserve it…
  - ravenstine 5y ago
    It's serious to the extent that I'm introducing it as a topic of discussion. Whether I wholeheartedly believe in it is a different story. As I mentioned to someone else, applying a solution to one particular problem doesn't exclude it from being applied elsewhere.
  - azth 5y ago
    > we eat taxes on purchases, investments and property. Maybe lobby to lower taxes then?
- latchkey 5y ago
  https://oilcity.news/wyoming/legislature/2021/04/15/gordon-signs-bill-exempting-wyoming-natural-gas-flared-for-cryptocurrency-mining-from-taxation/ https://oilcity.news/wyoming/legislature/2021/04/15/gordon-s...
- graeme 5y ago
  Why would you want to give crypto a selective subsidy vs subdizing solar for all? (If solar subsidy is your goal) Picking winners doesn’t work very well
  - 5y ago
booleandilemma 5y ago
I’ve brought this up before and I was downvoted for it[0], but I don’t think I made my point clear enough last time. People seemed to think I was questioning the soundness of the algorithm, but that’s not what concerns me. I was talking about the concept of bitcoin itself. What I’m concerned with is what if the true point of this thing we have been led to call “bitcoin” is to destabilize countries. What if it’s a new type of nation-state attack, or virus, that we haven’t seen before. Something we don’t yet have a word for. Something that takes advantage of a country’s citizens’ greed while doing things like disrupting power grids and causing countries to be worse off than they would be without bitcoin. It’s like finding food someone left on your doorstep and eating it without being worried someone is trying to poison you. Most people that are supporters of bitcoin are driven by pure greed. What if someone has found a way to weaponize greed? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446571
- bufbupa 5y ago
  Sorry that I don't know how to present this more constructively, but you sound pretty tin-foil-hat-y. You argument seems to be just "I don't understand this thing, so doesn't that mean someone could have introduced it out of malice". As the replies from your previous comment stated, try reading about the block chain protocol. It's definitely easier to understand than the whole of our fiat currency system. In my opinion, crypto is largely a ponzi scheme, so rest assured I'm not saying this out of love for bitcoin. But I also don't believe there's some master-mind illuminati behind the scenes orchestrating this intentionally. This is a 100% open and transparent protocol that people are supporting out of fear of existing societal power structure. If you have a good reason to suspect someone of manipulating crypto for some greater purpose, present your evidence and let us evaluate it. But vague paranoia about some puppet master's scheme sounds a bit like crying wolf to me. We as a society just haven't gotten good at pricing in externalities (eg: carbon emissions) to consumer goods yet. If crypto miners were providing enough societal value to afford the excessive consumption of energy, then I think everyone would be praising crypto as the next industrial revolution -- improving quality of life for everyone! But instead, I think most people recognize it as siphoning value from many for the benefit of a fortunate few.
- 5y ago
g42gregory 5y ago
I am not getting the sense that people, who talking about global warming, will really follow up with the actions, when it concerns their wallets or their quality of life. Look at the number of the private jets at the COP26. Look at number of Hummers that Arnold Schwarzenegger (whom I love btw!) owns. He talks climate change but drives a Hummer. By the same token, people with money, progressive or otherwise, will continue to invest in crypto as it is the highest yielding asset on the market. Kazakhstan became the 2nd largest crypto miner, after the US. It looks like they are balancing the demand for the energy supply between crypto miners and the rest of their customers. This sounds like a very reasonable thing for them to do. We will see more regulations concerning the crypto currency and I think it's a good thing for the market. The regulations will ensure continuous growth and mainstream acceptance of crypto.
- georgeecollins 5y ago
  To be fair, I think he is aware of the contradiction: https://www.motor1.com/news/181048/schwarzenegger-shows-electric-hummer-h1/ https://www.motor1.com/news/181048/schwarzenegger-shows-elec...
etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
Is this even possible to restrict? Does this also basically ban all datacenters until you prove you're not mining?
zherbert 5y ago
Bitcoin mining incentivizes the plentiful production of cheap electricity. This will make it so that there are no such thing as power shortages in the future and push us towards a Type I civilization on the Kardashev scale. Bitcoin mining reduces the risk for energy generation projects, because they no longer need to worry about who will purchase the extra capacity. Bitcoin mining can act as a load-balancer for the grid – spin down some machines if there is high demand, spin up machines if there is low demand. There are so many benefits. It is unfortunate that there is a serious lack of understanding on this website.
- labster 5y ago
  Bitcoin mining uses up all of the efficiency gains from energy saving over the past decade, and more. Bitcoin incentivizes carbon production by keeping electricity demand artificially high, even dedicating entire coal power plants to a single mining location. Therefore, cryptocurrency has already guaranteed we will never have time to advance on the Kardashev scale.
  - zherbert 5y ago
    That's preposterous, Bitcoin incentivizes production of whatever energy is cheapest. That does not necessarily mean fossil fuels, though it is often that those are cheaper. Hydro is a perfect example. A sizeable percentage of all Bitcoin mining is done with cheap hydro. Bitcoin will do the same for nuclear, making it cheap and plentiful.
    - labster 5y ago
      How does Bitcoin incentivize cheap energy? It only incentivizes energy that has a marginal cost less than the Bitcoin it can produce. As long as human speculation outpaces finite resources, it makes economic sense to burn the most expensive, dijon fuels. This is true even if externalities are factored into energy prices, which they aren’t.
- Aretas77 5y ago
  Take the benefits and double them up to get the drawbacks. The components used for mining could have much better use cases and the raw material shortage does not make this easier. I doubt that mining is the reason why countries/companies/people are pushing for that cheaper green energy. Additionally, the cryptocurrency market right now is a mess, an online casino one might say, where only few can benefit. And to push prices up, people are encouraging others to buy them, to push the prices up more and not because they believe in the future.
dr-detroit 5y ago
Welcome to hell. Wait until you realize its a scam in plain sight.
soheil 5y ago
Not only you can use the excess heat from the miners to heat your office you can also use adsorption chillers [0] to cool down your office using the heat. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/03/30/196054/using-heat-to-cool-buildings/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/03/30/196054/using-hea...

