For instance. I don't cool my home with AC. does it bother you that I mine bitcoin overnight when the grid has surplus energy?
That said, there's a couple of differences between hot tubs and AC, and crypto mining:
- Creature comforts don't consume the energy equivalent of a small developed country.
- In what they do consume, most of the use is around basic human needs; excessive use happens rarely.
- Most importantly, for almost[0] everything other than crypto, whether it's hot tubs or ACs or fiat banking system, energy use is considered waste to be minimized. Simply because energy is not free, the market is incentivized to reduce marginal energy consumption involved across the board[1]. In contrast, PoW considers waste a feature.
Cryptocurrencies are their own special thing - the perfect machine for consuming any surplus energy available. That's why they deserve their own special kind of backlash.
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[0] - I can't really think of any thing other than PoW cryptocurrencies, where energy waste would be beneficial to the thing by design.
[1] - That, of course, doesn't mean we're using less energy overall - because both population and economic growth outpace efficiency improvements. But on the margin, it holds true.
There are fossil burning power plants running only to produce PoW, and unless mining operations shut down to allow a generator to operate at minimum load, they are forcing shared generators to run and dams to drain.
it's not like a generator burns 2gal/hr no matter the load. This is easily observable even (perhaps especially) on home generators - if you run it idle it might run for 12 hours and if you load it to maximum capacity it might be out of fuel in 2 hours. look at a product page for a generator and will probably be specified at a particular load level (50% load for example).
also if you keep pushing water through a dam at maximum rate even when the dam is under a light load, you'll overspeed the generator and blow it up. You have to have control gates to control the water flow.
basically, "how difficult" it is to spin the generator is determined by the electrical load (coupled through the magnetic field of the motor) and obviously you need more physical power to spin against a stronger field, which translates into more power/fuel.
The only true surplus is if the water needed to flow anyway, or for something like nuclear power which has to stay active at some base load.
Even so, there’s more useful potential uses like desalinisation or carbon capture.
you are incorrect here. 10% of global energy (not just electricity) is used for cooling.
I live in the deep south with no AC. "basic human needs; excessive use happens rarely." is extremely generous.
What you are describing is what makes you comfortable. I have no problem with that. be comfortable. Just consider that what you are describing is completely a matter of perspective and not some universal truth about use of energy. Just like you are not universally correct that every watt spent on crypto is "wasted". It's a perspective.... and my point here is to remind you to keep it in perspective of other trivial preferences people have, rather than turning it into an ideological war of good and evil.
"Penny wise and pound foolsh."
Another example of this is plastic bottles. See it's your responsibility to recycle, not the company's responsibility to not use plastic. People nanny each other's recycling habits but don't say shit about Coca-Cola bottlers. Bottler's are too busy laughing their ass off on the way to the bank. Recycle, reduce, reuse.
As an example, the proposed proof of stake mechanism for Ethereum requires 32 ETH, which is around $100k USD today. So established parties with capital will be able to stake, but your average person will not. I'm not sure I like that aspect of it.
Consider the case with Proof of Work (ASIC-based): you need to purchase specialized hardware for several $k (apparently at least $2k), spend more on specialized infrastructure (power supply, cooling, servers) and live somewhere with almost free energy. Otherwise it's just not economical to mine. This leaves out the vast majority of people as well, and incentivizes (1) massive economies of scale of farms, (2) shady or corrupt deals for free energy, through local government or simply illegal connections to the network.