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Comment by root_axis | Hacker News Reader

It's a bad idea because the energy used is worse than wasted since all it does is contribute to an increase in the mining difficulty for the entire network, thus worsening the environmental impact. It's actually better for the environment to leave that energy completely unused rather than use it for mining bitcoins.

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This isn’t necessarily true: if the subsidies spread clean power generation then the percentage of miners that have bad environmental impacts will decrease over time. Also, since this would make relatively clean power sources cheaper, it would help phase out fossil generation capacity.

They're not "subsidies", they're just profits earned from selling what was mined, nothing useful happened, it simply makes the blockchain needlessly more expensive for everyone because a nuclear power plant is dumping hashing power into the network. Green energy doesn't change the fundamental nature of PoW, it inevitably expands to consume all available energy because the more energy you can burn the more money you can make.

I disagree with the last part about direct proportionality between energy and money. But my real wonder is if we can use this hashed/mined out coins for something that is actually useful socially.(even if it is a transaction of services anonymously.) I keep wondering if we can create a crypto currency + IOT devices + energy tracking system that can value the coins you have based on the energy sources that fed into mining it. But it feels so complex that I am not optimistic about creating such a thing..

Why do you disagree? If I profit X per kWh why wouldn't I burn as many kWhs as I can?

Because not everyone is the "economically rational agent" that just wants to maximize profits as much as they can. May be you disagree, and think most people are and it's strong enough to be a normal distribution. (I am not sure it is, but i sure hope it is not a normal distribution and there are enough people outside).

It doesn't matter that not everyone is a "economically rational agent". What matters is that there are some of them. People who will reinvest their profit into more mining, to profit more and reinvest it further. The people who are currently fabbing their own ASICs and setting up mining farms in places where electricity is cheap. These people left unchecked will, over time, suck up all spare electricity generation capacity and eventually outbid quite a lot of normal electricity use.

Once again I disagree.. these "some people" need to be the majority(of anyone participating in these currencies) for this mining to stay profitable.. Of course i may be mistaken about that part of the reasoning, but I'm fairly confident about it. Please let me know if you think it is an unfair assumption.

Majority is counted by hashing capability, not by head count. Is it not?

Ah... I am talking about who gets to determine the cost of the coins.. So I assumed it's majority of the people who use it as a currency or exchange. But then that's my default assumption about crypto currencies in general and not sure that applies to NFTs..

The important part is that the profits from mining are used to reduce rates: so it’s subsidizing the power costs for the customers as well as offsetting the capital investment into the powerplant.

Any reduction in rates would drive up the costs for everyone else. The capital investment required to construct a nuclear plant utterly dwarfs anything that could possibly be earned by mining.

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