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How Texas is becoming a Bitcoin mining hub
- ameminator 5y agoWe'll see how that holds up, especially since the Texas power grid seemed especially strained in the last little while.
- b3nji 5y agoNot many people seem to know that the power grid issue wasn't to do with the power grid... I think Texas will do well with crypto from what I understand. http://adam.curry.com/art/1613521813_mxdUgmnT.html http://adam.curry.com/art/1613521813_mxdUgmnT.html
- ryanfreeborn 5y agoYour source is a Texas-secessionist rant with no citations? Do you have any actual objective reviews of why the power grid issue happened?
- mikeyouse 5y agoThat’s straight nonsense from some bizarre “Texit” secession advocate. https://energy.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/UTAustin%20%282021%29%20EventsFebruary2021TexasBlackout%2020210714.pdf https://energy.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/UTAustin%20%28... Texas lost 30,000 MW of thermal power plants due to thermal maintenance and thermal forced outages (Page 18). In the face of unprecedented (but not unpredicted) demand, they had to load shed like crazy to save their grid. It’s not a complicated story and has literally nothing to do with EPA clean air regulations. Page 34 gives the breakdown by power plant type.. poorly prepared natural gas pipelines and power plants were essentially entirely responsible for the outage.
- mindslight 5y agotldr - blames federal regulations limiting (coal) pollution that easily travels across state borders. skips any examination of why Texas doesn't have enough plants meeting modern pollution standards.
- walrus01 5y agoIt's OK, if it gets too cold in Texas you can always fly to Cancun for a while, as shown by the example of some notable local politicians who espouse a "the free market will fix everything" philosophy.
- ameminator 5y agoHaha I don't live in Texas and it always did seem strange to have key infrastructure privatized in the way that they did. To be fair, however, almost no community is ready for the effects of climate change (despite the reporting). In fact, most people have trouble with statistically rare events, so it doesn't surprise me. It's hard to say whether a government-managed endeavor would have been more prepared if I'm being completely honest.
- twalla 5y agoPretty sure I've made this comment before but one of the main reasons Texas runs its own grid is to avoid the need to meet federal regulations, which ironically and also unsurprisingly, contain winterization guidelines.
- ameminator 5y agoI did not know that! Very interesting! Although, I do think that having some differentiation makes sense. For example, I'm sure Vermont's winterization needs would look very different than Texas'.
- scotty79 5y agoIf you can place a bitcoin miner next to a wind turbine then state of the grid is not an issue.
- oblib 5y agoSo, what I gathered from this is that they will be using off-site power to run these "mining machines" while sucking up all the power they may get from solar they install and own at a time when those living there are experiencing blackouts in harsh weather conditions. Gotta love Texas!
- acchow 5y agoThis is not unique to Texas. Any private mining farm with its own electricity generation would operate like this.
- oblib 5y agoWidespread brownouts are rare where I live. Seems not so much in Texas anymore.
- RedBeetDeadpool 5y agoIf the price of electricity rises, then don't mine bitcoin, sell it back to the grid.
- TigeriusKirk 5y agoThe article says that's the plan. We'll see if it works out that way. ------------------------------------------------------------------- “When you can consume 20% of your electricity on site and sell roughly 80% back into the grid, and can shut down our miners in a minute if we need during peak hours, that offers a massive benefit with regards to smoothing our supply and demand across the energy grid,” Ward said, describing the benefits of building on-site solar panels. “We can still make money [when bitcoin miners are turned off] by selling our leftover solar energy back into the wholesale system. This won’t hurt our profitability, yet the relief it could provide to the end consumer could be massive,” he said.
- oblib 5y ago"When you can consume 20% of your electricity on site and sell roughly 80% back into the grid" That would make sense if the mining made you more money than the grid and you had excess power, but what would be the point of selling your juice to the grid if that is the case? Seems to me like powering as many miners as you can with your supply of installed power would have to be the goal at all times and the grid would be your backup plan to keep them running if your onsite supply was lacking.
- Aterio 5y agoAlways a good idea to build and consume renewable energy and then making heat out of it. Texas power grid sounds very good: cheap and reliable. Ah wait wait we talk about searching for arbitrary hashes which can't be recycled or actually used in a state which probably needs AC in summer and an independent unstable power grid in a time were every additional CO2 generated creates even more pressure for our society. Perhaps not such a good idea? Perhaps we should not let BTC consume solar panels and renewable energy and use it for things we actually need?
- trhway 5y agoBTC providing demand for renewables stimulates the development of renewables. Any massive investment like in renewables carries a risk, and the higher the demand the lesser the risk for the investment on the supply side.
- Aterio 5y agoNo it doesn't. It's just a lie. BTC provides demand for cheap energy not for renewable. And it consumes the demand. It doesn't create this demand for others.
- scotty79 5y agoCheapest energy is when renewables production peaks. Then it can be worth less than zero.