183 points by UglyToad 5y ago

vimy 5y ago

The crypto hate here is ridiculous. Every thread about crypto is the dropbox thread x 10. Unless you want to live in a dictatorship where the government dictates what is and isn’t a useful use of energy, the constant bitcoin electricity usage hysteria is a waste of everyone’s energy. :-)

justbored123 5y ago
Yep, sounds like the problem is that they just can't get healthy price market for electricity going to regulate consumption by just increasing cost to certain brackets. My shitty country has the same problem, too many illegal power connections that they fail to properly control and punish.
oblio 5y ago
Aren't there quite strict regulations about what you can use electricity for, in almost every country in the world? Especially at industrial scale. I don't think you can just start your own power plant and/or major consumer without a ton of permits.
sudosysgen 5y ago
You're not free to use the grid as you please. That's not how freedom works anywhere. The grid can decide to subsidize some uses, tax others, and forbid some.
malermeister 5y ago
Why does a government that regulates energy use have to be a dictatorship? A democratically elected one could put measures in place too.

Im_your_dada 5y ago

Electricity = keeps you warm, cooks your food, powers your devices. Cryptos = suck that energy out of the power grid to gamble with one another.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> Electricity = keeps you warm Computers also generate heat. Wish I could use cryptocurrency miners for my heating needs. Why burn fuel or pass current through resistances for that?
- 0des 5y ago
  My heater doesn't become less effective each year, requiring replacement. While ASIC concretely implies this, GPU is not excluded if you want to remain competitive (read: generating profit)
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    It doesn't have to be competitive. 4+ kWh electric showers are ubiquitous in my country. Literally a dumb piece of metal resistance immersed in water. Anything is better than the current situation. What if it was a processor instead? What if a bunch of home servers could heat up stored water through their heat instead of just dissipating that energy uselessly into the air? We'd be getting the heat we need and we'd be helping build a decentralized cash network. We were gonna spend energy heating up stuff anyway. Might as well get some cryptocurrency out of that heat.
    - thinkmassive 5y ago
      This is what WiseMining.io is addressing with their Sato “bitcoin boiler.” It uses hashcards (daughterboards populated with mining ASICs) immersed in coolant to augment a typical heat pump setup.
      - matheusmoreira 5y ago
        That's interesting. My search for products in this category turned up the Qarnot company which also has a "digital boiler". Apparently, it's a general purpose Linux server that can be used to mine any coin or perform any type of computation. https://qarnot.com/en/heating-water/ https://qarnot.com/en/heating-water/ Not sure if it's even available outside Europe. I wonder if it's possible to somehow replicate this with a home server. How is it pumping the heat out of the components and into the water system?

agent_simon 5y ago

Makes sense, since winter is coming and power needed to keep people warm

josephcsible 5y ago

Wouldn't it make more sense to just let the price of electricity go up?

