Some locals say a Bitcoin mining operation is ruining one of the Finger Lakes | Hacker News Reader

Some locals say a Bitcoin mining operation is ruining one of the Finger Lakes

nbcnews.com

162 pointscar150 comments

Ars Technica did a great piece about this a couple months ago: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...

The gist is that a private equity firm bought a defunct fossil plant and are running it to power mining rigs directly, without any connection to the outside power grid. Apparently this allows them to do an end run around certain regulations and taxes which only apply to grid-connected power plants.

The scariest part is that this is apparently insanely profitable for them. NY is pretty progressive and it would not surprise me if they crack down on this kind of thing, but other states or countries seem unlikely to do that.

All the stories we've read lately about fossil plants shutting down due to being replaced by renewables could ultimately be for nothing if companies like this one buy them all up and restart them.

> The scariest part is that this is apparently insanely profitable for them. NY is pretty progressive and it would not surprise me if they crack down on this kind of thing, but other states or countries seem unlikely to do that.

And this is why you need a carbon tax.

These clowns are basically making money by turning negative externalities into bitcoin. And the best way to deal with a negative externality is to tax the heck out of those folks and thereby either a) make the activity unprofitable, or b) use the resulting revenues to plow into mitigation efforts to offset the effects of the externality.

I don't get why the law separates between connected and disconnected power plants? Seems a lot less simple than just saying "everyone who pollutes pays x".

This is also why carbon tax is gonna be a disappointment. There are way too many rules surrounding it, when really there should just be one carbon budget that every firm can try to buy some of on equal terms.

The law likely didn't consider disconnected power plants, as why would such a thing exist? I guess the only reason before bitcoin is a self-contained power plant to run a self-contained facility, and even those (like a datacenter) are often grid tied with the power plant as a backup.

I think this is an example of capitalism finding exploits in the legal system. We should try to patch this one quickly.

Capitalism isn't exploiting anything. People make the laws, people operate businesses.

It isn't clear to me that these concerns are absent under any other system -- in fact I would argue that capitalism paired with a liberal representative democracy and strong individual rights is the best system for addressing any concerns.

I don't think capitalism is "wrong" for finding an exploit, but those liberal representative democracies should realize that turning retired power plants into miners is bad, and pass laws to prevent that business model from working.

Why impugn "capitalism" when you could have just said that the business model has negative consequences that should be addressed via legislation?

I was reacting to the non-sequitur that you were suggesting that somehow capitalism was at fault in this situation.

I don't think people realize how much of things like the tax code are basically code patches to law to fix exploitable bugs.

> The law likely didn't consider disconnected power plants, as why would such a thing exist?

I think the point is that why would the law make the distinction anyway? Like why would it say "power plants connected to a power grid pay X tax"? Why wouldn't it just say "power plants pay X tax"?

A sibling comment points out a reasonable explanation for why non-connected power plants might be exempt from tax, though.

Probably because the owners, operators, and/or manufacturers of generating equipment lobbied to get excluded. It's the same reason why emissions regulations apply specifically to reciprocating engines only up to a certain threshold of displacement per cylinder: it exempts the products of Caterpillar.

> I don't get why the law separates between connected and disconnected power plants?

Assuming they made an exception for private plants that belong to a campus of some sort. Many airports, universitys, housing projects, water treatment facilities, prisons, data centers, etc, run their own power plants primarily for heating and cooling needs with the added benefit of 24/7 onsite power in case of a blackout. They may be grid tied and export some power but are not primary grid suppliers like a utility.

Why should those private plants get an exception? All you jave done is provide a "who", not a "why".

Partially it is a scale thing. The state only has so many inspectors, so if you limit the law to large industrial users you don't need to have inspectors driving around to tens of thousands of tiny single-use boilers inspecting them for environmental requirements they would never be able to afford in the first place.

Then it seems like scale should be part qualifying for the exemption. In this case the power plant is absolutely at a large enough scale that it should be regulated.

> Why should those private plants get an exception?

Ask the law makers who wrote it.

> All you jave done is provide a "who", not a "why".

The word "private" is the "why".

If you want an analogy: Do you follow food safety and preparation laws or submit to inspection in your private kitchen before making yourself breakfast? No. Because it's private.

You analogy is completely inaccurate and flawed. "Private" commercial kitchens (e.g. on campuses) absolutely have to follow food safety regulations.

I wouldn't be surprised if the law dated back to electrification and specifically existed to grandfather in mills that had independent electrical supplies before the grid was established - like a textile mill with a water wheel that hooked the axle up to a generator.

Remember too that AC vs. DC was very much up in the air in the early days of electricity so any early investors in generators would have to gamble on which standard would win for transmission and some of them would end up being incompatible with the grid unless they installed transformers. A sane government would want to allow those early adopters to keep using what they've got until it breaks and not penalize those companies for investing in new technology.

