The fightback against the Bitcoin energy guzzlers has begun

Isn&#x27;t the solution to charge more?<p>One could have a tiered rate system, where the first N kWhr are inexpensive and the rates rise after that (just as we do in Seattle)<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattle.gov&#x2F;light&#x2F;Rates&#x2F;docs&#x2F;2018&#x2F;Jan1&#x2F;Schedule%20RSC%20Jan%201%202018.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.seattle.gov&#x2F;light&#x2F;Rates&#x2F;docs&#x2F;2018&#x2F;Jan1&#x2F;Schedule%2...</a><p>If supply is constrained, and demand grows, it won&#x27;t stop growing until the price goes up.<p>An imposition of a quota system is interesting, just because it might yield free residential heating for homes that welcome miners into their basements.

There is something interesting to be said about Bitcoin&#x27;s ability to expose and correct market distortions so neatly.<p>I personally quite like the idea of a quota system for access to cheap, local power. It is interesting however to imagine what might happen if the power was sold into the market at market rate and the profits divided up amongst local businesses and residents instead of giving them cheap power.<p>That way, they in theory would be no worse off (they can buy power and the dividend cancels the loss of the subsidy), but they can also directly buy things that have higher utility than the direct energy would provide them.<p>That would also stamp out local bitcoin mining operations and divert the cheap energy to uses more productive than burning it for crypto creation.

Seems to me if Bitcoin was going to &quot;become a thing&quot; (to use American parlance), it would already have done so by now. What milestone could mark success for this currency? Conversely, when shall we declare failure?

Bitcoin mining can scale depending on demand, from a bunch of laptops to massive farms. It is only greed that brings more and more miners into the game, pushing energy demands higher.<p>It&#x27;s normal for governments to crack down on mining at some point, the energy consumption is indeed hilarious, but that&#x27;s not going to bring down bitcoin anytime soon.

&gt; Thanks to nearby Niagara Falls, Plattsburgh has a quota of cheap electricity available at a low rate<p>Plattsburgh is 300 miles away from Niagara Falls, on the other side of the state! I don&#x27;t know why Plattsburgh prices are so low, but it&#x27;s certainly not proximity to the Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant.

It would be interesting for miners to offer all merchants within the geographic area affected by their power consumption fee-less transaction processing (free mining for their neighbors) . If it&#x27;s technically achievable I could see it introducing some unusual but generally positive dynamics.

I admit I don&#x27;t know much of anything about cryptocurrency, but is there something fundamental about the need for &quot;mining&quot; (in whatever form) for currency? It seems like the intent behind bitcoin mining was to mimic the scarcity of mining for gold or other precious metals by substituting hefty computations. But isn&#x27;t that just a means of getting the currency bootstrapped in some way which ensures that it becomes scarce? Aren&#x27;t there other, less energy intensive ways to do that?<p>I mean, could there not be a cryptocurrency which bootstrapped off of the exchange with &quot;real currency&quot;? Or perhaps by direct exchange of goods and services?

Weren&#x27;t the smarter miners already relocating to places like Iceland which have more cheap surplus geothermal power than they ever use themselves anyway?

If the future if money is bitcoin, and the input to bitcoin is energy... does that mean energy companies will eventually create all the money?

I&#x27;m sure air conditioners in US banks or public offices consume more energy than Bitcoin mining worldwide. They never turn off computers at night, insurance companies require to leave lights on at night, each office has a few TVs with chomecast showing pictures of nature (irony ha!) all day and night long... but it&#x27;s BTC mining they&#x27;re fighting with.

I thought part of Bitcoin&#x27;s design is to use the cost of electricity as a way to prevent wide-scale mining?<p>Anyway, turning off power to mining companies will just trigger investment in better off-grid power solutions. It&#x27;s a double-win for everyone else.

as long as there is value in mining there will be miners. But it&#x27;s a new drain resource that required energy and I&#x27;m sure energy companies, governments, and greens will have a say. Not clear to me though why mining requires so much power? Is there a way or existing initiatives to reduce this? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2018&#x2F;05&#x2F;new-study-quantifies-bitcoins-ludicrous-energy-consumption&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;arstechnica.com&#x2F;tech-policy&#x2F;2018&#x2F;05&#x2F;new-study-quanti...</a>

Isn&#x27;t the energy spent for the security of the network, instead of armed guards and bombs? Compared to that, is it more or less wasteful then how we secure USD?

&gt;Is the libertarian dream of bitcoin as an unregulated global currency about to be destroyed by municipal electricity companies?<p>Sounds like author has no idea what he’s talking about.

Man that&#x27;s a good deal. I&#x27;m paying $2,200 per month in electricity costs for mining and am getting nowhere near those kinds of rates.

If the revenue from the money transfers business is 30 billions per year and the cost of electricity is 0.12 U$D per KW&#x2F;h. Then the cost, in energy terms, of the money transfer business is 250 TW&#x2F;h in a year. This is a lower bound.[1]<p>Bitcoin miners are consuming in the order of 73TW&#x2F;h[0] annually.<p>Let&#x27;s consider those quantities equal for the next argument:<p>Isn&#x27;t it a good thing that crypto is generating business for the energy sector? If those revenues are invested in more energy research it is favorable to human kind, isn&#x27;t it?<p>Why deny the energy sector its business and favor the financial sector?<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digiconomist.net&#x2F;bitcoin-energy-consumption" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;digiconomist.net&#x2F;bitcoin-energy-consumption</a> [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;How-big-is-the-international-money-transfers-market" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.quora.com&#x2F;How-big-is-the-international-money-tra...</a>