ctur 5y ago
Only if you want miners to have power and residents to be without it. Capitalism is not the cookie cutter solution to all problems.
- fastball 5y ago
  Right but that's not the problem here? If there are power shortages then the power companies should increase supply.
  - throw1234651234 5y ago
    There is no capability to increase supply. See my other post - Eastern Europe is out of coal and nat gas. Belarus has excess energy from Nuclear, but is still triaging exports. People will go without power this winter if this isn't done.
    - fastball 5y ago
      So don't rely on coal and nat gas? What about solar? Wind?
      - throw1234651234 5y ago
        Europe tried that, now they are trying to buy more gas from Russia. See Poland for an example. The point of that real-time example? Wind and solar are great, but they take time and the infrastructure is not yet there. Nuclear is arguably cleaner and cheaper for the output in the long term. Of course, infrastructure for nuclear isn't there in Kazakhstan yet either.
      - oblio 5y ago
        Yup, the magic pixie fairy will manage to build out electricity producing capacity that takes years to decades to build in days, weeks or months at best.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

cinntaile 5y ago

I wonder if cryptominers in poorer countries speed up the buildout of more stable and robust electricity networks in the long run? I understand they sometimes stress it too much in the short run such as here and then the regulators have to take action but the interplay on a longer timescale would be interesting to see.

nwah1 5y ago
You could say the same about whether bridges to nowhere generate important economic robustness. The problem with this view is it ignores that such activity crowds out the ability to do something actually useful with the same resources, while also producing all the same externalities (both positive and negative).
- cinntaile 5y ago
  You're talking about the broken window fallacy. I don't think it's immediately clear that a more robust and stable electricity network wouldn't lead to additional economical and societal benefits thus making it a positive sum game?
  - notahacker 5y ago
    I don't think it's immediately clear that cryptomining leads to a more robust and stable electricity network for the people it outcompetes on power. The evidence of Kazakhstan certainly doesn't point in that direction...
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      What do you mean by outcompeting? I don't know the answer of course otherwise I wouldn't have posed the question but I guess asking questions qualifies for getting downvoted to -3. Some of you are clearly sitting on all the answers but you're not sharing them with the rest of us. We see the short term results, my question was directed at the long term. I don't think it really matters if it's crypto mining or aluminum melters or any other energy intensive industry, it just happens to be crypto mining in Kazakhstan. It just seems plausible since higher energy usage correlates with BNP. (I know, I know tax havens are exceptions to that rule.) If mining sticks around then this may turn out well for Kazakhstan, from an economical perspective.

cletus 5y ago

And so it begins. In the developed world in particular, we're seeing the move away from fossil-fuel power. This is good but currently relatively expensive. Crypto mining is starting to have very real impact on the ability of other people to live. It is adversely and disproportionately affecting poor people (who pay a greater share of their income for power). And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for society. Crypto-mining apologists will point to figures that say "crypto-mining uses mostly renewable energy". What this actually means is that crypto-mining is focused on areas that have hydroelectric power because it's the cheapest, generally. While you might say that's still good, it's starting to raise prices for other people. this has been an issue in towns on the Hudson Valley in New York, for example. Even if you believe the overall impact of crypto-mining is small I guarantee you it's only a matter of time before politicians start using crypto-mining as a convenient whipping boy.

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> And at best crypto provides extremely limited utility for society. This is true for bitcoin. It failed at everything it set out to be and yet it is the most mined coin. Truly a waste of energy. There are better projects out there which actually provide value and utility. Monero is an example. It's pretty sad that bitcoin is still number one despite the existence of these projects.
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
  Monero is a proof of work cryptocurrency. I like PoW, it is the most secure distributed consensus algorithm we have discovered. If Monero was as popular as Bitcoin, it would use something similar to the energy. None of it is a 'waste of energy'.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    I agree with you. It's a waste of energy because that energy is being spent mining BTC, a useless coin that isn't anonymous, private, decentralized, fungible, it isn't even an actual currency. It should be spent mining Monero instead which actually does have all of those properties.

ineedasername 5y ago

The general public doesn't have the best grasp on crypto to begin with. If it starts messing with their ability to go about their daily lives with consistently available electricity at inflated prices then mining in those impacted areas may die a quick political death. Or have their facilities burned down by mobs that need those fires to keep them warm.

thomcano 5y ago

I didn't realized that Kazakhstan is one of the top giant miners in the world. Is there any reason for this one?

baybal2 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostochny_Coal_Mine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vostochny_Coal_Mine
vbezhenar 5y ago
It shares border with China. Mining has been forbidden in China recently, Kazakhstan has cheap electricity, they flocked here.

webinvest 5y ago

Crypto helps accelerate the growth, demand, and build-out of renewable energy.

