5 ms·
> The “work” does not need to be done. That point is up for debate, but that's not the point I'm addressing. > Doing the work cannot have a societal benefit
by yrral 5y ago
> The “work” does not need to be done.
That point is up for debate, but that's not the point I'm addressing.
> Doing the work cannot have a societal benefit
I'm just pointing out that this use of electricity makes new renewable electricity deployments viable when they otherwise would not be. In that sense, if you think that replacing fossil fuel generation with renewables is valuable then bitcoin mining is valuable in that sense.
Renewables are cheaper already than fossil fuels. Their electricity generation is just not stable enough to replace all of fossil fuels. We can use bitcoin mining to smooth out supply/demand of electricity which allows us to use a higher proportion of renewables in our supply than would otherwise be possible.
- gefhfffh 5y agoWe can use storage systems to smooth out supply/demand of electricity. Mining is unsufficient, because it can't provide energy in the night when the sun is not shining. Storage systems can
- inter_netuser 5y agoor we can just finally admit renewables cannot supply the entire Earth, and something else needs to be in the mix too.
- gefhfffh 5y agoLike storage systems, yeah. Bitcoin only makes it worse, because it uses/wastes energy of which we don't have enough clean one
- inter_netuser 5y agoUsually, when you don't have enough of something - you go and build it. Bitcoin requires only as much power as a tiny country size of Portugal/Netherlands, less than 1% of electricity consumption globally. Less than dishwashers, heated pools or computer games use. Perhaps we should ban these also? If anything, we should be thankful Bitcoin exposed the inability of renewables to scale in practice.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gefhfffh 5y agoSo, coal, gas, nuclear and renewables don't see in practice? Solution? Waste even more energy than we already do!
- dmitriid 5y ago>Bitcoin requires only as much power as a tiny country size of Portugal/Netherlands Riiight. "Tiny". Netherlands is number 31 and Portugal is 52 by electricity consumption out of 216 countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electrici... To put it in context: you could power all of Argentina with the power bitcoin wastes. Big enough for you? Or Nigeria five times over (that's 200 million people times five).
- inter_netuser 5y agoThe point is, global consumption is barely 1%. We were told renewables are cheap and plentiful, but it turns it they cannot even power 1% of the demand? Why do reneweables scale so poorly?
- dmitriid 5y agoYou keep pushing the same false narrative pretending that this is the argument people make. Stop.
- inter_netuser 5y agofalse in what sense? People make the argument "it will boil the ocean". Is this not the claim, roughly speaking? ..but why is it renewables cannot service reliably and inexpensively just 1% of demand? I have no problems with renewables, but interplanetary civilizations subsisting on windmills is just fantasy.
- yrral 5y ago> We can use storage systems to smooth out supply/demand of electricity. They have a max capacity. They cannot be steady consumers of electricity for the 95%+ of the time that there is enough electricity to go around. > Mining is unsufficient, because it can't provide energy in the night when the sun is not shining. Storage systems can I can use the same argument: Storage systems are insufficient, because they can't consume most of the excess generated power to make development of more renewables economically viable. Bitcoin miners can.
- gefhfffh 5y agoAre you going to copy your stuff to every post of mine now? I have already answered that. Excess power can be removed from the system removing valuable CO2 emissions damaging society for about 700 dollars a ton
- arrrg 5y agoIt would be much more useful to pour excess power into green hydrogen production. There are industrial and chemical processes where electricity is not a viable replacement for the CO2 intensive approaches we are using now. Building up a hydrogen economy for those applications would be great. And much more useful than that cryptocurrency bullshit.