4 ms·

This Gas would have stayed in the ground if it wasn’t for Bitcoin

36 points by labrador 4y ago

emteycz 4y ago
Nah, it would've been sold to Europe. Or at least should've been, it'd be super-weird to keep it in the ground during the current crisis.
- lelag 4y ago
  At least, there would have been a chance it went to some useful use-cases.
- MrRadar 4y ago
  These wells may not have been profitable if you had to run a pipeline to them to deliver the gas to a market where it could have been put to use, and therefore the headline would have been correct.
  - emteycz 4y ago
    We're past profitability concerns, EU is over-paying as much as it can afford so it doesn't need so much of the Russian gas - and Russia is not selling enough to fill the storage for winter.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    Not to mention, transporting liquid natural gas by ship is way more expensive than pipelines. Natural gas is significantly cheaper in the US than in other countries, and cheap fracking plus the expense of oceanic transport is the reason.
mirceal 4y ago
Getting tired of people on their high horses saving the environment by proposing to shut down bitcoin mining. Next time someone says something like this think about what would you think if someone suggested: you walk to the store instead of driving (5 miles? No worries, it' s healthy and good for the environment), you can only use 1 gallon of water per day, use daylight not electricity, eat only what you can grow yourself, stop using any type of plastic, computers (and datacenters) use a lot of energy - stop using them, alcohol? total waste of resources to produce and distribute. This could go on. There are reasonably good arguments to be made for a lot of things.
- antiverse 4y ago
  In terms of tradeoffs, shutting down an energy-parasitic cryptocurrency operation seems like a good move compared to shutting down a lot of other things that have, thus far, greatly benefited our society. I don't think this needs a [citation needed], as it's a pretty objective thing at this point that we've had to exchange some of the planet's resources to say, visit people on another continent or power an entire country or whatever. I think the misalignment here is that the bitcoin mining operation and what one person can do are not at all comparable, and what you're proposing we do would not really do much as the larger scale operations far exceed what even the entire community of HN would be able to accomplish.
  - mirceal 4y ago
    My point is not about bitcoin mining. It's about the slippery slope of deciding that X is good and Y is bad. Everyone has a blast until something you want to do gets banned.
    - withinboredom 4y ago
      It isn’t about “good” or “bad” but more about “fair use.” I think the right answer here is “if you want to mine, you need to use x% of alternative energy” so that energy will go somewhere more useful.
      - mirceal 4y ago
        Why? Why is it about fair use? And more importantly: who gets to decide what fair use is?
        withinboredom 4y ago
        If you walk into my house with a phone charger. Sure go at it. If you walk in with a toaster, oven, and a microwave, maybe you should pay part of the power bill? If an industry is using a large part of a finite resource, that doesn’t really advance humanity all that much, perhaps it shouldn’t get so much of that finite resource. Where that cutoff is, is anyone’s guess, but it should be an option. I’d say the same of any industry using a finite resource. Could there be worse offenders than mining? Certainly, but afaik, they are furthering human-kind. An imaginary currency that can’t be realistically spent like a currency and isn’t even running at planet-wide-scale (aka, 100% of every monetary transaction) yet but using a disproportionate amount of energy … yeah, that should be regulated.

36 points by labrador 4y ago

Nah, it would've been sold to Europe. Or at least should've been, it'd be super-weird to keep it in the ground during the current crisis.

lelag 4y ago
At least, there would have been a chance it went to some useful use-cases.
MrRadar 4y ago
These wells may not have been profitable if you had to run a pipeline to them to deliver the gas to a market where it could have been put to use, and therefore the headline would have been correct.
- emteycz 4y ago
  We're past profitability concerns, EU is over-paying as much as it can afford so it doesn't need so much of the Russian gas - and Russia is not selling enough to fill the storage for winter.
- DennisP 4y ago
  Not to mention, transporting liquid natural gas by ship is way more expensive than pipelines. Natural gas is significantly cheaper in the US than in other countries, and cheap fracking plus the expense of oceanic transport is the reason.

mirceal 4y ago

Getting tired of people on their high horses saving the environment by proposing to shut down bitcoin mining. Next time someone says something like this think about what would you think if someone suggested: you walk to the store instead of driving (5 miles? No worries, it' s healthy and good for the environment), you can only use 1 gallon of water per day, use daylight not electricity, eat only what you can grow yourself, stop using any type of plastic, computers (and datacenters) use a lot of energy - stop using them, alcohol? total waste of resources to produce and distribute. This could go on. There are reasonably good arguments to be made for a lot of things.

antiverse 4y ago
In terms of tradeoffs, shutting down an energy-parasitic cryptocurrency operation seems like a good move compared to shutting down a lot of other things that have, thus far, greatly benefited our society. I don't think this needs a [citation needed], as it's a pretty objective thing at this point that we've had to exchange some of the planet's resources to say, visit people on another continent or power an entire country or whatever. I think the misalignment here is that the bitcoin mining operation and what one person can do are not at all comparable, and what you're proposing we do would not really do much as the larger scale operations far exceed what even the entire community of HN would be able to accomplish.
- mirceal 4y ago
  My point is not about bitcoin mining. It's about the slippery slope of deciding that X is good and Y is bad. Everyone has a blast until something you want to do gets banned.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    It isn’t about “good” or “bad” but more about “fair use.” I think the right answer here is “if you want to mine, you need to use x% of alternative energy” so that energy will go somewhere more useful.
    - mirceal 4y ago
      Why? Why is it about fair use? And more importantly: who gets to decide what fair use is?
      - withinboredom 4y ago
        If you walk into my house with a phone charger. Sure go at it. If you walk in with a toaster, oven, and a microwave, maybe you should pay part of the power bill? If an industry is using a large part of a finite resource, that doesn’t really advance humanity all that much, perhaps it shouldn’t get so much of that finite resource. Where that cutoff is, is anyone’s guess, but it should be an option. I’d say the same of any industry using a finite resource. Could there be worse offenders than mining? Certainly, but afaik, they are furthering human-kind. An imaginary currency that can’t be realistically spent like a currency and isn’t even running at planet-wide-scale (aka, 100% of every monetary transaction) yet but using a disproportionate amount of energy … yeah, that should be regulated.