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What are the massive negative externalities? Port of of Work/Waste L1s like BTC and ETH burn a fuck ton of power, but it’s climate impact is mostly in places wh

What are the massive negative externalities? Port of of Work/Waste L1s like BTC and ETH burn a fuck ton of power, but it’s climate impact is mostly in places where sketchy municipal managers with cheap coal would be burning it anyhow. They also drive massive interest in renewables and soak up a fuck ton of otherwise wasted renewable electricity. When the aluminum market tanked with COVID the ETH boom caused a net increase in Icelandic geothermal exploitation. Dirty mid-level PRC officials in NK-adjacent, coal rich provinces are a problem, but a different problem than BTC mining. There’s arguable nothing on earth keeping so much renewable energy in-demand, fully-loaded, at all possible times than blockchain. So what’s your beef?

jeromegv 4y ago
So burning all this power is actually "good" because... we would waste this energy otherwise? That's non-sense. Everything you just said is just made up and backed by absolutely no studies. And you would need studies to prove that because it goes against everything we know about energy. If our energy consumption is increasing, then new energy supply must come up to fill that gap, and more often than not, it's not renewable.
- benreesman 4y ago
  PoW blockchain mining is like the absolute sweet spot for surplus renewables: it’s time insensitive, energy-intensive, and fucking lucrative. I’m a little reluctant to write off anything putting massive upward pressure on photovoltaic efficiency. I don’t remember where I read the thing about Iceland, but I was trying to buy a bunch of NVIDIA cards at the time and every supplier I spoke to was like: “Iceland bro, sorry”. If you’re just against this thing by all means be against it. I’m certainly against parts of it. But whether some sketchy-ass coal from China gets used to mine BitCoin or gets shipped to NK to run whatever godawful shit they’re up to? I hope NK is just mining BTC, because I can think of about a zillion worse things they could be doing with off-the-books coal. Ultimately HN isn’t a speculation society, and if you really think I’m in outer space on this tell me so and I’ll carve an hour or three out of a busy work week to pull all the footnotes and resoundingly corner you with facts and figures. But if you just don’t like BitCoin? Well I don’t exactly love it either, and we can leave it at that.
  - pavlov 4y ago
    If putting NVIDIA cards behind some solar panels or Icelandic geothermal is such a massively lucrative operation, why did NVIDIA recently report a 52% year-on-year decline in sales of its crypto mining GPUs? It doesn’t add up. Based on the numbers I’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe that crypto mining on renewables mostly just isn’t anywhere near profitable. The big operators all seem to be taking advantage of cheap fossil fuels. Of course if we could ban that and force mining to surplus renewables only, then fine — but it seems a long way off.
    - benreesman 4y ago
      So I don’t track this closely but I’m generally of the opinion (and do correct me) that NVIDIA’s anti-mining firmware tends to last ~1 day before someone turns it into a perfectly mining-suited card. So to the extent they’re breaking out crypto cards on the quarterly? Eh, I haven’t seen a 3090RTX on Amazon or at my Best Buy at MSRP a single time since it was released, though in fairness I sucked it up and bought the ones I needed at 3.5x MSRP some time ago, maybe it’s changed. And as to mining on geo or PV or wind or whatever not being profitable? Wind blows at night, sun shines in Arizona, and geothermal is always on. I don’t think that it’s tough to get NVIDIA gear at retail because people are running a lot of Christmas lights. I think Ethermine is making a fucking mint, but like all such “no investors welcome” type ventures, I’m only speculating.

jeromegv 4y ago

So burning all this power is actually "good" because... we would waste this energy otherwise? That's non-sense. Everything you just said is just made up and backed by absolutely no studies. And you would need studies to prove that because it goes against everything we know about energy. If our energy consumption is increasing, then new energy supply must come up to fill that gap, and more often than not, it's not renewable.

benreesman 4y ago
PoW blockchain mining is like the absolute sweet spot for surplus renewables: it’s time insensitive, energy-intensive, and fucking lucrative. I’m a little reluctant to write off anything putting massive upward pressure on photovoltaic efficiency. I don’t remember where I read the thing about Iceland, but I was trying to buy a bunch of NVIDIA cards at the time and every supplier I spoke to was like: “Iceland bro, sorry”. If you’re just against this thing by all means be against it. I’m certainly against parts of it. But whether some sketchy-ass coal from China gets used to mine BitCoin or gets shipped to NK to run whatever godawful shit they’re up to? I hope NK is just mining BTC, because I can think of about a zillion worse things they could be doing with off-the-books coal. Ultimately HN isn’t a speculation society, and if you really think I’m in outer space on this tell me so and I’ll carve an hour or three out of a busy work week to pull all the footnotes and resoundingly corner you with facts and figures. But if you just don’t like BitCoin? Well I don’t exactly love it either, and we can leave it at that.
- pavlov 4y ago
  If putting NVIDIA cards behind some solar panels or Icelandic geothermal is such a massively lucrative operation, why did NVIDIA recently report a 52% year-on-year decline in sales of its crypto mining GPUs? It doesn’t add up. Based on the numbers I’ve seen, I’m inclined to believe that crypto mining on renewables mostly just isn’t anywhere near profitable. The big operators all seem to be taking advantage of cheap fossil fuels. Of course if we could ban that and force mining to surplus renewables only, then fine — but it seems a long way off.
  - benreesman 4y ago
    So I don’t track this closely but I’m generally of the opinion (and do correct me) that NVIDIA’s anti-mining firmware tends to last ~1 day before someone turns it into a perfectly mining-suited card. So to the extent they’re breaking out crypto cards on the quarterly? Eh, I haven’t seen a 3090RTX on Amazon or at my Best Buy at MSRP a single time since it was released, though in fairness I sucked it up and bought the ones I needed at 3.5x MSRP some time ago, maybe it’s changed. And as to mining on geo or PV or wind or whatever not being profitable? Wind blows at night, sun shines in Arizona, and geothermal is always on. I don’t think that it’s tough to get NVIDIA gear at retail because people are running a lot of Christmas lights. I think Ethermine is making a fucking mint, but like all such “no investors welcome” type ventures, I’m only speculating.