The premise is that there no more worthier causes than bitcoin beyond the grid needs. That premise is simply false. You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen. These are all applications that can flexibly use clean/cheap power when it is available instead of putting a constant load on the grid. This solution would compete with all of that. Excess grid energy is a resource that we need to use more effectively. Wasting it on bitcoin is pointless. Nobody really needs bitcoin except those living on hoarding it; which is pretty much the only thing you can do with it.
In the same way a lot carbon capture schemes use clean energy to slightly reduce (but not completely solve) the amount of CO2 added to our atmosphere. A better use of that clean energy is to completely remove the need for adding more CO2 to our energy (rather than just partially) through alternatives that make better/more efficient use of the clean energy that these capture schemes take.
> You can use excess grid capacity for lots of useful things including water desalination, charging cars at off peak hours, producing hydrogen.
Ideally you need something where the cost of electricity would normally dominate the capital costs of setting up the operation. Otherwise, you're better off running the process all the time, and it's not a useful grid battery.
Alternatively, something where you need to overbuild the infrastructure, perhaps to serve peak demand or for emergency availability.
Water desalination plants and hydrogen factories are expensive to build, so they don't work well here. Bitcoin mining rigs aren't free either. Charging cars is a great application even though cars are expensive to build: they meet the second criterion as, for logistic reasons, we build way more cars than are on the road at any point in time.
I haven’t looked at the details of the calculations but one of problems with mining is that mining hardware deprecates and therefor it needs to be used now - in two years more energy efficient hardware will render it useless.
So the idea of switching it on and off according to energy prices doesn’t really hold.
I'd like to believe that something like this is possible, but I just don't get how this gets around the fact that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else. Even if many Joules of renewable power get wasted during periods of overproduction (mid-day in the summer in California), other more worthwhile loads could be shifted to use that power, because today it's negative-priced during such periods. If bitcoin soaks up that power, it won't be negative-priced, and other loads won't be moved to use it, and they'll use power from non-renewable sources during some other time of day.
There's all sorts of demand shifting that can be done. Most articles talk about washers and dryers, and certainly that's one smaller load, but also EV charging, pre-cooling of buildings during the summer (run the AC in houses full blast during the middle of the day so there's no need to run it in the early evening), etc.
> that every Joule that is used for bitcoin mining is a Joule that wasn't used somewhere else.
This applies to so many things. Snapchat data center? YouTube using gigawatts to process and stream cat videos? On and on. It’s really hard to control what people do with energy. Much better to focus on ensuring its priced correctly and all it’s externalities are properly included in that price. Then we don’t have to involve ourselves in moral debates about what’s a valid or invalid use.
> Even if many Joules of renewable power get wasted during periods of overproduction (mid-day in the summer in California), other more worthwhile loads could be shifted to use that power, because today it's negative-priced during such periods.
Clearly there aren't such worthwhile loads available, which is why the rates go negative in the first place.
>pre-cooling of buildings during the summer (run the AC in houses full blast during the middle of the day so there's no need to run it in the early evening),
Isn't this counter-productive? The middle of the day is also when the temperature is the hottest, so running AC full blast is also the most wasteful since it generates the biggest temperature gradient (and thus cooling loss).
On boats with extra solar, running a dump load when batteries are full often happens by producing fresh water (desalination) or heating up water. If useful dump loads are available (pumped water?) then it's a good idea but bitcoin mining is better than nothing I guess.
However having bitcoin mining as defacto dump load would probably demotivate work needed toward creating useful dump loads. I'm also wondering what incentives bitcoin as dump load would have in less wealthy regions where purchase power is no match to compete with BTC mining.
Think of a world where most electricity is unaffordable to people, being wasted to hash some coins instead, because it's more "efficient" from a monetary standpoint.
There are some situations where mining Bitcoin is a very good application of energy that will otherwise be wasted. Here are two that come to mind:
1. Flared gas from oil wells. Natural gas is a byproduct of extracting oil from the Earth. In the past this was vented straight to the atmosphere, which is a huge waste of energy and causes horrible air pollution. Capturing this gas isn’t useful for many applications because it happens in remote areas, but if there’s a network connection it can be harnessed for mining Bitcoin.