- Aterio 5y agoPart of renewable is short term storage. You use that peak energy to create heat, charge a battery or do similar things. You can easily create hydrogen. But using it for searching for a hash is the worst idea. If you would be able to use the heat output sure that could work but let's someone do that first Until then doing anything else with this energy is critit!
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- dvt 5y agoI'm genuinely curious when the fat lady will stop singing in regards to Bitcoin. I sort-of understand the allure of ETH and its derivatives ("programmable money" does bring something new to the table), but BTC is supposed to be a "value store" yet is down 30% from November; or it's supposed to be a "currency" but you can't use it as one; or it's supposed to be "decentralized" but mining is monopolized by a handful of mining pools. If it looks like a speculative financial instrument and it quacks like a speculative financial instrument, it's probably a speculative financial instrument. Maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand BTC.
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- vmception 5y agoAll blockchains are just databases that anyone can write to by paying in the transferable database units. People are willing to do that. Don't worry about the sales pitches for why other people hoard the database units. It periodically fits their risk profile, or it doesnt. Who cares. I like using the database, I expect to continue being able to. Other platforms don’t have the same features regarding the tradability of the unit. Dealbreaker.
- stevehawk 5y agoNope. I'm pretty sure you understand it perfectly.
- asperous 5y agoIf you think about it like gambling it makes sense. It takes about $14 billion per year to maintain the current price given that new bitcoins are "mined", so that's the theoretical supply inflation right now not subtracting deflation from lost coins. The gambling industry worldwide revenue is $219 billion. That's just one theory of its value if its purely used for speculation. That said I still believe it could totally collapse at any time or perhaps hit an all time high and slowly decline from there, with several smaller rallies on its way down.
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- ABeeSea 5y agoNot surprising that Texas Republicans are fully behind wasting as much energy as possible. They talk about renewables but most of the Texas mining will be powered by burning natural gas.
- vmception 5y agoMy prediction is that the only ones of these that will survive are the natural gas ones that also sell to the grid. Texas has so much gas and methane being thrown into the atmosphere for decades. The regulator rubber stamps pollution exceptions to allow sites to continue doing it. Crypto miners can and are cleaning that up, since they have a simple usage converting that gas to energy with a simple catalytic converter. Low infrastructure, light weight, and doesnt even need much of an internet connection compared to a data center.
- reaperducer 5y agoFrom what I've read in newspapers over the last year or so, now that satellites allow methane and other discharges to be detected and investigated by entities outside of Texas (both American and international), the biggest polluters are getting out of the game. Up to now, whenever there's been a big discharge, the suspected polluter would say, "Well, it was next to our pipeline, and it's the sort of stuff we have in our pipeline, and it happened when we were working on our pipeline, but there's no proof that it was us." And the Texas regulators would say, "Sounds good to us!" Now outside eyes are watching, including government agencies downwind in New Mexico, and as the detection technology becomes more refined, it will be harder and harder for polluters to wriggle out of it.
- vmception 5y agoYes, I could see that. The regulator especially but also all levels of government there are captured by their affinity towards energy production or the industry itself. But they also want to meet their climate goals and it becomes increasingly embarrassing and indefensible. So they just need the profitable option, crypto miners are it.
- mupuff1234 5y ago> "Bitcoin Experts" What does that even mean?
- ameminator 5y agoYour weird uncle who also talks about the aliens who built the pyramids, probably.
- asciimov 5y agoThe reason EROCT, the Texas Republicans (TRP) and the minesr are doing this is to raise prices on electrical power. During the right time of year, the cost of power can often go negative overnight. Ercot wants to get rid of this and ultimately raise the price of power as negative power prices have consequences for all the middle men involved. In Texas there are lots of middle men, negative power means they might owe money instead of making money, they all want to be making money. The general idea is that ERCOT give some guarantees to the miners including rate locks. The miners promise to use so much power and then get to buy the power at a bulk rate. Enough of these miners means that enough demand is put on the system that the nighttime rates never go negative. Long term goal of this is to keep money flowing to the oil and gas companies, the traditional power generators, as well as all the middlemen, regardless of how much green power is invested and built in Texas. The issue of "too much power" on the grid is something that could be controlled by ERCOT. They could easily put some of the power generators into standby to keep the extra power off the grid. As for the miners shutting off when demand goes up. They are only going to do that when the price of power goes above the threshold of them not making money off crypto. Since the rate of power in Texas changes moment to moment, and can easily be monitored this is a trivial thing for these miners to do. Further, the cities and towns that want the miners to be in their town are giving huge tax breaks to these companies to set up shop. In one instance, the miners will end up paying less than a million dollars a year for 10 years, while they estimate they will generate a couple of billion during that same time and bringing well less than 100 jobs to the area.
- beezle 5y agoI've clearly missed something but what is attraction of miners that a municipality would offer any tax breaks at all? (assuming those are property type taxes as there would be no sales tax) As you point out, at the high end it may be 100 jobs, I suspect probably far less are needed to mind the data/mining center?
- asciimov 5y agoIn my hometown, it's in part so they can say they have it and part kowtowing to state Republican leadership.