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I heard an interesting argument for Bitcoin recently. It represents a way to move energy around the world wirelessly. For instance, you can use geothermal power

I heard an interesting argument for Bitcoin recently. It represents a way to move energy around the world wirelessly. For instance, you can use geothermal power in a very isolated, cold climate that previously would be unusable for any purpose. As Bitcoin’s power needs are decentralized, all it needs is an internet connection. You could have a Bitcoin mine in outer space, if you wanted. Not sure why I’m being downvoted - maybe someone smarter than me can explain it better. I’m too tired to figure out how to put this into words. But basically, the earth has a total energy amount that can be used. Bitcoin can use energy in places you couldn’t get to before, so in a sense, you’re able to do work with isolated energy in a given remote locaton and send the output of that work via the internet to somewhere else.

Gravityloss 5y ago
Interesting. I could heat my home with bitcoin like that. /s
- throwaway73838 5y ago
  Ironically, if you had a Bitcoin mining set up in your home, you’d be more worried about keeping it cool. But you raise a good point - heat is another potential positive externality/resource of Bitcoin mining. Imagine if instead of heaters, we all had decentralized mining rigs to warm our houses?
  - pjerem 5y ago
    Well, they would be like electric space heaters. Inefficient vs heat pumps. Sure, you'd get some coins on top of it. But you (I) would be still considering this to be a waste of energy.
    - throwaway73838 5y ago
      Not really. You would be doing a portion of work that would be done anyway, but instead, it’s being done in your house, for free, and you get a warm house. That’s a positive externality. Much more efficient than using energy for the sole purpose of creating heat.
      - amptorn 5y ago
        It's not free! You have to pay for the electricity and the expensive mining hardware! And it's less energy efficient than heating your house using conventional means.
    - thinkmassive 5y ago
      You can augment a heat pump with a miner that uses immersion cooling
amptorn 5y ago
So by "move energy" you mean "move energy demand".
- throwaway73838 5y ago
  Essentially. It could be entirely generated from sources of energy which could not be utilized for any other purpose. There is a world of untapped energy that is only restricted by isolation. So you could entirely run bitcoin without increasing global energy output, if that makes sense. There would be no opportunity cost of lost power to current grids, as it is using power that cannot be used for any other purpose. In other words, transporting energy is usually the limiting factor. That’s why you can’t just have all your solar panels in the desert, for instance. Moving power is too difficult. But with Bitcoin, you don’t need to move the power, just the product. So think of all the energy currently devoted to printing money, or running the computer systems that prop up the global financial market - if you transitioned to Bitcoin, in theory all of that power could be saved, as Bitcoin would be entirely using power that cannot otherwise be used.
  - amptorn 5y ago
    > There is a world of untapped energy that is only restricted by isolation. So you could entirely run bitcoin without increasing global energy output, if that makes sense. No? Using previously untapped energy for Bitcoin, or for anything, does, in fact, increase global energy output.
    - lowkey 5y ago
      Increasing global energy output isn't a negative, provided that energy output is clean energy. In fact, developing our ability to produce and use energy is virtually synonymous with the development of human civilization.
      - amptorn 5y ago
        Yes, actually it is negative, due to the emissions and waste involved in setting up energy production in the first place. That negative has to be offset by using the energy to do something useful.
ben_w 5y ago
The problem is that doesn’t actually move any energy. You can’t take a bitcoin that has already been minted and turn it directly into something useful like electricity.
- throwaway73838 5y ago
  Let’s make it simple. Let’s say you live in a house in a place where the sun never shines and have ten dollars. One electricity costs one dollar. But you spend your ten dollars on a wireless solar mining rig that lives in the desert ten thousand miles away. Now you’re using this power, that previously only cactuses could use, to generate Bitcoin. You take the Bitcoin via the net, and buy electricity with it in your home town, which you can do as long as the sun is shining in the desert. Now, with all this money, you build a renewable geothermal power plant under your house. Boom, passive energy generation. Now generalize this principle to millions of people, and you get the idea.
  - D13Fd 5y ago