2. Heat production for buildings and water. Most space and water heaters produce heat directly from their energy source (electricity or gas) without producing anything else of value. The primary byproduct of Bitcoin mining is heat, so it’s relatively straightforward to use mining hardware to produce, or at least augment, traditional heating elements. A company called Wisemining has a product called the Sato Boiler that does this now.
Neither of these is specific to Bitcoin, because the general concept is running a computer at full load for an extended duration. Bitcoin mining just happens to be the most logical (and profitable) application of that concept at present.
We don't have a problem that we lack Joules. What we lack is the reason for the rich to buy Joule generating capacity beyond what's absolutely necessary. And Bitcoin could provide that reason.
Negative priced power is a problem for the people who own the solar panels. They want to make a return on their investment. If the business case improves, renewable capacity will build out faster.
Adding an elastic demand sink to a peaky supply in a way that is profitable is quite interesting. Joules that are not used at all are wasted. This converts that wasted generation into cash allowing expansion of the facilities and more Joules overall.
I think a more important objection is that increased demand for solar panels and batteries for bitcoin mining pushes up prices for those (edit: if bitcoin prices are above market price for electricity).
I joke, but I also do not. The inevitable conclusion of this path with bitcoin mining is the fastest path towards creating a black hole. It's the exactly perfect incentive structure to maximize speed towards a blackhole ecological disaster.
Caveat on disaster: Unless blackholes aren't real, or they are something else entirely.
I consider a spending all these joules of energy on securing the bitcoin blockchain to be one of the most important things we can do to ensure the prosperity of the people of Earth - in the face of tyrants, fraudsters and central bankers.
This really is the right idea. Making it profitable for PoW to consume excess solar energy has the downstream effect of spinning up more demand for solar energy in general.
You can hate Bitcoin and PoW all you want, but the genie is already out of the bottle. Even if you banned mining rigs (good luck with that), people would just mine it at home on their spare computers or use botnets. Either way, the only way we'll ever succeed in making PoW green is to make energy production itself green. And that's a problem we'd have to solve even if Bitcoin was never invented!
I'd like to solicit feedback on why this is, did I not explain some point clearly enough or is it just the legitimacy of it coming from ark vs a random commenter on HN?
What is our problem? The problem is creating/producing co2 is a problem for our planet. Can we agree on this?
If we agree on the co2 production problem, lets take a look at what bitcoin is doing:
It converts a lot of energy/resources of our planet into co2. It does that by the asic's someone has to create, and by far the direct energy consumption. What does bitcoin produce? It produces transaction security right?
1. That value bitcoin is creating, is basically necessary to allow bitcoin to function. Without energy consumption, no transaction. Right now, we have a system which is able to create secure transactions, its called our current financial system. Our financial system is optimized for cost, speed and trust. Trust by regulations on different levels (state, world etc.). We have a global financial system.
That financial system is not perfect but bitcoin is also not perfect right? Okay so what is the advantage of bitcoin? People say its open, i can invest in bitcoins without regulations and i can send money to people like who are in a regime (in theory). Is that true? Is Bitcoin making sure that if your country decides to stop money transactions to North Korea for good reasons, that bitcoins stop working there? No it doesn't. All those mechanism, which are there to protect the normal people more than the tax fraud people are gone in the bitcoin system.
Therefore, the big advantge Bitcoin actually delivers (unregulated financial system) will be regulated as hard as our current system as soon as it hits a relevant size. And its not even hard as long as Bitcoin doesn't have any value. It doesn't has any real value as it is not a currency, its only a crypto currency. It doesn't has a country behind it. That it works as it works right now is just due to speculations/gambling.
We have to make sure that investing in batteries, other storage options, dump load with usefullness (pre heating water, using an EV, producing hydrogen, smelting more metals on high demand time, enabling technology to flip on and off devices like washing machines) is actually more reasonable INSTEAD of having to fight the Bitcoin gambling market.
