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We live in a society were people believe making gas into bitcoins is a good thing? :-( We should not have allowed to allow burning this on the spot ever. We w

by Aterio 5y ago

We live in a society were people believe making gas into bitcoins is a good thing? :-( We should not have allowed to allow burning this on the spot ever. We would now have cost effective counter measures or storage system for it.

isitmadeofglass 5y ago
> We should not have allowed to allow burning this on the spot ever. You do understand that the alternative is the rig blowing up at times right? Kinda feels like arguing we need to reduce animal suffering by burning down the rainforest so there’s no animals left that can suffer.
- Aterio 5y ago
  Yes! Of course the Alternative is not to catch it and transport it away and use it but the expectation that the rig would blow. Not sure how you came up with this one, funny. You know they are not doing it because its more effort and less profit right? We are able to catch gas, store and transport it.
  - scotty79 5y ago
    > We are able to catch gas, store and transport it. Great. Now you need to find way to make it profitable. You could force-entangle it with something profitable with a law. For example you could say that if you own a well you must not burn the gas, but you must capture it and transport it at least some distance before it's burned. Then people would have incetive to find a buyer that will burn it to get some utility out of it (heating something probably). But! That law would reduce profits of rich people in USA and since only rich people in USA decide which laws are created (they can practically veto all laws they oppose) no such law will be created. So you have two options. Either wells will be just burning gas for nothing except turning more potent greenhouse gasses like methane into less potent one like CO2. Or you can burn it and mine bitcoins. Which makes bitcoin less profitable for everyone else since all miners compete for a fixed number of bitcoins. If bitcoin mining is less profitable other miners must look for cheaper energy to keep mining which means laeger percentage renewables at peak production times. So in current political reality of USA this news is actually good news despite everything. Another positive factor in using this gas to mine bitcoin is that it turns that gas into valuable resource, so there's no incentive to "loose" it due to leaks accidental or intentional and that would be the case if you tried to force owners to transport it away to somewhere where it's useful. And this gas, as I mentioned, is more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 produced by burning it.
    - Aterio 5y ago
      It's getting burned one way or the other. Just that BTC consumes the energy and probably need AC so even more energy and consumed additional CO2 through making the ASIC. And we are not in a isolated world. The miners will search and find a cheaper energy source anyway. Either by buying a gas power plant or by moving to cheaper country. No one is forcing a miner to use 'excess' energy. 'excess' energy is energy we need to make viable and work together for finding solutions. Bitcoin destroys this motivation. Thanks to Bitcoin a global market can not only strip poor people from normal resources like oil, ors, metals but also from energy in any usable form. Whatever it is doing it will find the cheapest energy possible and will consume it as long as the Bitcoin price allows it, totally independent of they type of energy. Earning money through Bitcoin also not only incentive to eat up all cheap energy, it strips our society from a beneficial dripping effect. The supply chain of Bitcoin is minimal with little to negative effects. Asics consume chip production capacity. Talking about Bitcoin creates mental load. And of course let's be realistic: we have already a PoS system (our currencies) which is highly optimized. BTC doesn't even solve anything. There is no positive thing we as a society gain from Bitcoin. 99,999999% of all humans are getting hurt by it. We all pay for Bitcoin.
      - scotty79 5y ago
        > It's getting burned one way or the other. Yes. Because alternative to that is releasing it into the atmosphere which is way worse. > Just that BTC consumes the energy and probably need AC Just fans. But that's just decreases the amount of bitcoins mined per kWh > so even more energy and consumed additional CO2 through making the ASIC. Yes. We need to build more equipment to turn useless gas into something profitable. No matter how we do that. > And we are not in a isolated world. The miners will search and find a cheaper energy source anyway. Either by buying a gas power plant or by moving to cheaper country. Or renewables where the price of electricity on the market is lower than what can be earned by mining bitcoin with it. > No one is