    Another instance of adding bitcoin where it is unnecessary. Using your example, you live in a place without sunlight and you buy a solar mining rig far away. You then use that power to do literally anything that generates money, including just straight selling it to someone or feeding it back into the grid. Then you use that money to buy electricity in your home. Boom! You've "move[d] energy around the world wirelessly" without bitcoin. I'll leave out the part about building a "renewable geothermal power plant under your house" because I'm guessing it's a joke.
    - throwaway73838 5y ago
      You’ve missed the point. What are you going to do with the solar power in the remote desert? There are no people within hundreds of kilometers. You can’t just mail them the electricity. That’s where Bitcoin comes in, because you can fully utilize that power and then ‘mail’ the output via the internet.
      - 5y ago
woodruffw 5y ago
Bitcoin does not "move" energy. You could exchange a Bitcoin produced with some quantity of energy in one location for another quantity of energy in a different location, but the energy has not moved with the token. Instead, you're just burning those quantities of energy twice. I've used the oil barrel analogy before: an empty oil barrel is a proof that someone has used the oil within it, much like a Bitcoin is proof of a certain amount of work. But I can't show up to another power plant with that empty oil barrel and expect them to manifest power from it: they have to burn another barrel of oil to produce the energy equivalent. This is of course also ridiculous, since nobody would accept payment for energy in the form of a proof of previous energy wasted. And yet, that's fundamentally what Bitcoin is, except laundered through a tokenization layer to obscure that fact. To tie it together: Bitcoin can only ever double the token-equivalent demand (not necessarily volume) for energy, never reduce it. Using Bitcoin for energy exchange is always roughly half as efficient as fiat.
- throwaway73838 5y ago
  I’ll try and explain it better. Money is analogous to work. You can’t just conjure up money (that would be illegal). If I have 50 dollars, I can pay someone to mow my grass. I have just converted potential energy (money) into work. In the same way, if I have a geothermal power plant in a remote Scandinavian wilderness, I can use that power to generate Bitcoin, and use that store of value to transfer to me which I can then convert into work by employing people, either directly as a service, or indirectly through a good. I hope that makes more sense now. To use your oil example - it would be like me mining a barrel of oil in location A, then converting it entirely into Bitcoin, sending the coin to me via the internet, then using the Bitcoin to buy another barrel of oil close to my home. I now have a barrel of oil I did not previously have, because I’ve transferred value (energy) from remote place A to local place B virtually.
  - johnsonlambo 5y ago
    This can be done with current dollars on a screen, the thousands of different cryptos out in the ether, gold, etc. Some take less energy and some take more. Then they can be converted for work, a service, goods etc. This is not new or solely a characteristic of btc.
amptorn 5y ago
> Bitcoin can use energy in places you couldn’t get to before You're suggesting a scenario where, instead of using energy at point A to do useful work, we use energy at point B to generate Bitcoin to buy energy at point A to do the useful work. In this scenario, 1. the same amount of energy is still being generated at point A, and 2. an incredible amount of additional energy is being generated at point B for no reason
- throwaway392321 5y ago
  > 2. an incredible amount of additional energy is being generated at point B for no reason 1) Why would the amount of energy at point B be "incredible"? It would be proportional to the amount of energy that is needed at point A. Either both are incredible or neither is, all that matters is the scale of this example. 2) Why would there be "no reason" for doing this? The reason is clear and you obviously understand it-- to buy energy at point A. 3) Energy can not be generated. Humans can in some cases make use of energy for some other purpose. The total amount of energy is always the same. If the stranded energy in this example was geothermal, adding a geothermal energy plant would not increase the total amount of energy, it would just channel some of that energy into something humans can get something out of, rather than it just dissipating to heat directly.
  - amptorn 5y ago
    - throwaway392321 5y ago
nootropicat 5y ago
It doesn't move any energy, it adds new energy consumption while producing nothing of actual value. There are ponzi coins and tokens that don't need PoW to exist, that's a significantly less damaging way for people to satisfy their ponzi itch. Eventually mining is self-extinguishing as collectively bitcoin holders only lose wealth. There aren't many potential new buyers left at this point, so the set of bitcoin holders can't change that much. On a long time scale bitcoin is a method to make people that think it's a good idea poorer than everyone else, at least in the average case. Social darwinism.

