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Is it fanciful to hope this could - in and of itself - allow several polluting power stations to be decommissioned, and/or appreciably reduce energy prices for

Is it fanciful to hope this could - in and of itself - allow several polluting power stations to be decommissioned, and/or appreciably reduce energy prices for the rest of us?

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
A quick look at https://whattomine.com/ https://whattomine.com/ shows that several altcoins are within 70% profitability of mining Ethereum. That math is going to change as the Ethereum miners reconfigure for altcoins and the difficulties change, but the bottom line is that mining will continue as long as some coin is still profitable to mine.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  I've read that a lot of former ETH miners have sold or are planning to sell their rigs (I think this is related to the submission yesterday about the GPU shortage being over[1], as Ethereum is usually mined on GPUs) We'll see if it plays out, but cryptocurrency prices falling have certainly reduced the energy consumption as well (it becomes less profitable to mine at a given difficulty when your mining reward is worth less). If Ethereum does eventually manage to overtake Bitcoin, that'll bode well for crypto's energy footprint in the long term (fingers crossed for this happening, or at least for there to not be another Bitcoin/PoW bubble) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31953662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31953662
- xur17 4y ago
  But Ethereum mining rewards are orders of magnitude greater than the mining rewards for all of the altcoins (combined). The attack cost on this page [0] is a good reference for the relative mining incentive. Given this, a LOT of mining capacity is going to go offline when this occurs. [0] https://www.crypto51.app/ https://www.crypto51.app/
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  And altcoins are a lot riskier too. They tend to come and fall out of favour.
chrisco255 4y ago
It's not that significant in the grand scheme of things. Even if BTC disappeared, your electricity bill would not be noticeably cheaper.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  This is probably true. The first part of the GP's post (about unnecessary pollution) does apply however.
everfree 4y ago
Edit: Never mind, my calculations were definitely wrong.
- patrickyeon 4y ago
  Not at all. 3.5 Billion kWh is 3.5 TWh.
- elromulous 4y ago
  Something here it not computing. They said Ethereum energy consumption is similar to the Netherlands. This would mean a single coal planet can power the Netherlands 35 times over. Some numbers are definitely wrong here.
- keishebmdod 4y ago
  3.5 billion kWh = 3.5 TWh, not 3500 TWh
- jcranmer 4y ago
  Those numbers don't look right. A plant running at 90% uptime is ~8000 h/yr, and a typical large power plant produces 100s of MW. So you should be looking at a yearly output in ~1000s GWh/yr range.
- notahacker 4y ago
  A terawatt is a trillion watts (or a billion kilowatts), so no, you're out by 3 orders of magnitude and Ethereum ceasing to use PoW would be the equivalent of losing the need for 30-40 typical coal power plants (or a handful of the world's largest coal power plants)

Is it fanciful to hope this could - in and of itself - allow several polluting power stations to be decommissioned, and/or appreciably reduce energy prices for the rest of us?

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

A quick look at https://whattomine.com/ https://whattomine.com/ shows that several altcoins are within 70% profitability of mining Ethereum. That math is going to change as the Ethereum miners reconfigure for altcoins and the difficulties change, but the bottom line is that mining will continue as long as some coin is still profitable to mine.

pcthrowaway 4y ago
I've read that a lot of former ETH miners have sold or are planning to sell their rigs (I think this is related to the submission yesterday about the GPU shortage being over[1], as Ethereum is usually mined on GPUs) We'll see if it plays out, but cryptocurrency prices falling have certainly reduced the energy consumption as well (it becomes less profitable to mine at a given difficulty when your mining reward is worth less). If Ethereum does eventually manage to overtake Bitcoin, that'll bode well for crypto's energy footprint in the long term (fingers crossed for this happening, or at least for there to not be another Bitcoin/PoW bubble) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31953662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31953662
xur17 4y ago
But Ethereum mining rewards are orders of magnitude greater than the mining rewards for all of the altcoins (combined). The attack cost on this page [0] is a good reference for the relative mining incentive. Given this, a LOT of mining capacity is going to go offline when this occurs. [0] https://www.crypto51.app/ https://www.crypto51.app/
GekkePrutser 4y ago
And altcoins are a lot riskier too. They tend to come and fall out of favour.

chrisco255 4y ago

It's not that significant in the grand scheme of things. Even if BTC disappeared, your electricity bill would not be noticeably cheaper.

woodruffw 4y ago
This is probably true. The first part of the GP's post (about unnecessary pollution) does apply however.

everfree 4y ago

Edit: Never mind, my calculations were definitely wrong.

patrickyeon 4y ago
Not at all. 3.5 Billion kWh is 3.5 TWh.
elromulous 4y ago
Something here it not computing. They said Ethereum energy consumption is similar to the Netherlands. This would mean a single coal planet can power the Netherlands 35 times over. Some numbers are definitely wrong here.
keishebmdod 4y ago
3.5 billion kWh = 3.5 TWh, not 3500 TWh
jcranmer 4y ago
Those numbers don't look right. A plant running at 90% uptime is ~8000 h/yr, and a typical large power plant produces 100s of MW. So you should be looking at a yearly output in ~1000s GWh/yr range.
notahacker 4y ago
A terawatt is a trillion watts (or a billion kilowatts), so no, you're out by 3 orders of magnitude and Ethereum ceasing to use PoW would be the equivalent of losing the need for 30-40 typical coal power plants (or a handful of the world's largest coal power plants)