[zherbert]

Bitcoin mining incentivizes the plentiful production of cheap electricity. This will make it so that there are no such thing as power shortages in the future and push us towards a Type I civilization on the Kardashev scale.

Bitcoin mining reduces the risk for energy generation projects, because they no longer need to worry about who will purchase the extra capacity.

Bitcoin mining can act as a load-balancer for the grid – spin down some machines if there is high demand, spin up machines if there is low demand.

There are so many benefits. It is unfortunate that there is a serious lack of understanding on this website.

[AlexandrB]

Breaking windows incentivizes the plentiful production of new windows. This will make it so that there is no such thing as window shortages in the future.

[ilammy]

In a way, yes. If windows didn't break, that hurts profits of window-making companies, and makes them all go out of business, leaving people without jobs, etc. Once everyone has a Forever Window there will be no one to sell new windows to, and there's hardly much innovation left in the field of windows. Planned obsolescence is a thing.

[labster]

Bitcoin mining uses up all of the efficiency gains from energy saving over the past decade, and more. Bitcoin incentivizes carbon production by keeping electricity demand artificially high, even dedicating entire coal power plants to a single mining location. Therefore, cryptocurrency has already guaranteed we will never have time to advance on the Kardashev scale.

[zherbert]

That's preposterous, Bitcoin incentivizes production of whatever energy is cheapest. That does not necessarily mean fossil fuels, though it is often that those are cheaper.

Hydro is a perfect example. A sizeable percentage of all Bitcoin mining is done with cheap hydro.

Bitcoin will do the same for nuclear, making it cheap and plentiful.

[labster]

How does Bitcoin incentivize cheap energy? It only incentivizes energy that has a marginal cost less than the Bitcoin it can produce. As long as human speculation outpaces finite resources, it makes economic sense to burn the most expensive, dijon fuels. This is true even if externalities are factored into energy prices, which they aren’t.

[Aretas77]

Take the benefits and double them up to get the drawbacks.

The components used for mining could have much better use cases and the raw material shortage does not make this easier.

I doubt that mining is the reason why countries/companies/people are pushing for that cheaper green energy.

Additionally, the cryptocurrency market right now is a mess, an online casino one might say, where only few can benefit.

And to push prices up, people are encouraging others to buy them, to push the prices up more and not because they believe in the future.

[zherbert]

You think the current global financial system is energy efficient? How about the raw materials used by global militarizes financed by unending money printing? If you fast forward a couple decades, and Bitcoin becomes the global reserve currency, mining will be far more efficient than the amount of enormous military spending and middle-eastern oil production financed by fiat currencies and the petrodollar standard.

You people are advocating for shutting down one of the most important human advancements of all time – money that is directly linked to energy.

[Aretas77]

It is not efficient, I agree. But the cryptocurrencies should be of low priority right now, there are much more significant topics and problems, plus - how do you expect people to use cryptocurrencies if they won't even have any computers due to various shortages caused by the miners?

Maybe sometime, but not right now.

[jmcgeeney]

If you're honestly looking for the best solution to plentiful, on-demand, cheap electricity, energy storage via batteries is a much better solution. Why burn up excess energy from a wind farm, rather than storing it to be reused during peak periods?

[poontang1]

Batteries are actually terrible at storing large amount of energy for any significant period of time, otherwise this would be the solution everywhere

[jmcgeeney]

You don't usually need to store energy for a significant period of time, just until the daily peak. Last I checked, the efficiency for charge + discharge was something like 70%, which, in any case, is much better than the 0% energy savings from using that energy to mine crypto.

[AlexandrB]

However bad batteries are at storing energy long-term, I guarantee that bitcoin mining rigs are worse. It's hard for a battery to do worse than losing 100% of "stored" energy immediately to heat.