Carbon taxes have come up in Congress from time to time, but the fossil fuel industries are much too politically connected. The excuse is usually that if you tax carbon all you do is move the polluters offshore, and since CO2 is a global problem it doesn't solve anything. Global problems need global solutions, but our international treaty systems are insufficient to make progress on this pressing issue.

People still try, Kyoto was a heroic effort, but at the end of the day the incentives to cheat are powerful and thus the level of trust is very low.

> The excuse is usually that if you tax carbon all you do is move the polluters offshore, and since CO2 is a global problem it doesn't solve anything. Global problems need global solutions, but our international treaty systems are insufficient to make progress on this pressing issue.

Which is, of course, ridiculous.

They bought a coal power plant in New York, because it already existed. They're not going to disassemble it and transport it to China because that wouldn't be cost effective, so the alternative is that it would remain offline.

Likewise, if people buy electric cars or high MPG hybrids in the US because there is a carbon tax, that reduces the CO2 emitted by the US independent of what anybody else does. It doesn't require any international agreement; you can just do it on your own.

"What about global effects," you say. But that goes the other way.

Africa doesn't buy new cars by and large, they buy used cars exported from America and Europe. If the new cars people buy in America or Europe become electric then they'll still be electric when they're the used cars sold to Africa.

Oil is a global commodity. If America burns less then the price goes down. Which makes it cheaper for other countries to independently enact a carbon tax. Which they have the incentive to do because they get brownie points, and their domestic population doesn't rebel against a change that only keeps the price the same, and it generates revenue at the expense of the (foreign) oil companies. The more countries do this, the easier it is for the others to do it, at the expense of oil net exporters like Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Nothing about this requires an international agreement or any kind of cooperation from anyone. Just enact a carbon tax and pay the revenue back to the population as a dividend. It will be extremely popular as soon as everybody gets the first check and realizes that they get back more than they paid because some of the money comes from oil companies and other corporations (who receive none of the dividend).

It's not too hard to imagine that there are decommissioned coal fired power plants in other parts of the world. Many were shut down when natural gas became cheaper than coal because they were too old or in a bad location for conversion to natural gas.

> Oil is a global commodity. If America burns less then the price goes down. Which makes it cheaper for other countries to independently enact a carbon tax. Which they have the incentive to do because they get brownie points, and their domestic population doesn't rebel against a change that only keeps the price the same, and it generates revenue at the expense of the (foreign) oil companies. The more countries do this, the easier it is for the others to do it, at the expense of oil net exporters like Saudi Arabia and Russia.

Or those countries don't enact a carbon tax and then start sucking up factories from countries that did.

If every country enacted the same taxes then the question comes down to which country has the most lax enforcement. If the enforcement is all the same then you have a potential solution, but of course this is a huge ask in the modern world. It's hard to get competitors to work cooperatively. As long as people treat the world economy like a big zero sum game this problem is basically unsolvable.

> Or those countries don't enact a carbon tax and then start sucking up factories from countries that did.

Then you can implement tarrifs on countries that refuse to implement carbon taxes.

You can't because now they make all of your stuff. It's just as much political suicide.

Just a few years ago, the US put a tariff on tons of manufactured imports based on other concerns, and it didn't turn out to be the biggest factor in the impending political suicide.

Unfortunately, no country would do it on its own, knowing that a neighbor could have an economic advantage. By making it a global problem with a global treaty, it makes everyone accountable. Like the Cold War weapons race: until the Arm treaty, it was going nowhere. Me and my neighbors driving an electric car won't make a difference until oil companies feel the pressure from international laws

Wouldn't emitting CO2 in dense forest contribute to green mass gain?

Apparently only for a short time: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-d...

Plants in general tend to be more water, mineral, and light limited than CO2 limited.

NASA seems to say yes https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...

This isn't correct, they are carbon neutral.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/greenidge-generatio...

You're using their press release as a source? I can't tell if it's intended to be ironic or serious.

Why would they operate out of a gas plant if they intend to be carbon neutral?

Either they offset it by creating green electricity elsewhere, in which case they should be using that instead of gas in the first place, or either they are offseting using very slow "net-neutral" schemes such as agroforestry, in which case the harm they do will not be compensated until 30 years on.

The answer is in the press release: Portfolio of Fully Accredited Carbon Offset Credits Starting June 1st

Then it means a huge carbon footprint not offset until decades from now.

(as carbon offsetting is typically slow)

So their business is criminal.

Why does the answer to everything have to be a tax that allows government to become even more bloated.

If using computing power like this is so bad just make it illegal to use excessive computing power, why allow it but let the government scoop up the cream.

> Why does the answer to everything have to be a tax that allows government to become even more bloated.

