[Feeble]

Miners don't operate at loss. This is nothing but free market economics.

Electricity is sold on a free market. Miners buy electricity to secure the Bitcoin monetary network because other people value a decentralized monetary network, i.e. Bitcoin, to such a price that it's worth it. Should the market value the network less then less miners will buy electricity for mining.

Do you suggest we get rid of the free market for energy?

[__s]

Energy is not on a free market in many places

If there weren't subsidies (& in fact, a carbon tax), I'd agree with you

[radu_floricica]

Yes. That's a very good point.

But when you find something that exposes the flaws in a system, you can try to blame the thing which exposes it, or you can try to fix the system. In this case the situation is not even overly complicated. Subsidies are bad, because:

1. they waste money - everybody is paying the subsidized price, whether they need to or not

2. they utterly fuck up incentives - there's no point to invest in higher energetic efficiency (at any level) when the price is kept artificially low.

What problem are subsidies fixing? That some people don't afford paying for electricity. Well, completely novel notion: give them money and let them chose what they spend them for. Once you do that quite a few of them will realize that investing $400 in an AC with inverter is a better investment long term than just paying for more electricity to heat the home. Or a huge array of solutions that subsidies don't make just unlikely - they make plain stupid, as long as electricity is cheap.

[serjester]

Fixing the “system” comes with tangible downsides - subsidies are designed to make local industries competitive on a global scale. Removing them will have a tangible impact on jobs, opportunities and a country’s economy. The alternative is limiting the energy used on something that adds 0 value to a countries broader economy.

Long term I’m all for removing subsidies but this is political suicide if done to offset the impact of crypto mining.

Crypto mining benefits an exceedingly tiny percentage of people while using massive amounts of power.

[radu_floricica]

Nice mix of true, false and fud.

Let's assume your scenario: you want to make an industry which is competitive globally, and feel that you need to subsidize it to get results abroad. Right?

1. This doesn't apply in your domestic market. You said "competitive globally", right?

2. When it applies in somebody else's domestic market, I imagine your subsidies are intended to level the playing field, so the electricity price will be, more or less, what's in that market in the first place. Otherwise we're talking about dumping prices, which are a totally different animal, and illegal where they're not simply immoral.

3. Dumping. Sure, you can be Putin who wants to go make Germany dependent on Russian gas, so he spends 30 years pouring money and keeping prices artificially low, only to raise them when it's strategically convenient. In this case crypto yep, will benefit from the periods of low price, but I'll point you to the fact that the whole game is so much larger that focusing on crypto is like stubbing your toe on a entrance in a cathedral. You could start jumping around on one foot and cursing crypto, or you could raise your head and see there's a freaking huge thing you're living into which is made of interests which make crypto money seems like change forgotten in laundry pockets.

And then probably shy away from something you dont't understand and go back to bitching about crypto because this is something simple and makes you feel good and something gotta change, dammit!