forcing a miner to use 'excess' energy. Only market will force a miner to use excess energy from renewables. Cheapest energy sources are renewables. Even now in some countries, at times energy price on the market drops below zero because renewables produce more than necessary at that time. And we are nowhere near the amount of renewable sources that will allow us to phase out fossil fuels. We need to overbuild renewables to the point that at times 90% of energy they'll produce will be the excess. Even transferring it away from the power stations would burn our energy grid to a crisp. We need to work on distributed energy sinks that can be collocated with renewable power stations that will be able to turn that excess energy into money. It might be bitcoins miners, it might be aluminum smelters. For our energy transformation to succeed it doesn't matter what it is as long as it incentivizes building renewable sources like mad. > 'excess' energy is energy we need to make viable and work together for finding solutions. Bitcoin destroys this motivation. I have no idea what do you even have in mind. This is a problem that is unsolvable by coming together and political action. It was proven conclusively by 50 years of attempts. Bitcoin along with technological progress in solar and wind are the first thing that points us to a solution to energy transformation that could happen even if people of the world were all against solving climate change. Economy, not politics is what shapes the world at such large scales. > Thanks to Bitcoin a global market can not only strip poor people from normal resources like oil, ors, metals but also from energy in any usable form. > Whatever it is doing it will find the cheapest energy possible and will consume it as long as the Bitcoin price allows it, totally independent of they type of energy. > Earning money through Bitcoin also not only incentive to eat up all cheap energy, it strips our society from a beneficial dripping effect. Yes. And that's why energy price will eventually rise to a point where mining bitcoins will be barely profitable and even that not at all times. Energy will be more expensive and smart governments at this point should work tirelessly on creating solutions offsetting rising energy prices for poor people. Some form of Universal Basic Income will be required. > Earning money through Bitcoin also not only incentive to eat up all cheap energy, it strips our society from a beneficial dripping effect. What is a dripping effect? > Asics consume chip production capacity. Yes. Another area where we have way too little manufacturing than we need. Which current chip shortages clearly indicate. Demand for ASICs can incentivize overbuilding fabs same way mining will incentivize renewable energy generation. And bticoin is not the only game in town. Mining ETC requires fairly complex chips. Like GPUs. It is already sending price signals to GPU manufacturers making manufacturing GPUs way more profitable than it would be without it. And GPUs power ton of scientific computation and our early ventures into AI. I've seen presentation by a scientist who, for his research, which was the point of presentation, used cluster of basically gaming hardware. And in an off hand note thanked the gamers for creating so much demand for such powerful hardware which made it a cheap commodity, so cheap that his research was possible. Overbuilding GPUs and fabs in general for crypto will power our future of scientific computing. > And of course let's be realistic: we have already a PoS system (our currencies) which is highly optimized. BTC doesn't even solve anything. Bitcoin solves nothing about money beside minor things in niche applications. It solves some problems that gold has which makes it attractive for investors. And BTC being attractive vessel for investment is what will finance global energy transformation. With zero political action required. > There is no positive thing we as a society gain from Bitcoin. > 99,999999% of all humans are getting hurt by it. > We all pay for Bitcoin. We'll see. Bitcoin is still decades from equilibrium. It turns money of greedy people who seek investments into energy production. I don't see how this won't make us move to renewables since they are already cheapest way to generate energy. If we got bitcoin when cheapest energy came from coal it could end us. But with technologies we have it can save us.
joelbondurant1 5y ago
thunkshift1 5y ago
Did you read the article? This is ‘waste’ gas that you encounter in the oil drilling process.. they are using that to extract some value from an otherwise harmful waste. What is wrong with that approach?
- Aterio 5y ago
  You can actually catch it and use it. And I don't mean BTC I mean normal heating etc. You could also generate energy and purt it into the grid. Instead you feed it hash search hardware. You consume that co2 for nothing. The same as before.