Because assholes exist who will gladly burn the planet down to make a buck.

> If using computing power like this is so bad just make it illegal to use excessive computing power, why allow it but let the government scoop up the cream.

Because enforcing an effective regime on capping the amount of power each US resident can use for computing is considerably _more_ difficult (and results in _more_ bloat) than just taxing emissions.

Taxing emissions just allows some government a-hole to make a buck and you still get the emissions how is that better?

If you think it would be structured in a way that would stop emissions you’re naive because tax makers would rather still make money than stop something.

Think I’m wrong? Cigarettes and alcohol still kill people they’re just highly taxed.

Taxes solve nothing and ONLY exist to keep poor people poor and middle class people middle class.

> Think I’m wrong? Cigarettes and alcohol still kill people they’re just highly taxed.

Most studies have found that increasing taxes on cigarettes does reduce smoking prevalence.

> Taxing emissions just allows some government a-hole to make a buck and you still get the emissions how is that better?

Easy: sanction their asses. We banned CFCs, remember? We didn't even need 100% compliance to be effective at repairing the ozone hole!

> Think I’m wrong? Cigarettes and alcohol still kill people they’re just highly taxed.

Taxing alcohol and tobacco reduce their use, thereby reducing the harm they bring. [1] [2]

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

[2] https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-publh...

>Taxing emissions just allows some government a-hole to make a buck and you still get the emissions how is that better?

Those emissions only happen because of the local price advantage of the externality. Globally there is no price advantage because for every winner (the person emitting the CO2) there is a loser (everyone else being harmed from the CO2). This is a clear case of individual decision making requiring an extension of responsibility. The carbon tax makes the decision maker responsible for the financial damages caused by the CO2 and thus allows local decision making to reach a global optimum.

Advocates of the free market should want local decision making to always result in a global optimum, because that is literally their position. If they want to argue that local decision making should not have to lead to a global optimum then they ruin their own position because what they really want is the right to harm others for private benefit.

Seems like a good opportunity for governments to tax their carbon dioxide emissions. It would be easier to get public support for a carbon tax that only targets "unproductive" sources.

Edit: What if governments just imposed a carbon tax on all crypto mining? The legal framework necessary to support that could be extended to cover other carbon sources in the future.

Wouldn't it make more sense to tax fossil fuels as they leave the ground?

But if you did that then drivers would have to pay their fair share instead of pretending like bitcoin actually matters.

Yes, but I think Earth's general voting population is too short-sighted to support something like that.

If all uses of a fossil fuel produces the exact same carbon output, but my understanding is that this is almost never the case.

Burning the same fuel is always going to produce the same amount of CO2. Here are the amounts, for various fuels:

https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.php

You might get more or less usable energy out of it depending on your efficiency, but if you're less efficient you'll have to burn more fuel (hence paying more tax, directly or as part of the price of fuel if it's taxed at the source).

But fuel is not the only use for those resources.

But isn't it the case that

A) petroleum products are used for other purposes?

B) carbon capturing is used to various levels of effectiveness?

C) there can be different levels of partial combustion?

A) We could address this by charging at the refinery for fuel products, rather than at the oil well for crude.

B) I definitely think carbon capture should earn credits in any carbon pricing system.

C) That's just another kind of inefficiency. Same comment applies as above.

All of the fuel that is burned should release roughly the same amount of carbon.

The stuff that is turned into lubricating oils, plastics, etc... will keep most of the carbon contained.

… but will nonetheless pollute the environment in differently harmful ways.

Yes but (for instance) some people who are 100% on board with reducing CO2 emissions to prevent global warming have different views about using fertilizer or plastics.

What about carbon capture?

Mostly doesn't exist.

They quite often are, but not as much as is necessary. Oil tends to be taxed at refinement, but there's no such stage for coal.

Hear me out, I don't buy this. NY would have never approved operating a power plant that did such damage to the lake.

Notice they mentioned "surface temperature". Many lakes are naturally stratified in summer. Especially lakes deep for their size. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_stratification

Indeed, Seneca lake is very deep, and naturally thermally stratified in summer:

> Because of Seneca Lake's great depth its temperature remains a near-constant 39 °F (4 °C).[3] In summer the top 10 to 15 feet (3.0 to 4.6 m) warms to 70–80 °F (21–27 °C)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Lake_(New_York)

I think crypto mining is a huge waste of energy. But this article has an ax to grind. A simpler explanation for warm surface temps is a warmer than usual summer.

Indeed, NY state has had two major heat waves already this year

How different is this from Cornell's lake source cooling plant? Opponents of that made the same sorts of claims, but afaik were never able to prove that lake temperatures were any different once you get more than a few yards away from where the water was released. E.g.: https://fcs.cornell.edu/sites/default/files/2020-06/Final_FA...

