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> in fact, continues to harm its local communities by essentially "hogging" low-cost power allocations that put the rest of the community's power prices in dang

> in fact, continues to harm its local communities by essentially "hogging" low-cost power allocations that put the rest of the community's power prices in danger. I've been to coinmint and know how they get their power. That isn't fact or truth. Their power comes directly from the Moses-Saunders dam via dedicated high voltage lines that they actually pay quite a lot on transmission costs (aka: maintenance of the lines and the dam). You can literally trace the lines from the dam to the plant, in google maps. On top of it, the local area is really spread out (sparsely populated) and doesn't have that large of power requirements. Especially not compared with the Alcoa plant that was once there. You can't just direct the power elsewhere... if they could, it would have already been done decades ago. I don't know what is expected there to 'give back'... Massena is a tiny community and doesn't have much in terms of qualified employees. I know that coinmint has had a lot of issues with people they've hired in the past. When I was doing all my research on the area there wasn't even local schools that you could hire from. If anything the fact that the place is so remote, is a major problem and part of why coinmint isn't a lot larger.

mrguyorama 3y ago
Every watt consumed must be created, and every extra watt a bitcoin mining operation uses is a watt that can't do anything else. And using "surplus" energy merely keeps electricity expensive. Bitcoin wasting power is as designed. Having to use up a certain amount of watt/hours per operation is the entire "protection" mechanism built into the bitcoin protocol. Mining operations have few employees because there isn't much work to do.
- latchkey 3y ago
  > Every watt consumed must be created, and every extra watt a bitcoin mining operation uses is a watt that can't do anything else. And using "surplus" energy merely keeps electricity expensive. No, that's not how large scale commercial power works. Please study the history of the Moses-Saunders dam. I've been to the Hawkins Point Visitors Center and studied the history, have you? > Bitcoin wasting power is as designed. 'wasting' is the wrong word there. It is converting power into work in order to validate blocks of transactions. We have tellers in banks who drive their cars into nice air conditioned offices every single day, that effectively do the same thing. Is that also wasting power in your eyes? > Mining operations have few employees because there isn't much work to do. Speaking as someone who's run very large mining operations, that is untrue. There is a ton of work, but it also requires relatively skilled labor since most of the ongoing work is maintenance of the equipment. Of course it doesn't require hundreds of people like the old aluminum smelters, but it also isn't creating a superfund site. I don't see why computerized solutions should be expected to create massive amounts of jobs over the long term. Massena is in the middle of nowhere upstate NY and was decimated when the Alcoa plants shut down. Population in 2010 is a whopping 12k. The people who are left are trained as factory aluminum smelters, not computer technicians.
  - kotaKat 3y ago
    > I don't see why computerized solutions should be expected to create massive amounts of jobs over the long term. Because that's what Coinmint dangled over Massena village and town administrators to coerce them into handing over the Alcoa property and power allocations without knowing what they were doing. I sure wonder where those "150 jobs" are that Coinmint said they'd hire here.
    - latchkey 3y ago
      Right, height of the bull market hopefulness, back in 2017. I'm sure they honestly thought things would get that large. It is also somehow coinmints fault that the town didn't know what bitcoin is. Come on, nobody was 'tricked'. Look on the bright side, at least someone is in the property, paying for the electricity, which would have just gone unused, for the last 6 years.
  - rspeele 3y ago
    > 'wasting' is the wrong word there. It is converting power into work in order to validate blocks of transactions. We have tellers in banks who drive their cars into nice air conditioned offices every single day, that effectively do the same thing. Is that also wasting power in your eyes? Tellers help human beings interact with the banking system. Being able to talk to a human to help resolve problems with your account, start the process of getting a loan, etc. is nice and not really comparable to what mining does. Lest we start adding every Coinbase employee, wallet developer, and so on to Bitcoin's list of costs. To determine whether Bitcoin mining is "wasteful" or not we would have to know exactly how much mining is needed for Bitcoin to remain secure against double spend attacks. As far as I know that is not something that can be calculated. But it seems like most people are confident the current amount of mining expenditure is way more than necessary, since nobody is concerned about the drop in security that will immediately follow the next halving event.
    - latchkey 3y ago
      > Tellers help human beings interact with the banking system. Being able to talk to a human to help resolve problems with your account, start the process of getting a loan, etc. is nice and not really comparable to what mining does. I'd argue that we don't need the help and it is something that can be automated. One can take out collateralized loans in DeFi all day long without interacting with a human. > But it seems like most people are confident the current amount of mining expenditure is way more than necessary, since nobody is concerned about the drop in security that will immediately follow the next halving event. Target difficulty adjusts, so the drop in security will only last 2016 blocks. Over time, I'd expect bitcoin mining energy usage to drop significantly with the halvings, which is a good thing. I agree, we don't need as much as we have today, but the reality is that there is a large land grab happening ahead of the drops. I do predict it will even out over time.