All of our datacenters are only using 80twh more energy than bitcion and all those datacenters give us as a society values like entertainment, banking, building, simulating stuff, doing research like cancer research etc. etc.
BITCOIN is the worst invention in our society so far as it is the only invention i'm aware of which has such a high impact on resource consumption with no real value to our planet :(
I think all this model says is the it's currently profitable for bitcoin miners to build their own power stations to run their miners. But if they're doing that, why would they contribute to the grid? From looking at the model it just assumes the power will go to the grid first and bitcoin miners second, even though it would always be more profitable to run the miners (by 2x to 3x). I don't see this happening without government intervention. And from the point of view of the human race even this approach involves a huge amount of extra resources going into the mining hardware, an extra cost which only really benefits the miners (extra mining doesn't even benefit bitcoin at this point). I find it extremely worrying that 'bitcoin price' is not an input to this model: it's buried in the assumptions that it basically remains as it is. Bitcoin price going up means even less incentive to contribute to the grid, bitcoin price going down means the benefits it can bring under the broken assumption miners are altruistic go down.
The only way I see this actually having a positive impact through market mechanisms is if there's a railroad fever and massive buildout of solar capacity for mining, followed shortly by a bitcoin crash which actually makes that energy available for the rest of us to use.
(Also, solar is not a great source for mining to use at the moment: mining hardware still costs an appreciable sum relative to the energy cost of running it, especially considering it depreciates quickly. So if at all possible the miners will run them constantly, not adjust to grid supply vs demand)
The incessant snide comments expressing nothing but dislike for Bitcoin really don’t belong on HN. Not liking Bitcoin is fine, but if you don’t have anything to add just don’t comment. Every thread about Bitcoin on HN does not a dozen comments that it’s a waste of time and energy.
It's really pretty ridiculous and frustrating. I come here for intelligent discussion, and I agree it's okay if people don't like Bitcoin, but at least take some time to learn about it if you're going to argue. It's straight up denial at this point, because Bitcoin, Ethereum, and DeFi are securing and transacting billions of dollars every single day. It's not a question of if it works at this point, it does work! An decentralized overlay financial system has successfully been bootstrapped on top of legacy infrastructure. If you don't understand how big of a moment this is for humanity you must have your head in the sand.
“When the Church of Scientology announces that they’ve been thinking about solar panels, why does everyone have to rush to mention that it’s a cult? Can’t we just give them credit for these good intentions and forget everything they’ve actually done?”
(Celebrity endorsements, non-functional technology, libertarian fantasies of escaping the tax man — L. Ron Hubbard would have loved Bitcoin.)
This is incredible, and exactly what Square was getting at. If bitcoin is the incentive for decentralized power generation and battery provision, hash on!
The amount of energy spent on this is breathtaking and it really has to stop.
A single bitcoin transaction has a carbon footprint of 359.04 kgCO2 – equivalent to the carbon footprint of 795,752 VISA transactions or 59,840 hours of watching YouTube.
Have you checked the spreadsheet? cell C34 on the second sheet contains an input for the cost of the mining rig. Presumably that accounts for the capital cost of the miner.
Increasing bitcoin mining capacity allows the energy provider to “overbuild” solar without wasting energy.
Nope. “Free” PoW undermines the whole system. Mining has to be a sacrifice, otherwise it won’t work anymore. There is no “and I can use the resulting infrastructure for X”. Every joule of energy that goes into proof of work is a joule wasted by design. There is no free lunch.
I’m starting to think that maybe cryptocurrency is the great filter. It’s actually pretty terrifying.
Edit: we should probably have termed it proof of valueless work to make that clear. There is also nothing to stop a speculative bubble crowding out all other energy uses. Our low-growth world is very vulnerable to these schemes.
> I’m starting to think that maybe cryptocurrency is the great filter. It’s actually pretty terrifying.
Either cryptocurrency is extremely useful and the energy spent will turn out not to be wasted at all or it is a big useless energy draining scam and the whole thing will soon collapse.
I really don't see a scenario were it will still be useless or only moderately useful and consuming so much energy that the human species will slowly die off.
It's not free, because every Joule of solar energy has a cost, because solar panels are not free and have a finite lifetime.