It's not different :)

Water can absorb enormous amount of energy. And releases huge amounts as it evaporates. And the lake is in contact with massive land surface that also absorbs ton of energy.

The deeper parts of Seneca lake are isothermal with regional ground temperature, so there's clearly no problem with heat dissipation

27°C doesn't "feel like a hot tub", so currently it must be higher.

The thermal conductivity of water makes that even a temperature a few degrees cooler than the body temperature feels refreshing, which is not the case right now according to the witnesses.

Honestly, even if they did then blaming bitcoin doesn't seem to be the right thing to blame. Blame the plant regulations. I say this agreeing that mining is a huge waste of energy. But going after bitcoin is like blaming a junky and giving the dealer a free pass.

But isn't this plant operating because it was bought by bitcoin miners? Thus the "junkie" in your allegory is also the manufacturer and dealer?

Yes, but that still doesn't mean that the regulations shouldn't be on the dealer. Even if the dealer is using their own product. The dealer is still the one doing more damage.

I wonder if part of the problem is that they are maybe water cooling the datacenters full of cryptominers? So not only is there the waste heat from the power plant as originally designed, but also the waste heat of its entire energy output is being dumped into the lake instead of being distributed around town.

I do suspect that this is a surface temperature problem. Lakes form thermal gradients pretty easily so if they are only heating the top layer this power plant could noticeably warm the water even if it is producing nowhere near enough heat to warm the entire lake.

I can't argue against the take that this whole thing is just killing the planet for a profit.

Oh boy, fermi estimation time! Big caveat: all of the below assumes ideal mixing, which is not a given at this scale at all. So I'm not rubbishing the residents. (Nor disputing the idiocy of burning 45 MW to "mine" numbers for that matter.)

From wiki, the lake has a volume of 15 km3, or 15 trillion litres. The daily discharge of 135 million gallons is ~ 600 million litres. So, per day, it's cycling about 40 parts per million. Alternatively, you'll cycle the volume of the lake once every 67 years at that rate.

That same discharge is ~ 7000 litres per second, which will require 30 MW to heat by one degree Celsius. It's listed at at most 45 MW, so one and a half degrees rise, unless any of the water is evaporated, which it quite possibly is (after all, more is licensed to go in the plant than come out. I wonder if they have some scheme where a small volume of water is heated to a point where evaporation matters, then it is mixed back in?).

Once again, the locals may be noticing, but only if very significant stratification is occurring. Water is good at dissipating heat.

So putting it all together, assuming no evaporation and ideal mixing, at its current max rate of 45MW it would take 67 years to raise the lake temperature 1.5 degrees Celsius?

I think cooling rates may increase as lake temperature increases. That said, over 67 years may be just in the noise.

It's quite likely that the real situation isn't anywhere close to ideal mixing, especially since warm water is lighter and the deep part of the lake might not be mixing efficiently with the warm discharged water. Then the surface water might be warming much more than your calculation suggests, to the point where locals are noticing a major difference.

The Finger Lakes are famously deep as well. Seneca averages 291' with a max depth of 618'

If this is a critical issue it probably wouldn't be overly difficult to spend some energy to pump in from a colder / deeper part of the lake if that is the concern, then heat and dump on the top. May be actually COLDER still than existing surface waters.

Or if it is a critical issue, just shut it down. We don't need to let someone ruin a lake to mine Bitcoin.

Running 45 MW of miners != Producing 45 MW of energy != Producing producing 45 MW of waste heat. First you have to consider the thermodynamic efficiency of the power plant. With a ~40% efficiency, 1 W of produced heat wastes 1.5 W of heat. Then you have to consider the overhead for running the miners. Ballpark, about half of the energy probably goes to HVAC. Furthermore, that 45 MW of mining power is also eventually getting released as heat, some of which may be returning to the lake.

Overall, 45 MW of bitcoin produced could mean 135 - 180 MW of waste heat.

This seems rather fishy to me. First of all, they're currently running at only 18MW, and that lake has about 4 billion gallons of water in it. That's not enough energy use to produce a noticeable change in that much water.

Second problem - there are literally no lake water temperatures in the article, either now or historical. The entire premise of the article seems to be that locals feel that it's warmer.

I personally think this kind of power use for bitcoin mining is wasteful and should be heavily taxed, but c'mon man - how about the reporter does a little bit of journalism?

This is shameful either way, but per the NBC article it sounds like they will need a few years to be sure the lake is warming:

> A full thermal study hasn't been produced and won't be until 2023, but residents protesting the plant say the lake is warmer with Greenidge operating. Greenidge recently published average discharged water temperatures from March 1 to April 17, during the trout spawning season; they were around 46 degrees to 54 degrees, with differences between inflow and outflow of 5 degrees to 7.5 degrees.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/some-locals-say-...

But apparently they plan to expand this business model.

