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> while Kosovo has the cheapest energy prices in Europe due in part to more than 90% of the domestic energy production coming from burning the country’s rich re
by perfunctory 5y ago
> while Kosovo has the cheapest energy prices in Europe due in part to more than 90% of the domestic energy production coming from burning the country’s rich reserves of lignite, a low-grade coal, and fuel bills being subsidised by the government.
> The largest-scale crypto mining is thought to be taking place in the north of the country, where the Serb-majority population refuse to recognise Kosovo as an independent state and have consequently not paid for electricity for more than two decades.
> global bitcoin mining consumes 125.96 terawatt hours a year of electricity, putting its consumption above Norway (122.2 TWh), Argentina (121 TWh), the Netherlands (108.8 TWh) and the United Arab Emirates (113.20 TWh).
The absurdity of the bitcoin mining in the middle of the climate crisis is mind boggling.
- bspammer 5y agoI sometimes wonder if Satoshi, whoever they are, is incredibly guilt-ridden by this. I know I would be. Not that I blame them at all, there was no way to predict the scale of the damage that a single paper could have on the world, and someone else would have eventually come up with the same idea.
- octocop 5y agoI will also cast judgement back in time, to all families owning cars both fossil and electric, to all the people not recycling every ounce of garbage they've thrown. The people whom consumed even the slightest, I cast my judgement, they've doomed the world with their existence. The judgment I cast even lands upon you, hackernews commenter, when it's all laid out.
- secondaryacct 5y agoNo because he wanted to take revenge on the "banks" after the 2008 crisis. He must be incredibly proud of the gigantic pyramid he built, knowing if he move just one btc out of his wallet he'll cause so much ruin people will suicide.
- cyphertruck 5y agoSatoshi has been selling bitcoin to pay expenses every year. You just don’t know it because “Satoshi’s coins” is a myth. He wrote off the identifiable ones but still had years to mine cheaply. Bitcoin is not ab attack in banks but on inflation. It is undermining government ability to create poverty and oppress people.
- sigmaprimus 5y agoI heard that the person who invented single serve coffee pods felt a similar guilt when they witnessed the amount of trash created from such a popular invention.
- darthrupert 5y agoBoth of these sentiments probably deserve the good old "Woody Harrelson drying tears with 100 dollar bills" meme.
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- cyphertruck 5y ago
- rdxm 5y ago
- lordfoom 5y ago> Bitcoin is actually cleaning up the environment. At at this point still uses only a tiny fraction of the energy thrown away every year. This is not true.
- kbd 5y agoThis reads like it was written by a bot… except for spelling errors. I can’t even tell what it’s supposed to mean.
- imtringued 5y agoBitcoin is a currency that entrenches fascists that have bought early.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- davidgerard 5y agoHal Finney (who beta-tested bitcoin before its release) flagged it almost immediately: > @halfin > Thinking about how to reduce CO2 emissions from a widespread Bitcoin implementation > Jan 27, 2009 https://twitter.com/halfin/status/1153096538 https://twitter.com/halfin/status/1153096538 Bitcoiners cannot claim they weren't told early, by bitcoin's second developer.
- boomskats 5y ago> The largest-scale crypto mining is thought to be taking place in the north of the country, where the Serb-majority population refuse to recognise Kosovo as an independent state and have consequently not paid for electricity for more than two decades. I still find this wording very interesting, and somewhat loaded. It's not that the population is somehow collectively refusing to pay for their electricity. A mechanism for them to pay it has not existed since 1999. Discussed previously here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29809078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29809078
- henrydark 5y agoI read the discussion and the piece referenced therein, but I couldn't find a reference to the Serbs not being able to pay. Can you elaborate on this?
- boomskats 5y agoMy understanding is that the billing infrastructure for that part of Kosovo still hasn't been established. Quoting another article from balkaninsight [0]: > While the Kosovo government remains unclear on how to proceed after the six-month deadline, Serbs in the Kosovo north remain confused on how and to whom they should pay their electricity bills. > Miodrag Milicevic, of the North Mitrovica-based NGO Aktiv, says Serbs in the north of Kosovo are in a “grey zone” when it comes to their electricity bills. > “Some still favour of maintaining this status, partly because they do not know who to pay, no one has complete information about it, about the method of calculating electricity, or who will be responsible for payment,” Milicevic told BIRN. [0]: https://balkaninsight.com/2021/05/06/kosovo-pledges-to-solve-electricity-billing-problem-in-serb-north/ https://balkaninsight.com/2021/05/06/kosovo-pledges-to-solve...
