this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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[–] Badeendje@lemmy.world 120 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Electricity is too cheap for these uses.

[–] aniki@lemm.ee 104 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Why is commercial power so cheap and residential so expensive? We could fix two problems by balancing that back.

[–] Nighed@sffa.community 28 points 8 months ago (1 children)

My understanding is tha some commercial/industrial users will get a highly variable tariff. This may be cheaper much of the time, but can get ridiculously expensive at times of high demand.

The difference is that a bitcoin farmer can shut down at those expensive times, but a home user still needs to heat/cool their house, run their fridge etc, so the savings cancel out. Because of this, averaging the costs works out easier/better for most home consumers

[–] frezik@midwest.social 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

You can get time of use billing at home with many power companies. Only makes sense if you have solar panels or storage batteries or some such.

[–] st3ph3n@midwest.social 10 points 8 months ago

I have real time pricing from my utility. It works out well because we charge 2 electric cars overnight for a fraction of what they would cost to charge at the standard fixed kilowatt-hour rate. My house is heated by natural gas; I don't think the savings would be there if I also was heating my house with electricity as I live in the midwest, where it gets cold as fuck for the winter.

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 117 points 8 months ago (3 children)

They don't produce anything except some numbers. A total waste of energy. I had to laugh when this guy I know who is very "progressive" and environmentally concerned got pissy when I pointed out how much energy was wasted on bitcoin mining just because he was into it.

[–] escaped_cruzader@lemmy.world 37 points 8 months ago (3 children)

My comment here is a much better use of energy

[–] GhostMatter@lemmy.ca 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Recording my next fart would be a better use of energy than Bitcoin.

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[–] Socsa@sh.itjust.works 31 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Right this is the fundamental problem. There needs to be some value to the Blockchain application which the crypto tokens support beyond just token speculation.

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[–] furzegulo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 96 points 8 months ago (57 children)
[–] WallEx@feddit.de 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

More like fuck crypto mining. There are cryptos that dont need mining.

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[–] rusticus@lemm.ee 74 points 8 months ago (38 children)

JFC how long do we have to wait for a carbon tax

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[–] FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world 66 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There is no good reason why this isn't illegal.

[–] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 22 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Not a good reason, but money.

[–] TheAlbacor@lemmy.world 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Not even real money, tech bro phantom bullshit.

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[–] Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 59 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Crypto is the digital coal of our times.

[–] wahming@monyet.cc 47 points 8 months ago (17 children)

Whoever Satoshi was, I wonder how he's responding to the thought that he's personally contributed more to global warming than the average billionaire.

[–] JasonDJ@lemmy.zip 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Satoshi is estimated to have wallets totaling as much as 1.1 million btc. That would make them the 26th richest person in the world.

If, Satoshi and the wallets actually still exist. Most of those wallets have been completely idle since they were mined

I imagine that “Satoshi’s Wallet” is the stuff of legends among cryptographic security researchers.

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[–] kautau@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Probably not thinking about it on his yacht that he doesn’t pilot or maintain, having built the most successful grifter scheme of all time

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 36 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Modern day gold rush.

Digging up more and more dirt for diminishing returns while destroying the environment.

Bitcoin using more and more power for essentially the same.

[–] darthfabulous42069@lemm.ee 34 points 8 months ago (16 children)

You'd think with all of the money they're pulling in, they'd invest in solar panels or something to lower their overhead.

Or am I making the mistake of approaching the situation with common sense?

[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's Bitcoin, of course common sense isn't involved.

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[–] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 28 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (55 children)

Misleading title - the problem is not "crypto", it's pretty much all Bitcoin and the people against the change in the consensus mechanism. Out of the top ~~10~~ 9 coins in market cap, Bitcoin is the only one using proof of work, which demands such high energy requirements.

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[–] baltakatei@sopuli.xyz 25 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (15 children)

Ultimately, mining should be banned from the surface of Earth. Let miners build orbital solar panel infrastructure close to the Sun where power is plentiful. See Bitcoin developer Peter Todd's 2017-09-10 presentation on the subject (transcript).

Edit: Fixed URL. Edit2; Add transcript link.

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[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 12 points 8 months ago

Just a PSA that the second biggest cryptocurrency by market cap (ETH) is no longer proof of work, and in the process, reduced their power consumption by ~98%.

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