I see some issues.<p>We can discard Hydro pretty much immediately. There's not a lot of it that's sitting unused, there's not much opportunity for growth.<p>If there was this much wasted energy, the problem would be solved already. If the price went negative really often, that'd be a perfect business model for building some storage. Storage on the whole should be simpler than a mining farm. Putting extra megawatts into a pump or electrolysis is a relatively simple proposition. The computer hardware needed to burn that power on demand is far more expensive and complex.<p>Mining can cross borders, but cryptocurrency usage much less so. Yes, you can mine all you want across the border, but as governments sour on crypto they're going to make it much harder to transact in it. And your crypto isn't good for much if you can't sell it and get $ or Euros in your bank account.<p>The countries most amenable to this kind of thing are not all that profitable. They've got weak economies, bad governments and bad infrastructure. They're also easily pressured by wealthier countries, so they can't do whatever they want.<p>Long term if this worked it'd lead to centralization. Once you find some optimum -- which is probably a company that produces solar panels around the equator, they win the game and are hard to out-compete.<p>And of course, in the end this is still all a pointless waste. It's still countless video cards, solar panels, ASICs, and other hardware being piled up higher and higher to just keep up a global competition going that doesn't really achieve any improvement. It doesn't add capacity, it doesn't improve speed, it doesn't solve any practical problems. It's just an arms race where you need an extra tank because the other side made another one.