FriedrichN 5y ago
Which will be totally useless if it's completely consumed by cryptocurrencies, thus only adding to further destruction of the climate.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
That doesn't really help if crypto is also consuming the renewable energy it "helps" build-out. The problem isn't that the relative proportion of renewable energy is too low, but that the consumption of non-renewable energy is too high. It doesn't matter if renewables make up 10% or 90% if that number doesn't mean a large reduction in the consumption of fossile fuels.

obiwan14 5y ago

Is Texas next? Given that several mining companies have set up or about to set up shop on Rockdale and Pyote. And this is a state that endured a major grid crisis early this year.

hanniabu 5y ago
That'd be tough, they'd need to figure out the mental gymnastics with their muh freedom narratives, especially since this is something that'd be good for the environment which it seems they're adamantly against.

DonHopkins 5y ago

Don't ever let any Bitcoin or NFT shills get away with lying to you that their cryptocurrencies and CryptoKitties and Digital Pet Rocks run on renewable energy. And never let any of those get-rich-quick pyramid scheme shills get away without forcing them to openly admit that even though they're burning coal, wasting electricity, destroying the environment, causing climate change, cancer, and heart disease, they simply don't give a flying fuck about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Kazakhstan#Electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Kazakhstan#Electrici... >In 2013, the country produced 93.76 billion kWH - 70 billion kWh (81%) from coal, 8 from gas and 8 from hydro. The country has 71 power stations, including 5 hydro power plants located on the Irtysh river, which translates to total installed generating capacity of 19.6 GW. 75 percent of electricity generated is consumed by industry, 11 percent by households, 2 percent by transportation.[25]

sparksparkapach 5y ago
There are quite a few carbon neutral chains that people do launch on. Most businesses do require energy but they try to offset it. People are trying to shift away from mining for the largest NFT blockchain though, ethereum.
- sparksparkapach 5y ago
  This is just one and I'm sure there are more to come because if the practice is unsustainable a large part of the community would not support it in the long term. https://medium.com/celoorg/a-carbon-negative-blockchain-its-here-and-it-s-celo-60228de36490 https://medium.com/celoorg/a-carbon-negative-blockchain-its-...
matheusmoreira 5y ago
I wonder how much coal China burned to fabricate all the computers necessary for you to post this and for everyone else to read it.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

ravenstine 5y ago

Why not create incentives to mine crypto with solar? Lower or eliminate any sort of capitol gains taxes on crypto mined with solar, make solar panels tax free for companies that mine crypto, and crypto would not only go up in value but the solar industry would also be supported. Oh yeah. The Federal Reserve and the central banks need fiat.

rank0 5y ago
Is this a serious suggestion? Us peasants have to work for the government 4 months a year and even after our take home we eat taxes on purchases, investments and property. But yeah, let’s give crypto miners the tax breaks surely they deserve it…
- ravenstine 5y ago
  It's serious to the extent that I'm introducing it as a topic of discussion. Whether I wholeheartedly believe in it is a different story. As I mentioned to someone else, applying a solution to one particular problem doesn't exclude it from being applied elsewhere.
- azth 5y ago
  > we eat taxes on purchases, investments and property. Maybe lobby to lower taxes then?
latchkey 5y ago
https://oilcity.news/wyoming/legislature/2021/04/15/gordon-signs-bill-exempting-wyoming-natural-gas-flared-for-cryptocurrency-mining-from-taxation/ https://oilcity.news/wyoming/legislature/2021/04/15/gordon-s...
graeme 5y ago
Why would you want to give crypto a selective subsidy vs subdizing solar for all? (If solar subsidy is your goal) Picking winners doesn’t work very well
- 5y ago

booleandilemma 5y ago

I’ve brought this up before and I was downvoted for it[0], but I don’t think I made my point clear enough last time. People seemed to think I was questioning the soundness of the algorithm, but that’s not what concerns me. I was talking about the concept of bitcoin itself. What I’m concerned with is what if the true point of this thing we have been led to call “bitcoin” is to destabilize countries. What if it’s a new type of nation-state attack, or virus, that we haven’t seen before. Something we don’t yet have a word for. Something that takes advantage of a country’s citizens’ greed while doing things like disrupting power grids and causing countries to be worse off than they would be without bitcoin. It’s like finding food someone left on your doorstep and eating it without being worried someone is trying to poison you. Most people that are supporters of bitcoin are driven by pure greed. What if someone has found a way to weaponize greed? [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28446571

