[delecti]

There are a few steps in between, but if the chain of events really is: coal mine accidents > coal shortage > power blackouts > drop in bitcoin mining, then the end result is effectively they were indeed slaving away for bitcoin.

[gruez]

I think you got cause and effect reversed. The correct chain of events is: coal miners slave away to produce coal, which is generally burned to produce heat. Part of that heat is used to run turbines to electric generators[1], and part of the generated electricity is used for bitcoin mining. Does this mean they're slaving away for bitcoin mining? I guess, but only partially. Saying they're slaving away for bitcoin mining is as correct as saying they're slaving away for steel smelting.

[1] there are other uses, like for cooking or for heating a house

[elefanten]

Without the bitcoin driven demand, there would be less pressure to mine faster than feasible and fewer accidents.

The pressure would still be there... but there are cost-related reasons the mining is colocated with the power generation.

Seems a reasonable guess that this virtuous cycle of coal-and-crypto mining synergy resulted in some soylent externalities.

[Thorrez]

I guess we should think about what percent of the power was used for bitcoin mining. If only 1% was used for bitcoin mining that it's pretty hard to say that bitcoin mining was the cause.

[delecti]

Bitcoin mining consumes about 0.6% of global electricity consumption [0]. According to TFA, global mining dropped by 50% from the issues above, so 0.3% of global electricity consumption is in China. China in total produced 5920 TWh in 2016 (last year I could easily get data [1]), out of a global total of 21877 TWh in that same year [2]. China's been growing faster than global trends, but that means that in 2016 they generated ~27% of global electricity (5920/21877). That means your ballpark of about 1% of China's power generation being used on bitcoin (0.3%/27%) is pretty spot on.

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/21/the-debate-about-cryptocur.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/280704/world-power-consu...

[athrowaway3z]

If i had to model this i wouldn't say

> Without the bitcoin driven demand, there would be less pressure to mine faster than feasible and fewer accidents.

I don't buy that demand has suddenly exceeded the operators capacity, forcing them to trades safety for production. I would assume the pressure is constant and trading safety for production is done for profit.

So in effect:

Without the bitcoin driven demand, there would be less miners leading to less accidents.

[delecti]

I suppose inherent in my argument that they're slaving away for bitcoin is how lowly I view bitcoin.

[rfoo]

No. I'm a native Chinese and from my understanding (read between lines and talking to local friends), the situation is:

1. Coal mine accidents.

2. Someone said "stop mining, make sure all the mine pass security check". Of course they mean coal mining.

3. Government officers confuse "mining coal" and "mining Bitcoin", decided to stop both just because they both have a "mine" word in name.

It's quite hilarious how they can be so wrong.

[oefrha]

According to the Twitter thread quoted by TFA, https://twitter.com/doveywan/status/1382912887535005701, non-crypto data centers in the region are down as well, which really doesn’t support this reading between lines.

[rfoo]

The Twitter thread you linked said exactly opposite thing.

Take a look at this one: https://twitter.com/DoveyWan/status/1382955030995554304

The Chinese text in this screenshot basically says:

"Some ISP datacenters were required to shut down and prepare for inspection. Others, because of the local government for 'reducing risk', they want to avoid the spotlight, so they shut down themselves. And then wait until inspection team from central government[1] leave, after that they restart"

That "Some ISP datacenters" in the first sentence were shut down because they do hosting for Bitcoin mining.

If you don't trust me, here are the copy-pastable replication of the original text. It is not very machine-translatable because it is spoken Chinese gone through WeChat's speech-to-text. Verify with someone you trust who can understand Chinese.

有些 isp 机房的话是那个他们要求停就配合检查，然后有一些是当地的政府为了规避风险吗？不想出风头，然后的话自己关的，然后的话，等他那个中央巡视巡视组走了之后的话再重新开启啊这样。

[1] https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%AD%E5%A4%AE%E5%B7%A1%E8...

[oefrha]

I can understand Chinese alright. The other screenshot of some "AICoin news" says "big data data centers" are almost all shut down for a week; are Bitcoin mining operations in any sense "big data"? Also, the quote you use simply isn't clear about whether the inspections are Bitcoin mining-related. It is also consistent with all data centers connected to the power grid in the affected counties being shut down, although of course there's the possibility that all data centers in the region are Bitcoin mining operations, so in that case it would be distinction without a difference.

[fspeech]

Doesn't bitcoin mining run on cheap surplus electricity? If they shut down the coal mines the power generation will eventually be impacted. They likely want to shut down bitcoin mining before impacting supply to other users, as bitcoin miners operate in the grey area.

[loceng]

So it's either incompetence (a mistake) or a cover for plausible deniability?