Unless you think the energy is still being wasted, in which case it is a net negative when you factor in setup costs and such.
To be clear, these type of facilitates already exist. It's not a new thing. Manufacturing companies have done it before and even power companies. This particular mining company is just partnering with this landfill. It did not invent the idea. As long as it doesn't affect the electricity rates for the community I don't see it as a problem. The shorter term climate affect of the methane is worse than the CO2 that the landfill will create.
If an energy provider has excess capacity and can negotiate a good deal with the crypto miners to buy it at a good price, then it makes sense. For instance, I very indirectly deal with some energy providers in Washington State for work who produce really low cost hydro-based power so have become a favored destination for crypto miners. Each one is different but at least some have tried to be strategic about how to make this work, sometimes trying to use some form of differentiated pricing so that the crypto miners are paying more than mom and pop or even regular businesses. And since it is hydro, not coal, the climate impact is OK.
But this is the exception, not the rule.
I note that you conveniently forgot to bold the “by mining Bitcoin” part of my quote. That’s what’s new.
We have been talking about Bitcoin and energy use in this thread, right?
I don’t think I, or anyone, ever claimed that BTC miners were the first to use landfill methane for energy, or first to pay a municipality for it.
It is new to see BTC doing both.
I don’t want to argue but these are your words.
“Bitcoin miners found a way to use wasted energy contained in a landfill’s Methane gas.”
Waste gas projects at landfills or from vented methane during oil extraction are a thing. This is just repurposing a preexisting idea but no different than what BMW has been doing for years. And there are consequences of burning Methane but with the current state of the environment it’s a pick your poison situation. Again no problem with the idea. It’s just not something the Bitcoin miners found.
And the reason I bring up things like this is because it seems a little “propagandy.” That kind of marketing (and I am not saying you are the generator) is an obstacle the BTC will have to overcome if it wants universal acceptance.
Also it’s a good business model because even if BTC goes south, they’ve still got a new power plant to make money.
Last edited by Kdogg; 08-12-2022 at 03:03 AM.
Many people have been critical of BTC’s energy use, without understanding the necessity of that use for the security of the network.
Bitcoin advocates have steadfastly maintained that BTC is incentivized to seek out the cheapest energy possible and actually finds untapped resources, strengthening energy grids and helping communities in the process.
This companies use of the landfill methane is an example of that.
That’s why I posted it. Moving on.
I think many of the critics do understand how Proof-of-Work functions, and the energy necessity for making it so, and still conclude the whole thing as wasteful.
You've insisted many times that if people simply did enough research, or had enough understanding on how it works, they'd all see the light and come to the same conclusions you have. Please stop insisting this.
A text without a context is a pretext.
Your whole argument is based on the assumption that the success of BTC is necessary, and thus justifies any negative externalities. Despite dozens of pages of going back and forth, I don't think I (nor anyone else here) is convinced that BTC is a necessary part of society. We have all been extremely open minded and tried to understand it, but we seem to really be going nowhere. If one wants to think of it as a sort of derivatives financial vehicle for investment and hedging purposes, that is all well and good, but that definitely does not justify the negative parts of it.
Also, despite my description above where the energy usage of bitcoin miners was made into a somewhat optimal situation, that is far from the rule. There are plenty of situations where their energy usage pressures system capacity, and energy providers have to decide whether to invest in constructing more capacity for these miners, knowing that when either a) the whole thing blows up, or b) all of the bitcoin is mined so there is no more need for heavy duty bitcoin mining, this capacity will no longer be needed. These miners don't care about "untapped resources," they care about cheap resources, and if they are burdening those systems, so be it. As I noted above, the smart systems with rate-setting flexibility should then in turn price differentiated these miners and charge them a small fortune for their usage, but they aren't always nimble enough to do this.
I’ll bet plenty of people reading this thread continue to have a real interest in Bitcoin and how it can better the worlds financial system, without necessarily commenting in the thread and subjecting themselves to all the negativity some want to dish out here.
You may not be convinced of BTC’s value, and that’s ok, a free market will decide if BTC has any value, not you or me. Feel free to sit this one out.
And BTW, I find it telling that people want to challenge BTC’s free market energy use as wasteful and unnecessary, but not the large data mining energy use of companies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc… why can’t BTC just compete fairly for computational energy with these guys, or anybody else?
Here’s how Bitcoin mining works.
There will always be an energy cost to secure the network and “mine” BTC. That’s a good thing.
