Irrelevant. Renewable energy could be used to replace other sources, instead of peed away on this.
A larger demand for energy likely means more polluting forms of energy will come back into service/stay in service to meet the demand.
A larger demand for energy likely means more polluting forms of energy will come back into service/stay in service to meet the demand.
That's like saying the energy used to run the security system in a bank is being peed away.
Your comment misses the point that it is still a monumental and needless waste.
Probably 95% of it is being used for speculation/gambling and scamming the uninformed. 4% on drugs, and 1% on anything else. I'm being generous here. Bitcoin advocates are pool sharks, they want the rest of the world to be their marks.
Who the hell pays rent with bitcoin? Who buys groceries with bitcoin? Bitcoin could drop off the face of the earth this instant and I wouldn't shed a tear.
As someone else in this thread pointed out, there's only 500,000 active Bitcoin addresses, and yet the Bitcoin network consumes the same amount of electricity as the entire country of Denmark
A 310L fridge [1] (random one I found) for context uses about 280 kWh per year [2].
I think it's pretty ridiculous to say that the average bitcoin transaction provides approximately half the value (in the best case scenario) as having the ability to refrigerate food for a year. I'd say "pissing away" is a pretty fair comparison.
[1] https://www.lg.com/au/fridges/lg-GB-310RPL
[2] http://www.energyrating.gov.au/calculator
With [2] you will need to put the model number in the "Brand or Model" box
They generally have high capex and low opex, having a strong outstanding demand by a centralized consumer willing to build a data center nearby makes the business case for a solar farm more attractive.
It is a subside to renewables, where they can make money on energy that would have been thrown away. It allows better managements of the peaks and troughs that commonly plague reneweable energy sources.
You want to help level out peaks and troughs of electricty production: Improve battery technology, don't just waste the energy generating sha256 over and over.
Before: The energy from a hydro plants gets wasted when it is night time.
After: Now they get money.
The hydro plant is now making money on something that they were just throwing away, previously, and thus it is a subsidy.
Hydro plants can usually turn off relatively quickly. They can be used as pump storage, which is an incredibly efficient way of storing energy - >70% efficiency [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...
The exception to the latter is where excess energy is created because a method of energy production is created to meet peak demand, but generates more energy than is needed off-peak. While some of it could be stored, storage is inefficient and it is better to sell the excess energy cheap, so that you can continue to expand your energy production capabilities.
Miners take advantage of off-peak energy excess, whilst at the same time, increasing the on-peak demand. This means that the provider of the cheap renewable energy source needs to invest in producing more, and cheaper energy to meet the higher peak demand.
However, as a trader, you will only ever buy what you expect to be able to sell. It would be pointless stocking up on goods which you aren't going to sell, especially in FMCG where you need to sell them before they go out of date, else you lose all of the money on your purchase. Sales are almost always the constraint under normal operation.
Suppliers are attempting to create new demand by creating new markets. They usually offer freebies or discounts for new products in order to gain penetration, but it is then up to the market to decide whether that demand warrants them to continue producing the good. Without demand, they cannot continue to produce, because it would be a loss making endeavour.
Electricity can be seen under the same lens. Like FMCG, it loses value with time rapidly, because it gets lost as heat through storage, and it also costs to store. An electricity producer is never going to create more than they expect that they can sell. They might produce a bit more than actual demand as the means to try and capture new markets for greater long-term profits. Mining is part of this - if they can capture a new market for bitcoin mining, they will generate profit in the long term by continuing to supply that demand.