- basisword 5y agoThe irony of eating meat/driving gas guzzling cars/using air conditioning/flying/… Do we need to attach the climate crisis to everything these days? It’s very important but picking on one thing relentlessly and not others is just silly. We’re not going to solve the climate crisis by trying to stop people from doing things that use a lot of energy. We need to find ways to make those things sustainable/carbon neutral.
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- paulgb 5y agoWe’re talking about Bitcoin here because the news is about Bitcoin, it doesn’t mean we don’t care about reducing emissions in other areas. There are articles on HN regularly about EVs, synthetic meat, etc. One thing that sets POW apart, though, is how it is designed to resist efficiency improvements through the difficulty adjustment mechanism. When hashrate per watt goes up with efficiency improvements, the network difficulty goes up to compensate, so more efficient hardware does not improve the efficiency of the system.
- paulcole 5y agoThe climate crisis will solve itself when flying, eating meat, gas guzzling cars, etc. are impossible to use because the climate crisis has made life an (as of today) essentially unimaginable hellscape. Sure it’ll be a few centuries of abject misery but as a result the world’s population will contract a lot and things will “reset.” If people today aren’t willing to change their lives (and they clearly aren’t), then it’s time to enjoy the ride and hope we die (fingers crossed) before things get awful (which they will).
- KennyBlanken 5y agoSuch a boorish attitude that Bors made a specific version of Mister Gotcha just for you: https://twitter.com/thenib/status/1098281126743937031 https://twitter.com/thenib/status/1098281126743937031 If you think the comic is hyperbole, I've literally had people say "but you exhale CO2, AHA!" to me when I've suggested we need more people on bicycles for personal transportation. The fact that bicycles are the most energy-efficient form of personal transit? Irrelevant, apparently, because we exhale CO2.
- scotty79 5y agoPricing electricity so low that bitcoin mining is profitable during peak hours is absurd. We should tax the hell out of every ounce of carbon emitted and use money from this tax to pay basic income so that people are able to live with increased prices. Free market will sort the rest out Energy is so cheap that some renewables could be decomissioned if not for bitcoin: https://www.reuters.com/technology/costa-rica-hydro-plant-gets-new-lease-life-crypto-mining-2022-01-11/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/costa-rica-hydro-plant-ge...
- sigmaprimus 5y ago>>> We should tax the hell out of every ounce of carbon emitted and use money from this tax to pay basic income so that people are able to live with increased prices. Free market will sort the rest out Sarcasm?
- gambiting 5y agoI don't see why you think this is sarcasm. Sounds very reasonable to me.
- cyphertruck 5y agoHow will taxes improve the environment? They will give politicians more power to oppress, snd since governments are the largest polluters in the world the environment will get worse. Which they will use as an excuse for more taxes. See the pattern? —— This comment has two further comments, both of which ask questions. But since this comment is heavily downvoted, I cannot reply to the replies to answer the questions. In short: no such thing as “negative externalities”, thats just make-believe to whitewash oppression and poverty creation. Taxes are not a market signal by definition. Its interesting how blithely people accept using violence to force others to comply with their wishes. If you really wanted to reduce CO2 you would support safe clean nuclear. But CO2 isnt causing warming- its historically low, earth started at %100 CO2. Plants evolved to need levels 5 times higher than present. Increased CO2 would improve the environment. We had an ICE AGE at 10 times higher CO2 then now. ETC. Unfortunately Government propaganda has replace science education.
- WaxedChewbacca 5y ago
- mypastself 5y agoThe other two quotes you’ve posted suggest that mining is a significantly smaller issue in this particular scenario. The principal culprits for climate change instead seem to be government-sponsored majority-coal energy expenditure and irredentist nationalist policies.
