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Bloomberg: BTC Miner Made Millions in Credits by Shutting Rigs During Texas Heat

15 points by janandonly 4y ago

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
This is the system working as intended. Presumably, they would have used millions of dollars worth of electricity to earn slightly less than this amount in bitcoin, and this program meant they could cut out the middle man and make slightly more money while using far less energy, at a time when delivering it would have been very expensive for the grid. I'm not really a fan of bitcoin, but this is like a casino shutting down in a heatwave because the power company paid them more than they were going to earn by having the place lit up and cooled. Still a good thing (possibly even a better thing) if you don't like casinos for other reasons. More of this please, charge people more for using energy when it's expensive to generate, charge them less if they shift their loads away from busy times. It's a simple and effective way for us all to get cheaper energy, even if some of us waste it on nonsense.
- wmf 4y ago
  On one hand yes. But from a nocoiner perspective if this mining facility never existed in the first place then demand on the grid would be lower and there would be no need to turn anything off.
- qqqwerty 4y ago
  The problem here is that the bitcoin miners are very likely driving up electricity prices for everyone else while generating very little economic activity and value for the community. The millions of dollars that these miners are getting to turn off their rigs is quite literally coming from other rate payers. And the additional demand on the grid when they are operating is almost certainly pushing up prices outside of a handful of periods where they maybe significant excess electricity supply. In your example, a casino may have questionably social utility, but it does provide local jobs. And an aluminum smelter may be fairly automated, but it provides significant economic value. Bitcoin mining provides neither of these things.
  - janandonly 4y ago
    The more than one thousand employees of Texas largest BTC mining company (Riot) would disagree on this...
    - qqqwerty 4y ago
      From their own press release in July 2022[1] they mined $6.8M worth of BTC, and "earned" $9.8M in power credits. They are literally making more money by abusing the curtailment incentives then they are from mining itself. And 1k employees is not a lot of employees. 28 million Texans are paying significantly higher electricity prices so a handful of bitcoin mining companies, employing a few thousand people at most, can rake in profits. [1] https://www.riotblockchain.com/news-media/press-releases/detail/135/riot-blockchain-announces-july-2022-production-and https://www.riotblockchain.com/news-media/press-releases/det...

15 points by janandonly 4y ago

This is the system working as intended. Presumably, they would have used millions of dollars worth of electricity to earn slightly less than this amount in bitcoin, and this program meant they could cut out the middle man and make slightly more money while using far less energy, at a time when delivering it would have been very expensive for the grid. I'm not really a fan of bitcoin, but this is like a casino shutting down in a heatwave because the power company paid them more than they were going to earn by having the place lit up and cooled. Still a good thing (possibly even a better thing) if you don't like casinos for other reasons. More of this please, charge people more for using energy when it's expensive to generate, charge them less if they shift their loads away from busy times. It's a simple and effective way for us all to get cheaper energy, even if some of us waste it on nonsense.

wmf 4y ago
On one hand yes. But from a nocoiner perspective if this mining facility never existed in the first place then demand on the grid would be lower and there would be no need to turn anything off.
qqqwerty 4y ago
The problem here is that the bitcoin miners are very likely driving up electricity prices for everyone else while generating very little economic activity and value for the community. The millions of dollars that these miners are getting to turn off their rigs is quite literally coming from other rate payers. And the additional demand on the grid when they are operating is almost certainly pushing up prices outside of a handful of periods where they maybe significant excess electricity supply. In your example, a casino may have questionably social utility, but it does provide local jobs. And an aluminum smelter may be fairly automated, but it provides significant economic value. Bitcoin mining provides neither of these things.
- janandonly 4y ago
  The more than one thousand employees of Texas largest BTC mining company (Riot) would disagree on this...
  - qqqwerty 4y ago
    From their own press release in July 2022[1] they mined $6.8M worth of BTC, and "earned" $9.8M in power credits. They are literally making more money by abusing the curtailment incentives then they are from mining itself. And 1k employees is not a lot of employees. 28 million Texans are paying significantly higher electricity prices so a handful of bitcoin mining companies, employing a few thousand people at most, can rake in profits. [1] https://www.riotblockchain.com/news-media/press-releases/detail/135/riot-blockchain-announces-july-2022-production-and https://www.riotblockchain.com/news-media/press-releases/det...