It's a sacrfice but of something we can easily sacrifice, excess of solar energy we have no means to store but we still need to produce if we want to go 100% renewables.
It could be the opposite: a way out through the great filter. Due to imperfection of gold or any resource-based money (symmetrical security), people can never stop fighting for it and build wasteful political hierarchies with ever-escalating arms race. Bitcoin being cheaper to secure than to steal (asymmetrical security) solves two problems: de-escalates arms race and flattens the hierarchies because now savings can be more organically spread in society. This allows redirecting a lot of energy from wars onto cooperative multi-planetary infrastructure or whatever.
A sucker is born every minute. I tell you what, I’ll go write an article showing it would have made sense to use money from selling solar power to the grid on buying a house in Austin before prices went up 30% in the past year. Why not spend all the money? Try to get this logic past a financier. This is truly laughable. I can’t wait for the update that includes February “snowvid” $9k/MWh prices. The author will think they are a genius. LOL. GTFO.
So the premise of the article is that the difficulty and inefficiency of Bitcoin is the fundamental feature that makes all this possible.
What are we waiting for then? Lets double the computation difficulty of Bitcoin's network. This will shoot up the price even further and will accelerate solar-battery-bitcoin-green combo. We just save the Earth and a lot of people become rich. Win win situation if you ask me.
A real aside and sorry for it, but it'd be great if we had a way to execute spreadsheet computation in a generalized manner/without opening a GUI. XLSX isn't (immediately) text based but I feel there should be a way to extract XLSX into a neat package that can be executed on different runtime implementations.
Can we please just invest more heavily in nuclear? My preference is thorium reactors given they are far, far less dangerous in all regards.
Given ARKs time horizon, it would be a prescient investment. There's no way in hell were going to get stable power from solar and batteries alone. The bitcoin power problem is also solved.
I'm pro nuclear, but I'm afraid that ship has sailed. Renewable prices have been going down fast and are not stopping, and building a new plant is expensive.
We should care about keeping the old ones operating as long as possible, but we've been hearing tales of new safer smaller easy to deploy nuclear plants designs for decades, I wouldn't hold my breath.
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|4 years ago|reply
In the same way a lot carbon capture schemes use clean energy to slightly reduce (but not completely solve) the amount of CO2 added to our atmosphere. A better use of that clean energy is to completely remove the need for adding more CO2 to our energy (rather than just partially) through alternatives that make better/more efficient use of the clean energy that these capture schemes take.
[+] [-] dmurray|4 years ago|reply
Ideally you need something where the cost of electricity would normally dominate the capital costs of setting up the operation. Otherwise, you're better off running the process all the time, and it's not a useful grid battery.
Alternatively, something where you need to overbuild the infrastructure, perhaps to serve peak demand or for emergency availability.
Water desalination plants and hydrogen factories are expensive to build, so they don't work well here. Bitcoin mining rigs aren't free either. Charging cars is a great application even though cars are expensive to build: they meet the second criterion as, for logistic reasons, we build way more cars than are on the road at any point in time.
[+] [-] throwaway4good|4 years ago|reply
So the idea of switching it on and off according to energy prices doesn’t really hold.
[+] [-] barathr|4 years ago|reply
There's all sorts of demand shifting that can be done. Most articles talk about washers and dryers, and certainly that's one smaller load, but also EV charging, pre-cooling of buildings during the summer (run the AC in houses full blast during the middle of the day so there's no need to run it in the early evening), etc.
[+] [-] erentz|4 years ago|reply
This applies to so many things. Snapchat data center? YouTube using gigawatts to process and stream cat videos? On and on. It’s really hard to control what people do with energy. Much better to focus on ensuring its priced correctly and all it’s externalities are properly included in that price. Then we don’t have to involve ourselves in moral debates about what’s a valid or invalid use.
[+] [-] gruez|4 years ago|reply
Clearly there aren't such worthwhile loads available, which is why the rates go negative in the first place.