BTC was designed to use energy for a reason, it’s what gives strength to the network, requiring any attacker to at least match or exceed BTC’s energy use for computations, which as large as the network has become now, makes it cost prohibitive and almost impossible to attack.
The security of the 21 million coins is the number 1 priority for the success of BTC.
Everything revolves around the networks blockchain/ledger keeping track of the coins.
Energy and computer power verifying transactions is what backs Bitcoins value.
Even after the last BTC is mined more than one hundred years from now, there will be transaction fees to support these miners when there is no more BTC left to be added to the market.
BTC will always need a strong energy infrastructure.
Its a great use of energy if you are providing for a better monetary asset, imo.
You are free to disagree and not use Bitcoin, and if enough people agree with you, Bitcoin will fail. So be it. That’s how markets work.
However, at this point, that stance is looking highly unlikely for the future.
That's a false equivalence. Bitcoin mining is a signaler, limited use case. Data centers and data mining provide multi use cases. Those companies you listed literally run the internet in the free world and use data mining to offer their services for free. There is a good chance this website is run on Azura or AWS. When you use the paid versions of Gmail or Outlook etc you can opt out of data mining. Also there is push back with new and existing data centers.
After September we are going to get a real-time case study when Etheruem moves to Proof-to-Stake. It will not only cut the energy usage by 99% but it will also upend the reward structure for the new validators (vs the old miners.) After the "merge", it will be less profitable to process Etheruem because part of the reward will now be sent to a non-existent wallet. That effective destroys some ETH with every transactions making it a deflationary. If ETH market cap supersedes BTC, I think the free market will have spoken.
ETH and BTC are two completely separate things. To try and compare the two is like comparing BTC to Goldman Sachs because both are a part of the financial system.
ETH is building a new internet of value. It’s a huge market for growth. I look at ETH as a giant tech company, with all the issues of privacy, security and lack of decentralized governance too.
Most people fully expect ETH market cap to exceed BTC at some point. It’s why I invest in ETH too.
POS will use less energy than POW after the merge, but will compromise ETh’s security and decentralization, which BTC will never do..
You started the topic of bitcoin mining vs data mining. It's a case of whataboutism. Bitcoin mining only serves bitcoin users and miners. Data mining pays for free YouTube (a primary source for your BTC information), free email, free search etc... for BILLIONS of people. It funds things like Deep Mind which has 3D mapped every known human protein. That's a Holy Grail for micro and moleculour biology. As much as I dislike Google, that's one for all man kind. Has Bitcoin or any crypto even come close to anything like that? I again state your comparison is a false equivalence.
Do you pay for YouTube?
If you haven't pickup on it, I'm a nerd. I do place a great value on privacy and know how to mitigate sharing personal information. I spend hours fine turning my OS installs to limit any telemetry from the OS, programs, games etc. I'm also one to do the legwork to remove myself from data brokers. (It only takes a couple of hours.) I mean I have a Pi-hole setup with only half a dozen websites whitelisted (like DBR). That's why I rarely see algorithmic feeds.
Now the question is do you? How often do you check your privacy dashboard on Google, Apple, Facebook and/or Microsoft. With the exception of Apple, mine are pretty much black. Even the Apple one is sparse. I bet your YouTube would look different if you log out and clear your cookies. You should request a downloadable copy of your information to see what you have given them.
If they were so different you would not see BTC companies popping up to mimic some of ETC's functionality. It's more convergence than divergence from the BTC side.
Last edited by Kdogg; 08-13-2022 at 11:13 AM.
Bitcoin layer two applications are coming to challenge many of the applications ETH is providing now. Those apps will sacrifice some security for scalability, just like ETH.
The Bitcoin base layer 1 will not sacrifice security for scalability, which requires proof of work energy consumption.
As expected….
https://apple.news/AsugNXAqzSPqXhdoSoaw5UQ
Got a random out-of-the-blue group text this morning sent to about 10 people (none of whom I had contact info for, but most sharing my area code) from a Kevin [leaving off last name] saying he was a Duke Alum and wanted to alert me to the "horrible, criminal cryptocurrency platforms made through Duke's Endowment" and then a link to a 5 minute Youtube video.
In the video (pretty sensational) it looks like he recently hired some billboard trucks to be on campus around graduation with the same messaging.
His grievances mostly center around DUMAC's investment/involvement with Filecoin, something I'm unfamiliar with.
However, I'm almost certain this is the same situation referenced in a link months ago in this thread, which I can't find for the life of me without re-reading every page/post.
Curious if anyone else has been randomly contacted like this, or if you have the Post # handy from earlier.
A text without a context is a pretext.