> In March, Greenidge said its Bitcoin mining capacity of 19 megawatts should reach 45 megawatts by December and may ramp to 500 megawatts by 2025 as it replicates its model elsewhere. Larger gas-fired plants in the U.S. have capacities of 1,500 to 3,500 megawatts.

If I may offer a little critical thinking, to a very biased, alarmist piece. This it seems very clear this is hit piece. It throws around some big numbers and a quote from some local, and comes up very short on analysis, and very big on leading readers into a particular conclusion.

Firstly, using lakes to cool power plants is not unusual or uncommon. They don't really make that clear, and it feels like they want the reader to think this is nefarious. To me the title of this should be something more like "Residents forgot the lake gets warmer when the power plant operates".

As far as the 135 million allowed to be discharged into the lake daily, it is an incredibly small amount compared to the size of the lake. According to Wikipedia, the volume of the lake is 3.81 cu/miles of water. A quick search tells me 1 cu/mi =~ 1.1 trillion gallons. Okay, some more rough math gives us a total of about 4.2 trillion gallons in the lake of which 135M gallons is something like 0.000032% of the total volume.

So my point is that when the article throws a figure like 135M gallons at you with no context it seems huge. But when you look at it in context, 3 one hundred thousands of one percent of the total, I have a hard time imagining that has any measurable impact on the lake whatsoever. I'm sure the quoted resident that lives very near to the plant had noticed the warmth, but anywhere else on the lake?

On top of this, the plant is under strict scrutiny by the regulators, and they appear to be operating withing the limits outlined by said regulators. So if there is anyone to get mad at here it's not the plant operators, it's the Department of Environmental Conservation.

> On top of this, the plant is under strict scrutiny by the regulators, and they appear to be operating withing the limits outlined by said regulators. So if there is anyone to get mad at here it's not the plant operators, it's the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Actually, the correct answer is: both.

There's a difference between what's legal and what's moral or ethical.

It is clear, at least to me, that emitting large quantities of CO2 into the air, and heated waste water into a lake, for the sole purpose of enriching oneself mining cryptocurrencies, is simply immoral. It is a classic example of the tragedy of the commons.

The regulations clearly do not adequately limit this kind of activity.

So we should be angry that the laws don't reflect our values.

And we should be angry that these folks are taking advantage of that fact to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

We as a society deem it a fair use of energy to have dryers, and christamas lights all year long, which use more energy that a decentralized monetary system that brings sovereign banking to the masses. Before letting this story and all the other propaganda make you angry (intended) actually look what bitcoin IS, how it works, and what problems it solves in the world. A comparison that always comes to mind is like someone saying that the internet is a big waste of energy.

> We as a society deem it a fair use of energy to have dryers, and christamas lights all year long, which use more energy that a decentralized monetary system that brings sovereign banking to the masses.

It... really doesn't. It brings wild speculation to a few. And ransomware to many.

But banking? To the masses? Hah! Sorry, no. That would imply Bitcoin is useful for, you know, actually engaging in day to day monetary transactions. It'd imply large numbers of commercial and government interests to be willing to use Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. It'd imply a stable, reliable, regulated, insured location where people could store their wealth confident that it wouldn't be stolen. It'd require reversible transactions to deal with fraud, fat fingering, and so forth.

Basically, it'd require Bitcoin to be something completely different than what it is.

> look what bitcoin IS, how it works, and what problems it solves in the world.

I have. I've been watching it for ten years now. And it's still just yet another speculative "asset" with no merit as either a currency or a store of value due to, among many many things, its massive volatility.

As a form of digital gambling, though? Unparalleled!

> A comparison that always comes to mind is like someone saying that the internet is a big waste of energy.

And if all the internet was was a giant digital slot machine, they'd be right.

> It is clear, at least to me, that emitting large quantities of CO2 into the air, and heated waste water into a lake, for the sole purpose of enriching oneself

i agree, but that would make bitcoin mining merely the most recent addition to a very, very long list of immoral endeavours undertaken for the sole purpose of enriching oneself.

I'm not a fan of starting up power plants for bitcoin mining, but I agree with your analysis. I did the same calculations before finding this thread, so I'll point out that it's 0.0032% not 0.000032% (you need to multiply by 100 for percent).

Thanks, I did the calculation quickly & admittedly didn’t double check, so I’ll take your word on it.

But the point stands true. This will certainly warm the lake in the local vicinity, where the quoted resident came from. But to slant this warming story as if it will effect the whole ecosystem of the lake is silly & inaccurate.

It’s a really big lake. I’m more used to seeing smaller, man made lakes for this purpose. My old hometown has one, and yes the water was warm. But that didn’t stop anyone from canoeing & fishing in it.