- space_rock 5y agoBoth subsidizing dirty coal and using it to mine bitcoin both sound criminal to me. Subsidizing coal is the most evil while mining bitcoin with it is a meaningless act that's fun to dislike
- sofixa 5y agoIt's a poor country, they have lots of dirty coal. Their options are use it and have pollution, or pay money to import energy/electricity or build new nuclear power plants ( seems out of the question) or invest into renewables. Coal seems the cheapest option, especially for a country with complicated relations with many of their neighbours, which would make energy/electricity imports highly risky.
- space_rock 5y agoI think you replied to the wrong comment. Mind was about a poor country wasting govt money on populist subsidies It's possible to use coal for power without subsidies (coal is cheap) and bonus it's even more economically efficient
- LatteLazy 5y agoMaybe if countries stopped giving away free energy people would waste less...
- sofixa 5y agoThe poor population of those countries needs that cheap energy to not freeze to death and in general for everyday living.
- LatteLazy 5y agoSo ration is accordingly. Just telling everyone they can have enough energy to run a Bitcoin mining op, and then being surprised when they run a Bitcoin mining op seems silly...
- FabHK 5y agoSo, if everyone was mining Bitcoin, they would earn around US$0.15 per month (assuming 8e9 people, a 6.25 BTC coinbase mining reward every 10 minutes plus some 10% transaction fees, at a price of US$40,000/BTC, and zero energy/mining rig cost). Yay, Bitcoin is solving global poverty!
- fleddr 5y agoSo are giant TVs, PC gaming rigs, ACs, large cars, overconsumption of meat, etc. None can be justified given climate change, but everyone wants to keep it. The truth is that nobody cares about energy usage. It has exploded in the last decades whilst fully knowing about the problem. People only care about somebody else's energy usage and call for the banning of things they don't use or care about.
- lucb1e 5y ago> People only care about somebody else's energy usage and call for the banning of things they don't use or care about. That's your bubble, not mine. This is not my experience at all.
- FabHK 5y ago> nobody cares about energy usage. It has exploded in the last decades That's not quite right. In the West, energy usage per capita has risen until the 1970's or 80's, then stayed flat or fallen. (Of course, it's continued to rise in Asia, but fairly linearly; I wouldn't call it an explosion.) https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab=chart&country=SWE~CHN~USA~DEU https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/per-capita-energy-use?tab... https://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-consumption-since-1820-in-charts/ https://ourfiniteworld.com/2012/03/12/world-energy-consumpti...
- ttty 5y ago
- lucb1e 5y agoI was thinking of bringing up the same point, but one could argue that it's for own gain to pay less on the energy bill. It can be said much more broadly that people are changing behavior. Not everyone for sure, but there are few people left that will not claim to be making different personal choices for environmental reasons. I think a lot of them are worth very little and there are definitely hypocrites that take multiple flights per year and compensate that by plugging out phone chargers while not in use, but it's still something that's apparently on their mind. People do do things, and some people do significant things. If GP says that they only see people complaining about others without doing anything themselves, that must be a quite narrow bubble (from my point of view, at least). Edit: maybe a less debatable example is meat replacement products in supermarkets popping up. It's not as if we have more compassion with animals today than ten years ago, what changed is that more people are aware of the climate impact of meat. If nobody was willing to do anything, who's financing the production and buys the shelf space? The products don't even hold that long before spoiling, so they must be sold nearly as fast as meat.
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- Jach 5y agoI like putting it another way: 125.96 terawatt-hours at 11 cents per Kwh (my local rate which is quite a bit higher than many places mining happens) is about $13.8 billion. This is much less than what the world spent on toothpaste in a year ($30bn), isn't much more than Americans spent on Halloween ($10bn), cigarette companies spent on US marketing ($8bn, with much more than that being how much American spent on cigarettes), and is only about 10x more than a single banking player (Bank of America) spends on cybersecurity per year. Do any of these figures seem as absurd to you?
- danlugo92 5y agoBTC bad. Giant faceless banks in bed with the government good. You dind't get the memo when you signed up?
- tradesurplus 5y agoClimate crisis aside, the absurdity of bitcoin mining parasitically profiting out of a local geopolitical situation like this is very ...illustrative.