I know; my point is that this situation isn't unique to crypto mining: their argument applies to every industry. If crypto didn't exist, another industry would need to be shutdown.
This makes literally zero sense. Mining adds extra load that wouldn’t otherwise exist. If crypto didn’t exist, the Texas grid would experience reduced load. This should be obvious: if paying these miners to stop has the desired effect of reducing the load on the grid, miners not existing would surely have a similar effect.
> their argument applies to every industry.
Most other industries provide actual societal value, unlike crypto. And to hear off the rebuttal I already hear coming: no, just because it has a market cap doesn’t mean it’s adding value to society. As a trivial counterexample, Mexican cartels are undoubtedly worth billions but I think it’s pretty inarguable we’d all be better off without them.
Your counter-factual doesn't make sense because you assume that additional demand has no effect on supply and vice-versa. Electricity generation isn't some constant that is unrelated to industrial needs.
If those industries are using that power that Texas has invested in producing, then how is it "abundantly available" for socially valuable uses?
Yes, without things like crypto, we probably would have somewhat less investment in green energy sources. We'd also be burning less coal. Given possible futures with "more fossil fuels and more renewables" versus "fossil fuels coal and fewer renewables", I'll pick the latter every time. The goal isn't more renewables, it's replacing fossil fuel with renewables.
Worse, those renewables being used up by cryptocurrencies are going to be the optimally-located renewables with the lowest installation and maintenance costs for the highest energy output (think: most reliable wind at high speeds, least cloud cover and highest sun angle). As we do continue to transition further away from fossil fuels, every additional installation is going to be in locations marginally less competitive than the ones that came before. This means that transitioning the non-crypto loads will take longer and be less cost-effective than if crypto magically disappeared overnight.
If there isn’t enough supply to satisfy things like residential demand then you loose demand (and therefore re revinue
In a privatized system, a large, predictable, static load would attract additional infrastructure. Assuming how that's how Texas' system works, if these miners did not exist, the peak capacity would be lower.
If they believed crypto mining is inherently bad, it should not be allowed in the first place.
If they believed crypto mining is at least neutral, it should get compensated for being forced to shut down (even temporarily), and it did.
The equivalent here would be picking what industries to forcibly shut down. In that sense with such a system crypto mining might be OK (at least for this argument).
But this compensation is a subsidy to ask more people to come in and use up a scarce resource.
Try thinking it through in terms of reduced rates for spare capacity. Any criticism that doesn't work under both frameworks is logically unsound.
But that aside I don't think your response is a fair one for three reasons:
(1) because solar and wind are the least expensive source of energy the excess power is significantly solar/wind.
(2) But because they're the least reliable maximizing their use requires solutions like a large amount of sheddable load on the grid.
(3) You're imposing your own opinions on the 'right' and 'wrong' sources of power which far from universal outside of internet filter bubbles and are not supported by the law. You may not like that some parties burn fossil fuels for energy but they currently have a right to do so. I agree that good cases can be made for restricting fossil fuel use, but so long as it isn't it's unproductive to pick and choose arbitrary targets that use energy for purposes you don't care about simply because fossil fuels for energy happens to exist. It's doubly so, considering 1/2 above because responsive loads help increase the share of renewable power.
I think lawmakers have an ethical duty to fix the "burning carbon is too cheap" problem, but the odds of that happening in Texas are low. If we had something like a carbon fee and dividend, miners could become a net good for society just by following price signals.
You are mischaracterizing the payments because you hate crypto.
I don't hate crypto, I have some nuanced opinions on it. Happy to criticize and defend it, depending on the argument. Once you get to PoS there is a lot less wrong with it environmentally. Unlimited carbon-free energy infra (and silicon production infra too, along with proper recycling!) would also make it less of a problem, but obviously we are not there yet. And I say unlimited because PoW demands that difficulty goes up and up and up to bid up PoW assets.