Gravityloss 5y ago

Interesting. I could heat my home with bitcoin like that. /s

throwaway73838 5y ago
Ironically, if you had a Bitcoin mining set up in your home, you’d be more worried about keeping it cool. But you raise a good point - heat is another potential positive externality/resource of Bitcoin mining. Imagine if instead of heaters, we all had decentralized mining rigs to warm our houses?
- pjerem 5y ago
  Well, they would be like electric space heaters. Inefficient vs heat pumps. Sure, you'd get some coins on top of it. But you (I) would be still considering this to be a waste of energy.
  - throwaway73838 5y ago
    Not really. You would be doing a portion of work that would be done anyway, but instead, it’s being done in your house, for free, and you get a warm house. That’s a positive externality. Much more efficient than using energy for the sole purpose of creating heat.
    - amptorn 5y ago
      It's not free! You have to pay for the electricity and the expensive mining hardware! And it's less energy efficient than heating your house using conventional means.
  - thinkmassive 5y ago
    You can augment a heat pump with a miner that uses immersion cooling

amptorn 5y ago

So by "move energy" you mean "move energy demand".

throwaway73838 5y ago
Essentially. It could be entirely generated from sources of energy which could not be utilized for any other purpose. There is a world of untapped energy that is only restricted by isolation. So you could entirely run bitcoin without increasing global energy output, if that makes sense. There would be no opportunity cost of lost power to current grids, as it is using power that cannot be used for any other purpose. In other words, transporting energy is usually the limiting factor. That’s why you can’t just have all your solar panels in the desert, for instance. Moving power is too difficult. But with Bitcoin, you don’t need to move the power, just the product. So think of all the energy currently devoted to printing money, or running the computer systems that prop up the global financial market - if you transitioned to Bitcoin, in theory all of that power could be saved, as Bitcoin would be entirely using power that cannot otherwise be used.
- amptorn 5y ago
  > There is a world of untapped energy that is only restricted by isolation. So you could entirely run bitcoin without increasing global energy output, if that makes sense. No? Using previously untapped energy for Bitcoin, or for anything, does, in fact, increase global energy output.
  - lowkey 5y ago
    Increasing global energy output isn't a negative, provided that energy output is clean energy. In fact, developing our ability to produce and use energy is virtually synonymous with the development of human civilization.
    - amptorn 5y ago
      Yes, actually it is negative, due to the emissions and waste involved in setting up energy production in the first place. That negative has to be offset by using the energy to do something useful.

ben_w 5y ago

The problem is that doesn’t actually move any energy. You can’t take a bitcoin that has already been minted and turn it directly into something useful like electricity.

throwaway73838 5y ago
Let’s make it simple. Let’s say you live in a house in a place where the sun never shines and have ten dollars. One electricity costs one dollar. But you spend your ten dollars on a wireless solar mining rig that lives in the desert ten thousand miles away. Now you’re using this power, that previously only cactuses could use, to generate Bitcoin. You take the Bitcoin via the net, and buy electricity with it in your home town, which you can do as long as the sun is shining in the desert. Now, with all this money, you build a renewable geothermal power plant under your house. Boom, passive energy generation. Now generalize this principle to millions of people, and you get the idea.
- D13Fd 5y ago
  Another instance of adding bitcoin where it is unnecessary. Using your example, you live in a place without sunlight and you buy a solar mining rig far away. You then use that power to do literally anything that generates money, including just straight selling it to someone or feeding it back into the grid. Then you use that money to buy electricity in your home. Boom! You've "move[d] energy around the world wirelessly" without bitcoin. I'll leave out the part about building a "renewable geothermal power plant under your house" because I'm guessing it's a joke.
  - throwaway73838 5y ago
    You’ve missed the point. What are you going to do with the solar power in the remote desert? There are no people within hundreds of kilometers. You can’t just mail them the electricity. That’s where Bitcoin comes in, because you can fully utilize that power and then ‘mail’ the output via the internet.
    - 5y ago

