3 ms·

What's the theory behind that? And even if true, what's the problem with using electricity if it's created cleanly?

• bcrl 3y ago
  Heat pumps move heat from where it's not needed to where it's needed. Moving heat takes less energy than converting electricity directly to heat or as a side effect of performing a calculation. They're not a new technology either, with the principle discovered back in the 1850s. The air to air heat pump we're installing at my home works at outdoor temperatures down to -30C. Bitcoin doesn't do anything useful aside from burn energy. I hope Proof Of Work gets banned, as it's one of the worst examples of externalities ever created.
  • npoc 3y ago
    It's quite dividing, Bitcoin. Since I heard about it in 2012, I thought the same as you until I shorted it one morning in 2021 and started to learn more about it. By the end of the day I'd changed the short to a long position and now I see it was one of the most important inventions/discoveries in the history of mankind. In fact it's difficult for me to see a positive future for mankind without it. I guess the reason you see it as a waste is because you don't understand what's wrong with the current fiat currency and the terrible, profound effects it has on the world. I recommend reading "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by E Griffin. It will teach you more about the world than you could ever imagine. If money isn't proof of work, what is it?
  • rapjr9 3y ago
    Is there anything useful (besides Bitcoin) that can be done with precomputation? Perhaps training an LLM? So if you are going to be training an LLM why not heat a town with it? The world has an enormous need for computation and probably for precomputation as well. The waste heat should be harnessed instead of dumped into the environment directly. This could be kind of like SETI, but selling computation boxes for home heating rather than using spare cycles on computers that are running anyway. While it's not as efficient as using a heat pump, it would mostly pay for itself if someone purchases the computation and if you're going to compute anyway... Graphics rendering for movies might be another example. Network bandwidth might be an issue, though some tasks don't produce much I/O but do a lot of computation.
    • npoc 3y ago
      Sure, you can heat buildings, water etc. The miners who can mine bitcoin the most efficiently (i.e. monetise any wasted energy the best) will win and the others will not be profitable and will go out of business. Miners are not location constrained like most energy users and are drawn to the cheapest energy sources around the world which tends to be otherwise wasted energy that no-one wants. If there's other demand for the energy it will be uneconomical for the miners to use, and they'll need to move elsewhere. Even if too many miners cluster in a certain location, their own demand will increase prices, forcing them to decentralise around the globe. So ultimately they end up spread around the world either using the energy no one wants and is otherwise wasted (i.e. ~free) or more expensive energy while efficiently monetising the by-products of mining (i.e. heat) They actually make otherwise unprofitable renewable energy sources, profitable, by offering a highly dynamic load that can monetise large amounts of unneeded (and unthrottlable) energy during periods of low demand (see the "duck curve"). Without this the solar farms etc could be unviable.