mrguyorama 3y ago

Every watt consumed must be created, and every extra watt a bitcoin mining operation uses is a watt that can't do anything else. And using "surplus" energy merely keeps electricity expensive. Bitcoin wasting power is as designed. Having to use up a certain amount of watt/hours per operation is the entire "protection" mechanism built into the bitcoin protocol. Mining operations have few employees because there isn't much work to do.

latchkey 3y ago
> Every watt consumed must be created, and every extra watt a bitcoin mining operation uses is a watt that can't do anything else. And using "surplus" energy merely keeps electricity expensive. No, that's not how large scale commercial power works. Please study the history of the Moses-Saunders dam. I've been to the Hawkins Point Visitors Center and studied the history, have you? > Bitcoin wasting power is as designed. 'wasting' is the wrong word there. It is converting power into work in order to validate blocks of transactions. We have tellers in banks who drive their cars into nice air conditioned offices every single day, that effectively do the same thing. Is that also wasting power in your eyes? > Mining operations have few employees because there isn't much work to do. Speaking as someone who's run very large mining operations, that is untrue. There is a ton of work, but it also requires relatively skilled labor since most of the ongoing work is maintenance of the equipment. Of course it doesn't require hundreds of people like the old aluminum smelters, but it also isn't creating a superfund site. I don't see why computerized solutions should be expected to create massive amounts of jobs over the long term. Massena is in the middle of nowhere upstate NY and was decimated when the Alcoa plants shut down. Population in 2010 is a whopping 12k. The people who are left are trained as factory aluminum smelters, not computer technicians.
- kotaKat 3y ago
  > I don't see why computerized solutions should be expected to create massive amounts of jobs over the long term. Because that's what Coinmint dangled over Massena village and town administrators to coerce them into handing over the Alcoa property and power allocations without knowing what they were doing. I sure wonder where those "150 jobs" are that Coinmint said they'd hire here.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    Right, height of the bull market hopefulness, back in 2017. I'm sure they honestly thought things would get that large. It is also somehow coinmints fault that the town didn't know what bitcoin is. Come on, nobody was 'tricked'. Look on the bright side, at least someone is in the property, paying for the electricity, which would have just gone unused, for the last 6 years.
- rspeele 3y ago
  > 'wasting' is the wrong word there. It is converting power into work in order to validate blocks of transactions. We have tellers in banks who drive their cars into nice air conditioned offices every single day, that effectively do the same thing. Is that also wasting power in your eyes? Tellers help human beings interact with the banking system. Being able to talk to a human to help resolve problems with your account, start the process of getting a loan, etc. is nice and not really comparable to what mining does. Lest we start adding every Coinbase employee, wallet developer, and so on to Bitcoin's list of costs. To determine whether Bitcoin mining is "wasteful" or not we would have to know exactly how much mining is needed for Bitcoin to remain secure against double spend attacks. As far as I know that is not something that can be calculated. But it seems like most people are confident the current amount of mining expenditure is way more than necessary, since nobody is concerned about the drop in security that will immediately follow the next halving event.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    > Tellers help human beings interact with the banking system. Being able to talk to a human to help resolve problems with your account, start the process of getting a loan, etc. is nice and not really comparable to what mining does. I'd argue that we don't need the help and it is something that can be automated. One can take out collateralized loans in DeFi all day long without interacting with a human. > But it seems like most people are confident the current amount of mining expenditure is way more than necessary, since nobody is concerned about the drop in security that will immediately follow the next halving event. Target difficulty adjusts, so the drop in security will only last 2016 blocks. Over time, I'd expect bitcoin mining energy usage to drop significantly with the halvings, which is a good thing. I agree, we don't need as much as we have today, but the reality is that there is a large land grab happening ahead of the drops. I do predict it will even out over time.