>pre-cooling of buildings during the summer (run the AC in houses full blast during the middle of the day so there's no need to run it in the early evening),
Isn't this counter-productive? The middle of the day is also when the temperature is the hottest, so running AC full blast is also the most wasteful since it generates the biggest temperature gradient (and thus cooling loss).
[+] [-] AYBABTME|4 years ago|reply
However having bitcoin mining as defacto dump load would probably demotivate work needed toward creating useful dump loads. I'm also wondering what incentives bitcoin as dump load would have in less wealthy regions where purchase power is no match to compete with BTC mining.
Think of a world where most electricity is unaffordable to people, being wasted to hash some coins instead, because it's more "efficient" from a monetary standpoint.
[+] [-] dnautics|4 years ago|reply
Not really? Batteries have limited capacity so at the point where the grid cannot buy any and your battery is topped up, you're mining bitcoin.
[+] [-] thinkmassive|4 years ago|reply
1. Flared gas from oil wells. Natural gas is a byproduct of extracting oil from the Earth. In the past this was vented straight to the atmosphere, which is a huge waste of energy and causes horrible air pollution. Capturing this gas isn’t useful for many applications because it happens in remote areas, but if there’s a network connection it can be harnessed for mining Bitcoin.
2. Heat production for buildings and water. Most space and water heaters produce heat directly from their energy source (electricity or gas) without producing anything else of value. The primary byproduct of Bitcoin mining is heat, so it’s relatively straightforward to use mining hardware to produce, or at least augment, traditional heating elements. A company called Wisemining has a product called the Sato Boiler that does this now.
Neither of these is specific to Bitcoin, because the general concept is running a computer at full load for an extended duration. Bitcoin mining just happens to be the most logical (and profitable) application of that concept at present.
[+] [-] scotty79|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omarforgotpwd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 314|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riffraff|4 years ago|reply
It'd be "can't buu GPUs" all over again.
[+] [-] nathias|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] canadianfella|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pyinstallwoes|4 years ago|reply
Caveat on disaster: Unless blackholes aren't real, or they are something else entirely.
[+] [-] randomhodler84|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jude-|4 years ago|reply
You can hate Bitcoin and PoW all you want, but the genie is already out of the bottle. Even if you banned mining rigs (good luck with that), people would just mine it at home on their spare computers or use botnets. Either way, the only way we'll ever succeed in making PoW green is to make energy production itself green. And that's a problem we'd have to solve even if Bitcoin was never invented!
[+] [-] yrral|4 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26811819
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26094279
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25444985
(among others)
I'd like to solicit feedback on why this is, did I not explain some point clearly enough or is it just the legitimacy of it coming from ark vs a random commenter on HN?
[+] [-] bArray|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AYBABTME|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hermio|4 years ago|reply
If we agree on the co2 production problem, lets take a look at what bitcoin is doing:
It converts a lot of energy/resources of our planet into co2. It does that by the asic's someone has to create, and by far the direct energy consumption. What does bitcoin produce? It produces transaction security right?
1. That value bitcoin is creating, is basically necessary to allow bitcoin to function. Without energy consumption, no transaction. Right now, we have a system which is able to create secure transactions, its called our current financial system. Our financial system is optimized for cost, speed and trust. Trust by regulations on different levels (state, world etc.). We have a global financial system.
That financial system is not perfect but bitcoin is also not perfect right? Okay so what is the advantage of bitcoin? People say its open, i can invest in bitcoins without regulations and i can send money to people like who are in a regime (in theory). Is that true? Is Bitcoin making sure that if your country decides to stop money transactions to North Korea for good reasons, that bitcoins stop working there? No it doesn't. All those mechanism, which are there to protect the normal people more than the tax fraud people are gone in the bitcoin system.
Therefore, the big advantge Bitcoin actually delivers (unregulated financial system) will be regulated as hard as our current system as soon as it hits a relevant size. And its not even hard as long as Bitcoin doesn't have any value. It doesn't has any real value as it is not a currency, its only a crypto currency. It doesn't has a country behind it. That it works as it works right now is just due to speculations/gambling.
