[dale_glass]

I see some issues.

We can discard Hydro pretty much immediately. There's not a lot of it that's sitting unused, there's not much opportunity for growth.

If there was this much wasted energy, the problem would be solved already. If the price went negative really often, that'd be a perfect business model for building some storage. Storage on the whole should be simpler than a mining farm. Putting extra megawatts into a pump or electrolysis is a relatively simple proposition. The computer hardware needed to burn that power on demand is far more expensive and complex.

Mining can cross borders, but cryptocurrency usage much less so. Yes, you can mine all you want across the border, but as governments sour on crypto they're going to make it much harder to transact in it. And your crypto isn't good for much if you can't sell it and get $ or Euros in your bank account.

The countries most amenable to this kind of thing are not all that profitable. They've got weak economies, bad governments and bad infrastructure. They're also easily pressured by wealthier countries, so they can't do whatever they want.

Long term if this worked it'd lead to centralization. Once you find some optimum -- which is probably a company that produces solar panels around the equator, they win the game and are hard to out-compete.

And of course, in the end this is still all a pointless waste. It's still countless video cards, solar panels, ASICs, and other hardware being piled up higher and higher to just keep up a global competition going that doesn't really achieve any improvement. It doesn't add capacity, it doesn't improve speed, it doesn't solve any practical problems. It's just an arms race where you need an extra tank because the other side made another one.

[sword_smith]

Energy storage is the deus ex machina solution that's always thrown around when real engineering concerns about the problem of electricity sources whose output you cannot control are presented. I might as well flip your argument on its head: if it was as easy to store energy as you propose, then electricity prices would never become negative.

Government is an abstraction that might make us blind to the fact that political decisions are made and enforced by actual people. The more economic power that crypto currencies amass, the bigger a threat they become to big government's taxing abilities, yes. Granted. But at the same time it also affords its supporters more lobbying power. I think governments face a prisoners dilemma in this regard: most governments might be better off if they all banned crypto currencies. But even better off if only their neighbors banned them and they allowed them, so they would get an influx of people and businesses making money in this sector, and they could tax these individuals. Think e.g. Crypto Valley in Switzerland, or Bitcoin enthusiasts visiting (or moving to?) El Salvador. And we all know how the Prisoner's Dilemma plays out in the long run: to the detriment of its actors.

And to you last points: ask modern day Venezuelans or North Koreans whether it's a waste to have sound money that can't be inflated by the whim of self-serving autocrats. Or ask a German citizen that was alive 100 years ago if sound money is a waste of resources.

[dale_glass]

> I might as well flip your argument on its head: if it was as easy to store energy as you propose, then electricity prices would never become negative.

Then you're not understanding what I'm saying. I'm saying that cost/complexity for dealing with energy overproduction goes:

Ignore it -> Adjust existing systems -> Store it -> Use it for mining.

The fact that storage is still a small niche shows that there's not enough waste to make even simple storage clearly profitable, so we're still mostly on the "adjust" step.

If it was a big untapped market, we'd never get to the mining part, because pumping water uphill is far technologically simpler than setting up a data center full of video cards.

> Think e.g. Crypto Valley in Switzerland, or Bitcoin enthusiasts visiting (or moving to?) El Salvador. And we all know how the Prisoner's Dilemma plays out in the long run: to the detriment of its actors.

El Salvador is an absolutely nonsensical usage of BTC. Bitcoin has long dropped any pretenses of being a currency, and is a horrible fit for normal people. BTW, the experiment in El Salvador is not going well.

> And to you last points: ask modern day Venezuelans or North Koreans whether it's a waste to have sound money that can't be inflated by the whim of self-serving autocrats.

As far as I can gather, the experiment in Venezuela is failure thus far, and North Korea is completely a no-go, since the general population has no internet access and NK barely has electricity.

[sword_smith]

> Ignore it -> Adjust existing systems -> Store it -> Use it for mining

That's just, like, your opinion, man.

[dale_glass]

Sure, but it makes sense. You have overproduction, how do you deal with it?

If a tiny amount, you can ignore it. Extra boxes pile up a bit higher than ideal. Power production gets a bit uncomfortably close to the maximum limits established, but you don't get into any trouble. You take note, but it's not worth really doing anything yet.

A bit more, and you start making minor changes. Slow things down a bit. Offer discounts to get rid of excess stock. Talk to the nearby businesses to adjust their schedules to use more power when you have too much.

If you have a lot of excess but have good reasons to believe that it won't be piling up indefinitely, but that you will profit from buffering the excess and then selling it off in times of high demand, that's when you build storage.

And something like crypto mining would be my very last choice. You're talking about building highly complex, highly specialized infrastructure for a single use. Storage can sell to anyone who wants, while crypto hardware only does crypto. Should conditions change it'll be far less flexible than storage.