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I know that it is a polarising topic but it is possible to capture this methane and convert it into Bitcoin for a profit.[0] [0] https://www.whatbitcoindid.com

I know that it is a polarising topic but it is possible to capture this methane and convert it into Bitcoin for a profit.[0] [0] https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/turning-garbage-into-bitcoin https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/turning-garbage-into-...

zwirbl 4y ago
You could also use the generated electricity for something more useful
- nuccy 4y ago
  /sarcasm Or you can just burn it like Russia does [1] in enormous scales, just because they cannot stop gas production while reducing the transport to Europe to increase economic pressure. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/wfxzjr/russia_is_now_burning_natural_gas_in_large_enough/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/wfxzjr/russia_is_no...
  - moffkalast 4y ago
    That is really both hilarious and depressing.
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    Russia should generate bitcoin with that. And people say blockchain isn't a solution for everything.
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      Hm, now I wonder. Would that actually make sense for them? They’d have the hardware costs upfront, but could then actually use the gas instead of just burning it. Or do they not have enough gas power plants to use all that excess gas? Anyone with background information and/or some napkin math? ;)
      - misja111 4y ago
        Yeah this is exactly what the world needs. Finally we have a killer use case for Bitcoin: allow Russia to circumvent Western European sanctions by burning fossil fuels and generating money to buy weapons for their war in Ukraine.
        moonchrome 4y ago
        Nvidia would be all for it if it involved ETH.
  - greggsy 4y ago
    I hadn’t considered the momentum of outflows across the gas supply chain. Interesting.
  - Silverback_VII 4y ago
    I still don't understand why Moscow doesn't look like Dubai with all the resources Russians have.
    - redwood 4y ago
      The national wealth is not reinvested and instead is extracted by kleptocrats and invested into places like Miami and Dubai.. Honestly the bigger tragedy is that they're unable to put their brilliant population with wonderful education to use building a modern economy and instead put their minds in a vice, put them in prison, and force them to flee in droves. It's really a human tragedy
      - cpursley 4y ago
        Are you actually familiar with Russia (or just the Reddit/Twitter depiction of Russia)? For one, Russia has a lower prison population than the USA. And that's even with some absolutely ridiculous and archaic laws. Russian consumer and tech companies are on par or in many cases, surpass the US. Yandex Taxi (and their other services), Ozon, Wildberries, Kusvil (grocery), banking mobile apps, shipping/logistics services - these are just some examples.
        lazide 4y ago
        Not the poster, but I know quite a few native Russians and their description of the corruption and looting matches the posters description.
        cpursley 4y ago
        When was the last time they lived in Russia? That was true in the 90s and 2000's but things have changed drastically in the past 10 years.
        lazide 4y ago
        About that time, but have family and friends in Moscow and used to visit regularly until the war. What they noted is had started to get better (albeit still with corruption and kleptocrats everywhere outside of the big Moscow foreign companies) then with the sanctions everything imploded again - but it was still pretty awful. They’re pretty left leaning and the wife is in tech and had to leave because of the blatant discrimination/sexism against her though, so I’m sure that weighs heavily on her analysis.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Burning it is better than venting it unburned, which is still subsidized in the US (though some recent, bipartisann EPA changes will hopefully reduce this). Russia also leaks lots of it unburned too, which new satellite tech will be able to track, so hopefully there will be a global improvement on this front with well regulated oil and gas production being carbon taxed less than irresponsible production. An easy win, once you can confront people with irrefutable evidence, but sad it takes that do something so simple.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago
  I.e. just pipe it to a genset and just contribute to the local power grid.
- sharperguy 4y ago
  The issue is that in the majority locations, the amount of energy to be recaptured is too low, and the location of the landfill is too remote to justify building the infrastucture to distribute it. With bitcoin mining, the energy can be used on-site.
leetnewb 4y ago
There are many landfill gas projects operating in the US - see https://www.epa.gov/lmop/project-and-landfill-data-state https://www.epa.gov/lmop/project-and-landfill-data-state
janandonly 4y ago
This is a great option because it helps small and poor municipalities to retrieve the initial cost of setup up a Methane based power plant. After some x years of BTC mining, the initial investment is fully paid back. Afterwards, they can choose to continue mining BTC or simply hook up the power plant to the electricity grid. A classic win-win.
janandonly 4y ago
Ted Cruz seems to agree on that: Ted Cruz Says Bitcoin Mining Can Fix Texas’ Crumbling Electric Grid. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg8yj8/ted-cruz-says-bitcoin-mining-can-fix-texas-crumbling-electric-grid https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg8yj8/ted-cruz-says-bitcoin...
- Melting_Harps 4y ago
  > Ted Cruz seems to agree on that: Honestly, even as an optimistic Bitcoiner that is too much of a stretch; Texas' electricity grid is a nightmare of Enron proportions, and at best Bitcoin can provide stabilizers to the grid to offset some unnecessary expenses and turn off it's mining operations when the grid becomes overwhelemed by demand, what is really needed there is much more than what BTC can provide. It's use and investment into Wind is laudable, but what is needed as complete overhaul of how ERCOT does business, and I honestly doubt a corrupt politician like Ted Cruz (or anyone else from that state) will actually do anything about that as he will just go to Mexico when the grid fails... again. I said Texas was a bad place to relocate those miners after China banned it, and yet it still provides a significant amount of the hashing power proving the point that it cannot be banned, and even more showed up after the uprising situation in Kazakhstan earlier this year--El Salvador or Tonga could have used them, or even Iceland would have been a better choice. And still it went ahead and mining operations were backed by tech 'luminaries' like Peter Thiel, which were followed by continuous winter and summer based outages and blackouts, proving that just coaxing something as energy demanding as BTC is far more complex than just shoe-horning something that sounds 'green.'