by Aterio 5y ago

isitmadeofglass 5y ago

> We should not have allowed to allow burning this on the spot ever. You do understand that the alternative is the rig blowing up at times right? Kinda feels like arguing we need to reduce animal suffering by burning down the rainforest so there’s no animals left that can suffer.

Aterio 5y ago
Yes! Of course the Alternative is not to catch it and transport it away and use it but the expectation that the rig would blow. Not sure how you came up with this one, funny. You know they are not doing it because its more effort and less profit right? We are able to catch gas, store and transport it.
- scotty79 5y ago
  > We are able to catch gas, store and transport it. Great. Now you need to find way to make it profitable. You could force-entangle it with something profitable with a law. For example you could say that if you own a well you must not burn the gas, but you must capture it and transport it at least some distance before it's burned. Then people would have incetive to find a buyer that will burn it to get some utility out of it (heating something probably). But! That law would reduce profits of rich people in USA and since only rich people in USA decide which laws are created (they can practically veto all laws they oppose) no such law will be created. So you have two options. Either wells will be just burning gas for nothing except turning more potent greenhouse gasses like methane into less potent one like CO2. Or you can burn it and mine bitcoins. Which makes bitcoin less profitable for everyone else since all miners compete for a fixed number of bitcoins. If bitcoin mining is less profitable other miners must look for cheaper energy to keep mining which means laeger percentage renewables at peak production times. So in current political reality of USA this news is actually good news despite everything. Another positive factor in using this gas to mine bitcoin is that it turns that gas into valuable resource, so there's no incentive to "loose" it due to leaks accidental or intentional and that would be the case if you tried to force owners to transport it away to somewhere where it's useful. And this gas, as I mentioned, is more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 produced by burning it.
  - Aterio 5y ago
    It's getting burned one way or the other. Just that BTC consumes the energy and probably need AC so even more energy and consumed additional CO2 through making the ASIC. And we are not in a isolated world. The miners will search and find a cheaper energy source anyway. Either by buying a gas power plant or by moving to cheaper country. No one is forcing a miner to use 'excess' energy. 'excess' energy is energy we need to make viable and work together for finding solutions. Bitcoin destroys this motivation. Thanks to Bitcoin a global market can not only strip poor people from normal resources like oil, ors, metals but also from energy in any usable form. Whatever it is doing it will find the cheapest energy possible and will consume it as long as the Bitcoin price allows it, totally independent of they type of energy. Earning money through Bitcoin also not only incentive to eat up all cheap energy, it strips our society from a beneficial dripping effect. The supply chain of Bitcoin is minimal with little to negative effects. Asics consume chip production capacity. Talking about Bitcoin creates mental load. And of course let's be realistic: we have already a PoS system (our currencies) which is highly optimized. BTC doesn't even solve anything. There is no positive thing we as a society gain from Bitcoin. 99,999999% of all humans are getting hurt by it. We all pay for Bitcoin.
    - scotty79 5y ago
      > It's getting burned one way or the other. Yes. Because alternative to that is releasing it into the atmosphere which is way worse. > Just that BTC consumes the energy and probably need AC Just fans. But that's just decreases the amount of bitcoins mined per kWh > so even more energy and consumed additional CO2 through making the ASIC. Yes. We need to build more equipment to turn useless gas into something profitable. No matter how we do that. > And we are not in a isolated world. The miners will search and find a cheaper energy source anyway. Either by buying a gas power plant or by moving to cheaper country. Or renewables where the price of electricity on the market is lower than what can be earned by mining bitcoin with it. > No one is forcing a miner to use 'excess' energy. Only market will force a miner to use excess energy from renewables. Cheapest energy sources are renewables. Even now in some countries, at times energy price on the market drops below zero because renewables produce more than necessary at that time. And we are nowhere near the amount of renewable sources that will allow us to phase out fossil fuels. We need to overbuild renewables to the point that at times 90% of energy they'll produce will be the excess. Even transferring it away from the power stations would burn our energy grid to a crisp. We need to work on distributed energy sinks that can be collocated with renewable power stations that will be able to turn that excess energy into money. It might be bitcoins miners, it might be aluminum smelters. For our energy transformation to succeed it doesn't matter what it is as long as it incentivizes building renewable sources like mad. > 'excess' energy is energy we need to make viable and work together for finding solutions. Bitcoin destroys this motivation. I have no idea what do you even have in mind. This is a problem that is unsolvable by coming together and political action. It was proven conclusively by 50 years of attempts. Bitcoin along with technological progress in solar and wind are the first thing that points us to a solution to energy transformation that could happen even if people of the world were all against solving climate change. Economy, not politics is what shapes the world at such large scales. > Thanks to Bitcoin a global market can not only strip poor people from normal resources like oil, ors, metals but also from energy in any usable form. > Whatever it is doing it will find the cheapest energy possible and will consume it as long as the Bitcoin price allows it, totally independent of they type of energy. > Earning money through Bitcoin also not only incentive to eat up all cheap energy, it strips our society from a beneficial dripping effect. Yes. And that's why energy price will eventually rise to a point where mining bitcoins will be barely profitable and even that not at all times. Energy will be more expensive and smart governments at this point should work tirelessly on creating solutions offsetting rising energy prices for poor people. Some form of Universal Basic Income will be required. > Earning money through Bitcoin also not only incentive to eat up all cheap energy, it strips our society from a beneficial dripping effect. What is a dripping effect? > Asics consume chip production capacity. Yes. Another area where we have way too little manufacturing than we need. Which current chip shortages clearly indicate. Demand for ASICs can incentivize overbuilding fabs same way mining will incentivize renewable energy generation. And bticoin is not the only game in town. Mining ETC requires fairly complex chips. Like GPUs. It is already sending price signals to GPU manufacturers making manufacturing GPUs way more profitable than it would be without it. And GPUs power ton of scientific computation and our early ventures into AI. I've seen presentation by a scientist who, for his research, which was the point of presentation, used cluster of basically gaming hardware. And in an off hand note thanked the gamers for creating so much demand for such powerful hardware which made it a cheap commodity, so cheap that his research was possible. Overbuilding GPUs and fabs in general for crypto will power our future of scientific computing. > And of course let's be realistic: we have already a PoS system (our currencies) which is highly optimized. BTC doesn't even solve anything. Bitcoin solves nothing about money beside minor things in niche applications. It solves some problems that gold has which makes it attractive for investors. And BTC being attractive vessel for investment is what will finance global energy transformation. With zero political action required. > There is no positive thing we as a society gain from Bitcoin. > 99,999999% of all humans are getting hurt by it. > We all pay for Bitcoin. We'll see. Bitcoin is still decades from equilibrium. It turns money of greedy people who seek investments into energy production. I don't see how this won't make us move to renewables since they are already cheapest way to generate energy. If we got bitcoin when cheapest energy came from coal it could end us. But with technologies we have it can save us.

joelbondurant1 5y ago

thunkshift1 5y ago

Did you read the article? This is ‘waste’ gas that you encounter in the oil drilling process.. they are using that to extract some value from an otherwise harmful waste. What is wrong with that approach?

Aterio 5y ago
You can actually catch it and use it. And I don't mean BTC I mean normal heating etc. You could also generate energy and purt it into the grid. Instead you feed it hash search hardware. You consume that co2 for nothing. The same as before.