bufbupa 5y ago
Sorry that I don't know how to present this more constructively, but you sound pretty tin-foil-hat-y. You argument seems to be just "I don't understand this thing, so doesn't that mean someone could have introduced it out of malice". As the replies from your previous comment stated, try reading about the block chain protocol. It's definitely easier to understand than the whole of our fiat currency system. In my opinion, crypto is largely a ponzi scheme, so rest assured I'm not saying this out of love for bitcoin. But I also don't believe there's some master-mind illuminati behind the scenes orchestrating this intentionally. This is a 100% open and transparent protocol that people are supporting out of fear of existing societal power structure. If you have a good reason to suspect someone of manipulating crypto for some greater purpose, present your evidence and let us evaluate it. But vague paranoia about some puppet master's scheme sounds a bit like crying wolf to me. We as a society just haven't gotten good at pricing in externalities (eg: carbon emissions) to consumer goods yet. If crypto miners were providing enough societal value to afford the excessive consumption of energy, then I think everyone would be praising crypto as the next industrial revolution -- improving quality of life for everyone! But instead, I think most people recognize it as siphoning value from many for the benefit of a fortunate few.
5y ago

g42gregory 5y ago

I am not getting the sense that people, who talking about global warming, will really follow up with the actions, when it concerns their wallets or their quality of life. Look at the number of the private jets at the COP26. Look at number of Hummers that Arnold Schwarzenegger (whom I love btw!) owns. He talks climate change but drives a Hummer. By the same token, people with money, progressive or otherwise, will continue to invest in crypto as it is the highest yielding asset on the market. Kazakhstan became the 2nd largest crypto miner, after the US. It looks like they are balancing the demand for the energy supply between crypto miners and the rest of their customers. This sounds like a very reasonable thing for them to do. We will see more regulations concerning the crypto currency and I think it's a good thing for the market. The regulations will ensure continuous growth and mainstream acceptance of crypto.

georgeecollins 5y ago
To be fair, I think he is aware of the contradiction: https://www.motor1.com/news/181048/schwarzenegger-shows-electric-hummer-h1/ https://www.motor1.com/news/181048/schwarzenegger-shows-elec...

etaioinshrdlu 5y ago

Is this even possible to restrict? Does this also basically ban all datacenters until you prove you're not mining?

zherbert 5y ago

Bitcoin mining incentivizes the plentiful production of cheap electricity. This will make it so that there are no such thing as power shortages in the future and push us towards a Type I civilization on the Kardashev scale. Bitcoin mining reduces the risk for energy generation projects, because they no longer need to worry about who will purchase the extra capacity. Bitcoin mining can act as a load-balancer for the grid – spin down some machines if there is high demand, spin up machines if there is low demand. There are so many benefits. It is unfortunate that there is a serious lack of understanding on this website.

labster 5y ago
Bitcoin mining uses up all of the efficiency gains from energy saving over the past decade, and more. Bitcoin incentivizes carbon production by keeping electricity demand artificially high, even dedicating entire coal power plants to a single mining location. Therefore, cryptocurrency has already guaranteed we will never have time to advance on the Kardashev scale.
- zherbert 5y ago
  That's preposterous, Bitcoin incentivizes production of whatever energy is cheapest. That does not necessarily mean fossil fuels, though it is often that those are cheaper. Hydro is a perfect example. A sizeable percentage of all Bitcoin mining is done with cheap hydro. Bitcoin will do the same for nuclear, making it cheap and plentiful.
  - labster 5y ago
    How does Bitcoin incentivize cheap energy? It only incentivizes energy that has a marginal cost less than the Bitcoin it can produce. As long as human speculation outpaces finite resources, it makes economic sense to burn the most expensive, dijon fuels. This is true even if externalities are factored into energy prices, which they aren’t.
Aretas77 5y ago
Take the benefits and double them up to get the drawbacks. The components used for mining could have much better use cases and the raw material shortage does not make this easier. I doubt that mining is the reason why countries/companies/people are pushing for that cheaper green energy. Additionally, the cryptocurrency market right now is a mess, an online casino one might say, where only few can benefit. And to push prices up, people are encouraging others to buy them, to push the prices up more and not because they believe in the future.

dr-detroit 5y ago

Welcome to hell. Wait until you realize its a scam in plain sight.

soheil 5y ago

Not only you can use the excess heat from the miners to heat your office you can also use adsorption chillers [0] to cool down your office using the heat. [0] https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/03/30/196054/using-heat-to-cool-buildings/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/03/30/196054/using-hea...