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Comment by bko | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin allows you to convert excess energy into money. Because it can be mined anywhere at any time, it's priced to the global low cost of energy. It doesn't make sense to use expensive energy sources.

Much of energy production is meant to meet peak demand and storage is difficult. Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste.

If you want to price energy or put a tax, by all means. But you shouldn't discriminate against particular usages of energy. You're angry at the wrong thing

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"Excess energy" is a myth.

It's 2021, and transmitting energy across the power grid is easier and more efficient than ever before. No one is building hydroelectric dams in the middle of nowhere without a way to transmit that energy to somewhere else. It's still better to send the energy somewhere where they can replace coal-fired power plants than it is to burn it up mining cryptocurrency.

> Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste.

It's exceedingly rare for energy to "go to waste".

Miners do not really care about anything other than profit. As long as the profit out of their operations is greater than the cost of electricity going in, the machines will be running.

Across most of the world there are at least brief moments when the price of electricity goes negative. It happens because some energy sources cannot quickly be shut down (eg. Nuclear), so it makes financial sense to pay to get rid of electricity for brief periods.

These negative prices don't coincide worldwide, indicating that there is not sufficient electrical transmission capacity.

> Miners do not really care about anything other than profit. As long as the profit out of their operations is greater than the cost of electricity going in, the machines will be running.

Exactly my point. That's why they choose the global lowest cost of energy provider. And if you allow the price system to work, this would be the least valuable undesirable energy. Anything else would be uneconomical.

or they just bribe a local official and make profit on what would otherwise be 'desirable' energy.

This and - literally millions of office worker drones power a PC for MS Office/Excel whole day long for no net effective social or global benefit which the likes of Bitcoin will weed out eventually. And then one day we will replace Bitcoin with something even more effective.

You imply good will of bitcoin miners. Once it becomes big enough for state actors, people in power will burn the Amazon forest or dry up entire rivers to mine bitcoin. Our civilization is all about ruthless greed and bitcoin exploits this nicely.

this implies some sort of perfect price for energy which (regardless of the fossil fuels v. renewable angle) is a myth.

"Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste."

Mining BTC is literally a waste.

There is no value creation at all.

Though some individuals may value it - it's not actually useful. The world economy does not grow one bit due to BTC or BTC mining - lives are not improved, products are not developed or made, or enabled etc..

Even if BTC were a very useful currency, it would still be wasteful to use considerable electricity to support it, because it's not necessary - it just happens to be the mechanism chosen to mine new coins.

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