zwirbl 4y ago

You could also use the generated electricity for something more useful

nuccy 4y ago
/sarcasm Or you can just burn it like Russia does [1] in enormous scales, just because they cannot stop gas production while reducing the transport to Europe to increase economic pressure. 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/wfxzjr/russia_is_now_burning_natural_gas_in_large_enough/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/wfxzjr/russia_is_no...
- moffkalast 4y ago
  That is really both hilarious and depressing.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  Russia should generate bitcoin with that. And people say blockchain isn't a solution for everything.
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    Hm, now I wonder. Would that actually make sense for them? They’d have the hardware costs upfront, but could then actually use the gas instead of just burning it. Or do they not have enough gas power plants to use all that excess gas? Anyone with background information and/or some napkin math? ;)
    - misja111 4y ago
      Yeah this is exactly what the world needs. Finally we have a killer use case for Bitcoin: allow Russia to circumvent Western European sanctions by burning fossil fuels and generating money to buy weapons for their war in Ukraine.
      - moonchrome 4y ago
        Nvidia would be all for it if it involved ETH.
- greggsy 4y ago
  I hadn’t considered the momentum of outflows across the gas supply chain. Interesting.
- Silverback_VII 4y ago
  I still don't understand why Moscow doesn't look like Dubai with all the resources Russians have.
  - redwood 4y ago
    The national wealth is not reinvested and instead is extracted by kleptocrats and invested into places like Miami and Dubai.. Honestly the bigger tragedy is that they're unable to put their brilliant population with wonderful education to use building a modern economy and instead put their minds in a vice, put them in prison, and force them to flee in droves. It's really a human tragedy
    - cpursley 4y ago
      Are you actually familiar with Russia (or just the Reddit/Twitter depiction of Russia)? For one, Russia has a lower prison population than the USA. And that's even with some absolutely ridiculous and archaic laws. Russian consumer and tech companies are on par or in many cases, surpass the US. Yandex Taxi (and their other services), Ozon, Wildberries, Kusvil (grocery), banking mobile apps, shipping/logistics services - these are just some examples.
      - lazide 4y ago
        Not the poster, but I know quite a few native Russians and their description of the corruption and looting matches the posters description.
        cpursley 4y ago
        When was the last time they lived in Russia? That was true in the 90s and 2000's but things have changed drastically in the past 10 years.
        lazide 4y ago
        About that time, but have family and friends in Moscow and used to visit regularly until the war. What they noted is had started to get better (albeit still with corruption and kleptocrats everywhere outside of the big Moscow foreign companies) then with the sanctions everything imploded again - but it was still pretty awful. They’re pretty left leaning and the wife is in tech and had to leave because of the blatant discrimination/sexism against her though, so I’m sure that weighs heavily on her analysis.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Burning it is better than venting it unburned, which is still subsidized in the US (though some recent, bipartisann EPA changes will hopefully reduce this). Russia also leaks lots of it unburned too, which new satellite tech will be able to track, so hopefully there will be a global improvement on this front with well regulated oil and gas production being carbon taxed less than irresponsible production. An easy win, once you can confront people with irrefutable evidence, but sad it takes that do something so simple.
throwaway0a5e 4y ago
I.e. just pipe it to a genset and just contribute to the local power grid.
sharperguy 4y ago
The issue is that in the majority locations, the amount of energy to be recaptured is too low, and the location of the landfill is too remote to justify building the infrastucture to distribute it. With bitcoin mining, the energy can be used on-site.

leetnewb 4y ago

There are many landfill gas projects operating in the US - see https://www.epa.gov/lmop/project-and-landfill-data-state https://www.epa.gov/lmop/project-and-landfill-data-state

janandonly 4y ago

This is a great option because it helps small and poor municipalities to retrieve the initial cost of setup up a Methane based power plant. After some x years of BTC mining, the initial investment is fully paid back. Afterwards, they can choose to continue mining BTC or simply hook up the power plant to the electricity grid. A classic win-win.

janandonly 4y ago

Ted Cruz seems to agree on that: Ted Cruz Says Bitcoin Mining Can Fix Texas’ Crumbling Electric Grid. https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg8yj8/ted-cruz-says-bitcoin-mining-can-fix-texas-crumbling-electric-grid https://www.vice.com/en/article/jg8yj8/ted-cruz-says-bitcoin...

Melting_Harps 4y ago
> Ted Cruz seems to agree on that: Honestly, even as an optimistic Bitcoiner that is too much of a stretch; Texas' electricity grid is a nightmare of Enron proportions, and at best Bitcoin can provide stabilizers to the grid to offset some unnecessary expenses and turn off it's mining operations when the grid becomes overwhelemed by demand, what is really needed there is much more than what BTC can provide. It's use and investment into Wind is laudable, but what is needed as complete overhaul of how ERCOT does business, and I honestly doubt a corrupt politician like Ted Cruz (or anyone else from that state) will actually do anything about that as he will just go to Mexico when the grid fails... again. I said Texas was a bad place to relocate those miners after China banned it, and yet it still provides a significant amount of the hashing power proving the point that it cannot be banned, and even more showed up after the uprising situation in Kazakhstan earlier this year--El Salvador or Tonga could have used them, or even Iceland would have been a better choice. And still it went ahead and mining operations were backed by tech 'luminaries' like Peter Thiel, which were followed by continuous winter and summer based outages and blackouts, proving that just coaxing something as energy demanding as BTC is far more complex than just shoe-horning something that sounds 'green.'