4 ms·

I saw a theoretical calculation many years ago saying that bitcoin mining would eventually use 7% of the world's electricity. I laughed at it then, but take it

I saw a theoretical calculation many years ago saying that bitcoin mining would eventually use 7% of the world's electricity. I laughed at it then, but take it more seriously now. Electricity in the US is expensive, so if it's using 2% here, it must be using more in some other parts of the world.

darthrupert 3y ago
Weird thing is that this seems to be irrelevant: there are plenty of PoS cryptos but people are still mining away bitcoins. Electricity is too cheap, I suppose.
Wytwwww 3y ago
> Electricity in the US is expensive It seems very cheap compared to most of Europe though?
- throwaway81523 3y ago
  I was thinking China. That's where most bitcoin is mined.
  - Sargos 3y ago
    The USA is actually the biggest Bitcoin mining nation [https://www.techopedia.com/bitcoin-mining-and-energy-statistics#:~:text=The%20US%20is%20the%20largest,global%20Bitcoin%20network's%20hash%20rate https://www.techopedia.com/bitcoin-mining-and-energy-statist....] China banned Bitcoin mining years ago which caused miners to flee to other parts of the globe. Texas is the current powerhouse.
    - DANmode 3y ago
      Connected miners remain in China.
    - not_really 3y ago
      Fake news. Bitcoin is not banned in China, and yet China has "banned" Bitcoin at least a dozen times since its inception.
pyinstallwoes 3y ago
Taken to the extreme it is an accelerated track to causing a black hole given the incentives of the network and the requirement of computational space having a physical necessity to provide the substrate for it to continue.
rightbyte 3y ago
> Electricity in the US is expensive, so if it's using 2% I believe much of it is stolen. Like sysadmins running it in schools during the night. Or someone tapping a communal powerline etc.
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago
  There are multiple LEGAL crypto-mining facilities in my mid-sized US South city. I don't know the specifics, but having spoken with a few of the technicians, it seems our local publicly-owned electric utility has agreements with these facilities for Time-of-Use offsets, which significantly reduces the kWH pricing. There is a single facility in my city which is allowed to consume about 1% of entire multi-county grid usage, but must agree to seasonal shut-down schedules where local utility can take them offline almost-immediately during emergency demand peaks. For their predictable baseload usage (21/7) and not-too-damaging shutdownability, the 1% miner gets kWH's at around 2¢+/ea. ---- Majority of our base-load energy is hydro/nuclear -generated, so my only remaining complaint is that these AI/crypto -mining facilities ought to somehow be incorporated into a local centralized heat distribution facility, perhaps to generate steam (or possibly even pre-heat existing generating facility water pre-steam/turbine).

darthrupert 3y ago

Weird thing is that this seems to be irrelevant: there are plenty of PoS cryptos but people are still mining away bitcoins. Electricity is too cheap, I suppose.

Wytwwww 3y ago

> Electricity in the US is expensive It seems very cheap compared to most of Europe though?

throwaway81523 3y ago
I was thinking China. That's where most bitcoin is mined.
- Sargos 3y ago
  The USA is actually the biggest Bitcoin mining nation [https://www.techopedia.com/bitcoin-mining-and-energy-statistics#:~:text=The%20US%20is%20the%20largest,global%20Bitcoin%20network's%20hash%20rate https://www.techopedia.com/bitcoin-mining-and-energy-statist....] China banned Bitcoin mining years ago which caused miners to flee to other parts of the globe. Texas is the current powerhouse.
  - DANmode 3y ago
    Connected miners remain in China.
  - not_really 3y ago
    Fake news. Bitcoin is not banned in China, and yet China has "banned" Bitcoin at least a dozen times since its inception.

pyinstallwoes 3y ago

Taken to the extreme it is an accelerated track to causing a black hole given the incentives of the network and the requirement of computational space having a physical necessity to provide the substrate for it to continue.

rightbyte 3y ago

> Electricity in the US is expensive, so if it's using 2% I believe much of it is stolen. Like sysadmins running it in schools during the night. Or someone tapping a communal powerline etc.

ProllyInfamous 3y ago
There are multiple LEGAL crypto-mining facilities in my mid-sized US South city. I don't know the specifics, but having spoken with a few of the technicians, it seems our local publicly-owned electric utility has agreements with these facilities for Time-of-Use offsets, which significantly reduces the kWH pricing. There is a single facility in my city which is allowed to consume about 1% of entire multi-county grid usage, but must agree to seasonal shut-down schedules where local utility can take them offline almost-immediately during emergency demand peaks. For their predictable baseload usage (21/7) and not-too-damaging shutdownability, the 1% miner gets kWH's at around 2¢+/ea. ---- Majority of our base-load energy is hydro/nuclear -generated, so my only remaining complaint is that these AI/crypto -mining facilities ought to somehow be incorporated into a local centralized heat distribution facility, perhaps to generate steam (or possibly even pre-heat existing generating facility water pre-steam/turbine).