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by mtrycz2 1979 days ago
That thread is assuming that BTC runs on fossil, non-renewable energy, which was mostly correct ten to five years ago, but will be mostly wrong onwards.

BTC runs mostly on surplus hydroelectric power. This may change based on what's locally available and the local cost of oil gas and coal, but when renewables will become cheaper than fossil (which will never be soon enough) it will not make any sense to mine on fossils.
2 comments
127 1979 days ago
Since nobody has made any better citation, here's one article giving a bit more depth to the issue: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/mining/china/

Seems at least half of Bitcoin is currently mined directly using coal.

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saberience 1979 days ago
Citation please.
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solresol 1979 days ago
I can't offer a citation, but I can observe that electricity prices in wholesale markets regularly go negative during times when renewables are operating at peak output. Since people overprovision solar to have enough power at non-peak times, during peak generation times, there's too much energy.

This doesn't happen with fossil fuels, since the plant operator will of course reduce output as far as possible by reducing fuel consumption.

So it seems entirely reasonable that the bulk of bitcoin mining in the future is going to be done at times when the electricity price is exceptionally low (or negative), and mostly be powered by renewables. It's an economically rational thing to do and as a bonus it will provide some grid stability.

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vaduz 1979 days ago
As long as the profit from operating the mining during high prices is higher than the cost of electricity at high demand times, it is economically rational to continue mining and grow demand to use the "excess" capacity that is provided in the grid.

In China it in particular it is seen as an easy way to convert coal to money, as one of the other commenters already linked [1] (which is also economically responsible, given the looming deadlines due to international agreements, but also disastrous to the climate at large).

Also, not to put too fine a point at it, neither Chinese nor US bitcoin miner server farms (mines?) have been found to be using particularly clean energy sources [0].

[0] https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25881601

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