And I must point out, a detail that gets buried in this story is the power plant was not repurposed as natural gas and started back up with the sole intention of mining Bitcoin. It was intended to provide extra electricity during peak usage hours in the summer. The Bitcoin mining is basically a ‘side hustle’.

They should provide free heating to locals in winter.

Your own numbers lack a great deal of context and your comment seems far more biased than this article. The article avoids making any conclusions about the effects on the lake while you seem quite happy to jump to conclusions with insufficient data and bad math.

Edit: My own stance would be that we should wait to until we have the data on how much warming is happening at the various layers of the lake and then use that data assess the regulations governing the power plant. In the meantime, we might look at bringing the regulations for disconnected power plants in-line with grid power plants.

(Ported from the duped thread [1])

I think it's kind of good that these absurd scenarios involving Bitcoin are driving people (in the larger sense of companies and governments) towards more environmental awareness.

If you think about it, the entire system is just as absurd as Bitcoin. Business pollute the environment we live in, and then get to brag to shareholders about "delivering value", "increased revenue margins", and "efficiency" that they later get rewarded by the stock market for.

The green company that makes a slightly lower profit, but takes care of the environment falls out of the index to be replaced by the polluter that either does the bare minimum, or actively breaks laws and treats fines as the cost of doing business. The market rewards rapacity over environmentalism.

Well, Bitcoin is even more efficient, it's directly burning coal and converting it into money that the market will also pay for!

The (hopefully) good outcome of this is that it will drive corporations and governments to take a breath, and formulate policies that prioritize the long-term health of the environment over short term priorities like jobs and the economy.

-------------------------------

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27749932

+1 here on this analysis ; four or five decades of stupid capital investment and population explosion plus plastics -- no contest ! I literally mean this.

Bitcoin has commodified wasting resources for money.

Proof-of-Waste (PoW) is quite accurate.

Saying it's a waste is like putting a moral qualifier on the use of energy - and for the purpose and affect that this decentralized monetary system can have on the world is definitely worth it in my eyes. People dont make a fuss about using 2 clothes dryers and 24/7 christmas lights that use more energy, but hey that's an approved use of energy.

Luckily Christmas lights lit 24/7/52 don't generate xmas-coins.

Morals or not. We will see if Ethereums "proof of stake" will be able to solve anything.

And if you solve the general problem, you solve the specific problem.

Is this a story if there is a carbon tax and as a result the profit-maximizing activity is to mine Bitcoin by building wind turbines?

This. Bitcoin mines were not the first to dump heat into natural bodies of water, but their number makes the damage and need for regulation obvious.

Buying carbon credits is like a corporate greenwashing get out jail free card, isn't it? "Hey, no need to hate us! We're buying carbon credits!"

It's like indulgences, for the remission of venial sins. The buyer is delivered publicly a clean bill of moral health, and the seller gets to build some new chateaus, estates and cathedrals.

It's a mechanism that uses market to let the economy and its participants know what actual costs of co2 emissions are instead letting them operate on assumption that they cost zero.

I wouldn't mind if sugar manufacturers would have to buy 'sugar credits' for emitting sugar into the human population.

They do. The government controls all sugar production in the U.S. They control how much can be grown, imported, and exported. It is a very unique commodity in that sense. I've worked in the industry for 10 years now.

But it doesn't use the actual cost of CO2 emissions.

Nor does it "balance out" emissions by removing CO2 in one place and allowing CO2 emissions in another place. It actually works off schemes that reduce the amount of CO2 emitted compared to a hypothetical.

So, it's like me saying I've made "savings" by not buying a coffee every day, even if I never actually bought coffee in the past.

Putting "actual" in quotes. Estimating the cost is insanely difficult.

You are right, the only thing it comunicates is that there actually is some cost.

This is the fundamental problem with carbon credits. There is currently no wide scale production system for scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere. Because of this, the price of the carbon credits is set arbitrarily by politicians. It's meaningless.

A carbon market only works if there are sellers. Companies that sequester carbon for X dollars per ton so producers need to buy enough credits to cover their emissions. There could even be competition as people find more efficient ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Currently the whole thing is a big game that nobody takes seriously. It is a game because if we actually priced in the cost of scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere using current technologies no fossil fuel industries would be competitive. It would threaten the gravy train for people like Rex Tillerson, so it's a nonstarter politically.

Not sure about the lake temperature, but the energy company just announced that all their bitcoin mining operations are carbon neutral.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/greenidge-generatio...

Sounds like a joke.

They are literally operating out of a gas plant...

What's fascinating to me about bitcoin is how much it shortens the chain of transmutation between electricity and money.

A typical situation might involve a business or manufacturer taking power, raw materials, and labor to create something of value and sell it.