We have to make sure that investing in batteries, other storage options, dump load with usefullness (pre heating water, using an EV, producing hydrogen, smelting more metals on high demand time, enabling technology to flip on and off devices like washing machines) is actually more reasonable INSTEAD of having to fight the Bitcoin gambling market.
Googles Datacenter are using 10times LESS energy than bitcoin https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-power-consu... and every single server/service on a Google Datacenter adds more value to our society than any bitcoin transaction ever will.
All of our datacenters are only using 80twh more energy than bitcion and all those datacenters give us as a society values like entertainment, banking, building, simulating stuff, doing research like cancer research etc. etc.
BITCOIN is the worst invention in our society so far as it is the only invention i'm aware of which has such a high impact on resource consumption with no real value to our planet :(
[+] [-] rcxdude|4 years ago|reply
The only way I see this actually having a positive impact through market mechanisms is if there's a railroad fever and massive buildout of solar capacity for mining, followed shortly by a bitcoin crash which actually makes that energy available for the rest of us to use.
(Also, solar is not a great source for mining to use at the moment: mining hardware still costs an appreciable sum relative to the energy cost of running it, especially considering it depreciates quickly. So if at all possible the miners will run them constantly, not adjust to grid supply vs demand)
[+] [-] NullPrefix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zoshi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _9omd|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pavlov|4 years ago|reply
(Celebrity endorsements, non-functional technology, libertarian fantasies of escaping the tax man — L. Ron Hubbard would have loved Bitcoin.)
[+] [-] CynicusRex|4 years ago|reply
Ironic isn't it, since the topic is bitcon.
[+] [-] randomhodler84|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christkv|4 years ago|reply
A single bitcoin transaction has a carbon footprint of 359.04 kgCO2 – equivalent to the carbon footprint of 795,752 VISA transactions or 59,840 hours of watching YouTube.
https://www.financialexpress.com/industry/bitcoin-shocker-cr...
[+] [-] plantain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gruez|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcMgD2BwE72F|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hannob|4 years ago|reply
But we live in a more complicated world where coal power plants, other possible uses of excess electricity and many other things exist.
[+] [-] swensel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hyko|4 years ago|reply
Nope. “Free” PoW undermines the whole system. Mining has to be a sacrifice, otherwise it won’t work anymore. There is no “and I can use the resulting infrastructure for X”. Every joule of energy that goes into proof of work is a joule wasted by design. There is no free lunch.
I’m starting to think that maybe cryptocurrency is the great filter. It’s actually pretty terrifying.
Edit: we should probably have termed it proof of valueless work to make that clear. There is also nothing to stop a speculative bubble crowding out all other energy uses. Our low-growth world is very vulnerable to these schemes.
[+] [-] sfvisser|4 years ago|reply
Either cryptocurrency is extremely useful and the energy spent will turn out not to be wasted at all or it is a big useless energy draining scam and the whole thing will soon collapse.
I really don't see a scenario were it will still be useless or only moderately useful and consuming so much energy that the human species will slowly die off.
[+] [-] sashimi-houdini|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scotty79|4 years ago|reply
It's a sacrfice but of something we can easily sacrifice, excess of solar energy we have no means to store but we still need to produce if we want to go 100% renewables.
[+] [-] oleganza|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ideamotor|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sashimi-houdini|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] christiansakai|4 years ago|reply
What are we waiting for then? Lets double the computation difficulty of Bitcoin's network. This will shoot up the price even further and will accelerate solar-battery-bitcoin-green combo. We just save the Earth and a lot of people become rich. Win win situation if you ask me.
/s
[+] [-] AYBABTME|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bitcoinmonger|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] capsulecorp|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fny|4 years ago|reply
Given ARKs time horizon, it would be a prescient investment. There's no way in hell were going to get stable power from solar and batteries alone. The bitcoin power problem is also solved.
[+] [-] riffraff|4 years ago|reply
We should care about keeping the old ones operating as long as possible, but we've been hearing tales of new safer smaller easy to deploy nuclear plants designs for decades, I wouldn't hold my breath.
[+] [-] jhgb|4 years ago|reply
True, non-existent reactors are the least dangerous of all, just like components that aren't there are the most reliable.