3 ms·

Nah,pushing through negative externalities of wasteful industries to other more desperate economies is a cool use of first world power. Also strong disagree th

Nah,pushing through negative externalities of wasteful industries to other more desperate economies is a cool use of first world power. Also strong disagree that local impacts of crypto mines are net positive - here in Texas we have to pay miners not to burn electricity for their fantasy dollars just to keep the AC on at grandma's house in the summer. Good riddance.

panarky 3y ago
> here in Texas we have to pay miners not to burn electricity It seems like lunacy when you put it that way. But I'd rather pay crypto miners to shed load during peak times rather than suffer blackouts at hospitals, chemical plants and water treatment facilities. Grid stability isn't a joke, and sometimes the least-bad option is still bad. Until we have better storage solutions, flexible demand is a necessary evil. Maybe paying miners not to mine is a lesser evil than paying even more to spin up filthy coal peaker plants and still have rotating outages.
- latchkey 3y ago
  Spot on. I literally had this same exact conversation today with the head electrician at a large bitcoin mining farm.
- kthejoker2 3y ago
  Another great way to shed load is just turn off their power and not pay them at all. What it is now is effectively extortion.
  - emchammer 3y ago
    Yes, this tax proposal seems to presume that the mining being done is a value-adding operation. However, an adversary desiring to undermine the electrical grid could just set up servers sending back cryptographic proof that they executed some useless inner loop. Who even knows with all the various crypto-coins now.
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
  He's also missing that this extra load is driving base demand, which is a big driver of increased capacity installation. In some sense paying crypto miners (and factories, and increasingly amalgamated groups of home owners using smart thermostats to increase the set point 10-15 degrees higher, etc.) is the best solution until storage becomes viable. They are flattening the demand curve across the year when they drop off at high demand times and are there for the rest of the time, and that's actually pretty useful.
serf 3y ago
>fantasy dollars If you include all fiat currencies in that category I think that's a keen name. If it's just a title to bad-mouth crypto in some arbitrary way -- well -- a lot of very real stuff has been bought with crypto, and name-calling generally attracts the very worst allies. I get the energy concern, and mostly agree with you, but i'm not sure we should pretend that fiat currencies have these problems fixed. Military backing for the sake of currency stability requires X amount of energy daily to facilitate, it's just not draining Texas. 'Not my problem'?
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Other fiat currencies don’t take a bunch of energy to mint. Fiat metals (whose values are worth more than their practical use), however, do have a cost to extract and refine, so it’s not like crypto currency is alone here.
- throw0101b 3y ago
  > If you include all fiat currencies in that category I think that's a keen name. All currencies are fantasies: rocks,[1] sea shells, paper, bits. Money is an human invention[2] and social contract[3] to help in interactions for goods and services. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones [2] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50358103 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50358103 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years
ryandvm 3y ago
Proof-of-work crypto mining is particularly egregious because it is quite literally zero sum. The world's Bitcoin miners could spend 100 watts mining crypto or 100 gigawatts mining it and due to the nature of the algorithm, the outcome would be the same number of mined blocks.

panarky 3y ago

> here in Texas we have to pay miners not to burn electricity It seems like lunacy when you put it that way. But I'd rather pay crypto miners to shed load during peak times rather than suffer blackouts at hospitals, chemical plants and water treatment facilities. Grid stability isn't a joke, and sometimes the least-bad option is still bad. Until we have better storage solutions, flexible demand is a necessary evil. Maybe paying miners not to mine is a lesser evil than paying even more to spin up filthy coal peaker plants and still have rotating outages.

latchkey 3y ago
Spot on. I literally had this same exact conversation today with the head electrician at a large bitcoin mining farm.
kthejoker2 3y ago
Another great way to shed load is just turn off their power and not pay them at all. What it is now is effectively extortion.
- emchammer 3y ago
  Yes, this tax proposal seems to presume that the mining being done is a value-adding operation. However, an adversary desiring to undermine the electrical grid could just set up servers sending back cryptographic proof that they executed some useless inner loop. Who even knows with all the various crypto-coins now.
snapplebobapple 3y ago
He's also missing that this extra load is driving base demand, which is a big driver of increased capacity installation. In some sense paying crypto miners (and factories, and increasingly amalgamated groups of home owners using smart thermostats to increase the set point 10-15 degrees higher, etc.) is the best solution until storage becomes viable. They are flattening the demand curve across the year when they drop off at high demand times and are there for the rest of the time, and that's actually pretty useful.

serf 3y ago

>fantasy dollars If you include all fiat currencies in that category I think that's a keen name. If it's just a title to bad-mouth crypto in some arbitrary way -- well -- a lot of very real stuff has been bought with crypto, and name-calling generally attracts the very worst allies. I get the energy concern, and mostly agree with you, but i'm not sure we should pretend that fiat currencies have these problems fixed. Military backing for the sake of currency stability requires X amount of energy daily to facilitate, it's just not draining Texas. 'Not my problem'?

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
Other fiat currencies don’t take a bunch of energy to mint. Fiat metals (whose values are worth more than their practical use), however, do have a cost to extract and refine, so it’s not like crypto currency is alone here.
throw0101b 3y ago
> If you include all fiat currencies in that category I think that's a keen name. All currencies are fantasies: rocks,[1] sea shells, paper, bits. Money is an human invention[2] and social contract[3] to help in interactions for goods and services. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones [2] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50358103 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/50358103 [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years

ryandvm 3y ago

Proof-of-work crypto mining is particularly egregious because it is quite literally zero sum. The world's Bitcoin miners could spend 100 watts mining crypto or 100 gigawatts mining it and due to the nature of the algorithm, the outcome would be the same number of mined blocks.