With bitcoin, anyone with sufficient capital can simply exploit natural resources and turn it directly into money. It's a capitalist dream: remove nearly all labor from the equation leaving only capital and land (land in the Georgist sense being natural resource like coal, oil, land, water, etc). I think in this way it exposes market failures faster than anything else since the efficiency of capital-infused actors is so high...

It certainly reinforces that externalities are not priced in to the current energy markets!

(moved to the other thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27749247)

> Bitcoin is driving people towards more environmental awareness.

WHAT? What makes you think Bitcoin is driving anything other than speculation and greed?

That was not well phrased, I apologize. The sentence should have been "These absurd scenarios involving Bitcoin are driving people towards more environmental awareness". Pretty much all the mentions of Bitcoin I have heard within my social circle have been about the environmental impact. People think it's absurd that we are literally converting energy into money!

Does it sound more plausible / correct with that phrasing?

> These absurd scenarios involving Bitcoin are driving people towards more environmental awareness

It is better to turn it around:

Those with environmental awareness are shocked by the absurdity of Bitcoin.

And there are a lot of people around which don't "believe" in climate change.

Profit. The cheaper your electricity, the higher your margins.

The greenies won't care to admit it but Bitcoin has finally provided the motivation to pursue cheap, efficient, reliable renewable energy where all they've ever had to offer was financially-punishing "save the planet" vibes.

Depending on the source, 50% (+-20%) of crypto mining is already powered renewably.

Absolutely. I have solar energy and I mine XMR with it. It's nice and clean.

My country has an obnoxious "incentive" structure where the power companies aren't actually required to pay me for the energy I generate. They give me "kWh credits" which expire if unused for over one year. So I have no reason to generate more energy than I need.

Cryptocurrency changed everything. It allowed me to sink my surplus energy production into proof-of-work. I get paid for it and get to support an amazing project like Monero.

> The cheaper your electricity, the higher your margins.

Isn't that true for every user of electricity?

Theres a literal incentive for bitcoin miners to find the cheapest use of energy possible. Literally pushing the technology to find efficiencies

> It's a capitalist dream

Except it gets more difficult the more you (and others) mine.

Why does this article not have the temperature change of the water?

Because journalism. Can't let data get in the way of a good story.

> The power plant, Greenidge, which is being closely monitored by the Department of Environmental Conservation, is allowed to suck in 139 million gallons of water and discharge 135 million gallons daily.

What is the rationale for the suck in allowance being 4 million gallons a day higher than the discharge allowance?

Evaporation?

That seems like a reasonable explanation for why they might have less water to discharge than they sucked in, but I don't understand why it would be written into the limits of what they are allowed to suck out and discharge.

If they were to take 139 MG one day and only 2 MG were lost to evaporation, so that they had 137 MG left over, I fail to see the logic in saying that they can only put 135 MG of that back into the lake.

That's effectively saying that if they take their limit of 139 MG per day, then they are required to net drain the lake by 4 MG per day.

I'd have expected the limits to be of the form: You can take up to X per day, you can put back up to what you take, and you must put back enough so that the net taking for that day is less than T.

There were some discussion among people who want to invest in solar farms. A major hurdle is the interconnection into the grid. There're lots of regulation and large fee to transmit electricity through the gird. From the people who have done it, they just chose not to connect to the grid but sell the electricity directly to the local users, like a local plant. It's quite lucrative with all the tax credits and the sales of green credits while the electricity income was minuscule in comparison. The limitation is they have to be near some major electric users and totally relying on the few users.

With bitcoin mining, it's possible to run a solar farm to mine the coins while disconnected from the grid. I'd imagine it's quite competitive without all the interconnected fees.

How can you sell solar power to local users without connecting to the grid?

They built their own power line directly to the users.

This isn't the only crypto mining setup causing problems in rural New York state. A few firms set up shop near the St. Lawrence river in the northern part of the state to take advantage of cheap hydropower and rent. Locals complained that their electricity rates were being jacked up, which resulted in a slew of new rules at the municipal and state level.

https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/40458/202...

How wasteful crypto is depends on how its energy consumption compares to the energy consumption of the traditional banking system.

What is the energy consumption of armed trucks anyway? How much energy is required to build a bank branch?

Sure, the transaction charges are tiny with Bitcoin and storage is free. Is that an indicator of the differences in total energy consumption once the mining is over?

Also, what is the total energy consumed by coping with fiat currency's inflation? Probably should include that.

I think some hyperinflation events also contribute to wars happening. These use energy too.

But BTC does not replace the banking system. The banking system does way way way more than simply hold money in accounts and send it places. I could sort of buy this argument for something like Ethereum that is truly programmable, but even if BTC completely takes over and no other currencies exist then there will still be banks and bank branches.

The discussion of inflation and wars is just fantasy. Everybody in the world using BTC isn't going to end standing armies.

It hasn't replaced it. But it does compete with it for some things.