woodruffw 5y ago

Bitcoin does not "move" energy. You could exchange a Bitcoin produced with some quantity of energy in one location for another quantity of energy in a different location, but the energy has not moved with the token. Instead, you're just burning those quantities of energy twice. I've used the oil barrel analogy before: an empty oil barrel is a proof that someone has used the oil within it, much like a Bitcoin is proof of a certain amount of work. But I can't show up to another power plant with that empty oil barrel and expect them to manifest power from it: they have to burn another barrel of oil to produce the energy equivalent. This is of course also ridiculous, since nobody would accept payment for energy in the form of a proof of previous energy wasted. And yet, that's fundamentally what Bitcoin is, except laundered through a tokenization layer to obscure that fact. To tie it together: Bitcoin can only ever double the token-equivalent demand (not necessarily volume) for energy, never reduce it. Using Bitcoin for energy exchange is always roughly half as efficient as fiat.

throwaway73838 5y ago
I’ll try and explain it better. Money is analogous to work. You can’t just conjure up money (that would be illegal). If I have 50 dollars, I can pay someone to mow my grass. I have just converted potential energy (money) into work. In the same way, if I have a geothermal power plant in a remote Scandinavian wilderness, I can use that power to generate Bitcoin, and use that store of value to transfer to me which I can then convert into work by employing people, either directly as a service, or indirectly through a good. I hope that makes more sense now. To use your oil example - it would be like me mining a barrel of oil in location A, then converting it entirely into Bitcoin, sending the coin to me via the internet, then using the Bitcoin to buy another barrel of oil close to my home. I now have a barrel of oil I did not previously have, because I’ve transferred value (energy) from remote place A to local place B virtually.
- johnsonlambo 5y ago
  This can be done with current dollars on a screen, the thousands of different cryptos out in the ether, gold, etc. Some take less energy and some take more. Then they can be converted for work, a service, goods etc. This is not new or solely a characteristic of btc.

amptorn 5y ago

> Bitcoin can use energy in places you couldn’t get to before You're suggesting a scenario where, instead of using energy at point A to do useful work, we use energy at point B to generate Bitcoin to buy energy at point A to do the useful work. In this scenario, 1. the same amount of energy is still being generated at point A, and 2. an incredible amount of additional energy is being generated at point B for no reason

throwaway392321 5y ago
> 2. an incredible amount of additional energy is being generated at point B for no reason 1) Why would the amount of energy at point B be "incredible"? It would be proportional to the amount of energy that is needed at point A. Either both are incredible or neither is, all that matters is the scale of this example. 2) Why would there be "no reason" for doing this? The reason is clear and you obviously understand it-- to buy energy at point A. 3) Energy can not be generated. Humans can in some cases make use of energy for some other purpose. The total amount of energy is always the same. If the stranded energy in this example was geothermal, adding a geothermal energy plant would not increase the total amount of energy, it would just channel some of that energy into something humans can get something out of, rather than it just dissipating to heat directly.
- amptorn 5y ago
  - throwaway392321 5y ago

nootropicat 5y ago

It doesn't move any energy, it adds new energy consumption while producing nothing of actual value. There are ponzi coins and tokens that don't need PoW to exist, that's a significantly less damaging way for people to satisfy their ponzi itch. Eventually mining is self-extinguishing as collectively bitcoin holders only lose wealth. There aren't many potential new buyers left at this point, so the set of bitcoin holders can't change that much. On a long time scale bitcoin is a method to make people that think it's a good idea poorer than everyone else, at least in the average case. Social darwinism.