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Comment by baroffoos | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what can be done about this. These crypto calculations are totally useless RNG and are trashing our planet. One solution I have seen is to charge for power on a non linear scale so for normal users its fairly cheap but if you start to use very high amounts of power it becomes more expensive per kwh.

This method doesn't sit too well with me but I don't have any other better suggestions.

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Electricity in this area is currently free:

> The problem reportedly persists in the Svaneti region where electricity is free due to harsh living conditions. Free electricity has drawn quite a lot of enterprises and the area has developed into a Bitcoin mining economy that is also “patronised by high-ranking officials” according to locals quoted by Kommersant daily. The locals face frequent power outages.

"What can be done" is: sell electricity at market rate, and rebate the proceeds to the residents in the area. The economic situation will be effectively the same, but bitcoin miners won't be able to freeload electricity.

This is literally how most electricity is charged. I’ve been in probably 30+ non European countries and it is frequently billed this way. Potable water is usually the same. Residential users rarely exceed the standard allowance so they never come across tiered pricing.

In fact most larger cities not only have tier pricing but also peak pricing inside tier levels.

Commercial and industrial is its own game, they have tiers and on/off peak charges along with load shedding requirements. Often it’s billed not just kWh but also peak amperage draw.

Edit: by load shedding I mean commercial/industrial end users often have to be able to accept incoming excess power from the grid that residential use isn’t consuming due to weather/events grid failures etc. Power grids are immensely complex and very interesting beasts.

In Australia electricity and gas both have a certain amount at a lower rate, with amoumts exceeding that going at a higher rate, also different on/off peak.

I suppose having a particularly steep increase over an amount only cryptominers will hit would be good.

> I wonder what can be done about this.

You can do something about this: support Proof of Stake crypto-currencies and denounce Proof of Work ones.

In contrast to proof of work, proof of stake will support itself since it doesn't come with the high power demands.

Increasing demand for renewable energy - thrashing our planet ?

Every KwH spent on useless calculations could be better spent heating a home, lighting a room, smelting some ore, or literally anything productive.

Oh, they can heat rooms/homes alright!

Overheating rooms which then have to be ventilated / air conditioned and aren't even an efficient way to heat an area compared to heat pumps.

Heat pumps can be complicated to set up, and nobody forces you to overheat...

Also having to produce more solar panels and wind turbines to run miners is not good for the environment either.

It can - if it helps with the economies of scale, and makes us "get off" fossil fuels earlier.

Normal usage has already done this. New renewable energy sources are cheaper than new fossil fuel sources. Fossil fuels exist mainly today because they have already been set up but mostly for political reasons. Many political parties have built their personal brand around fossil fuels and will continue to use them even when it is illogical.

Not if you consider the intermittency/storage issues.

(And guess what - intermittency isn't a big deal for cryptomining / SETI/Folding@Home either!)

Not totally true. As I pointed out in previous HN threads, there is a lot of power used by miners that would otherwise be unused. In the Chinese regions of Yunan and Sichuan, there is such an overcapacity of hydropower that dams are forced to release water (without spinning the turbines) which amounts to over 100 TWh wasted every year. So just these 2 regions let more hydropower go to literal waste than the worldwide consumption of Bitcoin miners.

Incidentally, this overcapacity is why some estimate that half the global Bitcoin mining capacity is located in Sichuan and Yunan. Despite that, they just make a tiny dent in the wasted hydropower...

I wonder why they don't use it to make synthetic gas.

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