Payments with BTC certainly isn't competitive. But that probably won't last.

Maybe we'll still need branches. Not everybody can deal with the security required for crypto and there will probably be companies that help people treat it like a regular bank.

Inflation is a real issue and Hitler came to power after the hyperinflation in the Weimar republic. Fiat made that possible.

But Germany still would have had to pay the WW1 reparations somehow. With very high taxation probably.

But the hyperinflation happens after multiple years of expanding the currency too much, often with little impact for several years. That can destroy confidence in government in a way that consistently high but stable taxation might not.

Heard it here first. Fiat money caused the holocaust.

Hyperinflation is not the result of monetary policy. Hyperinflation is the result of near total collapse of systems. BTC is absolutely not immune to hyperinflation. That's just what happens when the price of some currency tanks rapidly as people lose all trust in its stability. The mining cap does not prevent the collapse of BTC as a currency or the collapse of states that use it. Not even a little.

I don't how stable your systems are. If too much print currency is printed, prices will rise. And if the printing is great enough and sustained long enough, hyperinflation will result.

Does a stable supply of a currency, coupled with collapsed systems, create hyperinflation?

Does a currency's value only drop up where systems collapse and not suffer hyperinflation elsewhere where systems are working?

I read the whole article looking for some indication as to the mechanism by which the power plant or mining operation are warming the lake. If there is one, it's not in the article. I assume offloading waste heat from the power plant and/or mining operation? That would have to be one hell of an operation to noticeably change the surface temperature of a lake that big. I wonder if anyone has anything more granular than "feels like a hot tub."

Hot tubs are pretty warm. That'd be an extraordinary amount of energy. Would be interested to see data, measuring water temperature is pretty easy

Url changed from https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/bitcoin-mini..., which points to this.

https://archive.is/ByenE

> Some locals say Bitcoin is great

> Some locals say earth is flat

> Some locals say...

Who cares?

I hate it when people claim jobs or work trump citizens rights. A minor example of this, why should developers and construction sites close sidewalks and car lanes?

What is the alternative? Sometimes you must close a road or sidewalk in order to perform maintenance. This is an out of touch stance.

The alternative, the business pays a fee per day for lane and sidewalk closures. I guarantee they will close the lanes and sidewalks less often and for shorter durations.

I don't know how it is where you live, but that's the way it works here. You pay a daily fee.

Because the fee isn't paid to them they don't notice or care.

Much of the "solutions" provided for apparent existing problems already exist. Some kind of analogy to the Dunning-Kreuger effect is going on - any problem I don't understand is simple.

This is already how it works. Also, in the process of applying for a permit, the city will make sure your construction plan is reasonable and you're doing everything you can to minimize impact to the public. I think anywhere in the world with a functioning local government will be similar.

> anywhere in the world with a functioning local government will be similar.

Boston does not have a functioning local government. A developer in my old neighborhood blocked a sidewalk for three years without a permit. Public works issued them one $50 fine. The same developer also abandoned the site in an effort to pressure the zoning board to allow them to add floors to their plan.

Most places in the US do not have functioning governments, to be fair, including at the national level.

The jobs argument can be made for just about anything. People use it when nothing else is valid.

Everything creates jobs. Car crashes, wild fires, drug dealing, sex trafficking, aerial bombing campaigns, it means nothing. Exxon Valdez was the greatest job creator of any ship that sailed that year.

When people say "jobs jobs jobs" just stop listening. Seriously, just walk away. They're saying it's of no value whatsoever and they have to fall back on perennial truisms

The argument for closing roads and sidewalks is not "jobs, jobs, jobs" It is "You must perform on going maintenance of our infrastructure, or it is going to crumble and become unusable" Do you think people just close roads so someone has a job?

Nah. Closing roads is perfectly valid. Infrastructure is super important. Large construction can be dangerous and it's a great idea to block the public from hazardous risks (like moving giant beams suspended from cranes, an accident of that slipping and killing people sounds like a legitimate risk)

I live in LA, roads get shut down for silly TV shows all the time and that's fine with me as well. Entertainment is important for people's happiness.

Jobs arguments are scams though

Biden needs to make Bitcoin illegal. It would instantly increase electricity capacity in many parts of the US and it would stop a large part of the money laundering that is going on in the US including ransom ware.

Why they haven’t yet made it illegal but made online poker illegal is beyond me.

In the old days at least we got something of value to society in exchange for pollution. Now we get nothing.

Changing the temperature of the water that drastically is potentially lethal to all sorts of species. It screws up when and where they breed, lay eggs, have access to cool water to cool off in, what plants grow (that is part of a complex ecological web), and might provide an opportunity for growth of harmful bacteria.

Here's an article from November about the plant and trout fishing. https://fingerlakes1.com/2020/11/14/fish-arent-biting-on-sen...

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