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Ideally, you would mine your Bitcoin in Iceland or Chile [1] with geothermal or hydro and buy corn from Iowa with it and the farmers there use it to buy power f
by mwattsun 5y ago
Ideally, you would mine your Bitcoin in Iceland or Chile [1] with geothermal or hydro and buy corn from Iowa with it and the farmers there use it to buy power from the local windmill grid, so it's a battery in that sense.
[1] https://www.hydropower.org/country-profiles/chile https://www.hydropower.org/country-profiles/chile
- meribold 5y agoIt's a battery in the sense that you can use it to buy electricity?
- mwattsun 5y agoYes, energy in at one geographic location, energy out at another
- woodruffw 5y agoThat's not a battery -- that's a form of economic triage where you burn power to produce tokens that allow you to buy power somewhere else. To use the analogy: nowhere is the battery being "drained". Edit: to make the analogy more complete: a bitcoin is, in effect, proof that energy has been wasted. Using a bitcoin to purchase renewable power from a windfarm is tantamount purchasing that power with empty batteries or empty oil drums.
- mwattsun 5y agoYou are literally correct, but if I use excess energy in Iceland to create Bitcoin, which I electronically send to Chile to finance a hydroelectric power plant, thus making electricity available in Chile that previously wasn't, how is that not like charging up a battery in Iceland and sending it to Chile?
- woodruffw 5y agoBecause you've expended the energy twice: once in Iceland, and again in Chile. The "battery" analogy requires a transfer of power, not a transfer of proof that the power was spent.