[_aavaa_]

I don't think that's quiet right. To paraphrase Kranzberg, Bitcoin is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral".

We can debate whether it's good or bad on net, but the fact that crypto provides monetary incentives for mining it (and thus spending electricity and computer equipment) is not up for debate.

[tossl568]

But whether that is a bad thing definitely is up for debate. Bitcoin mining is a buyer of last resort for stranded renewable energy. It also incentivises renewable energy capture. Energy isn't fungible, it can't be magically teleported to where it can be used. Energy consumption in itself isn't something to be ashamed of or avoided. Personally I think mining Bitcoin with fossil fuels is wrong, but trying to tell people what they can compute is a dangerous road to go down.

[_aavaa_]

Yes, I keep hearing that it's a buyer of last resort. Is there any info on how true that it? What % of mining is done with last resort energy, and what % is just simply creating more demand. I would guess that most is increasing demand.

[anonporridge]

This is really hard to answer because mining is a fiercely competitive business, and miners aren't eager to give up this kind of information.

But I would suspect probably not a lot right now. There is some mining that's efficiently burning off nat gas that otherwise would have been inefficiently flared or vented, which is net positive from a GHG emissions perspective, but that's an outlier. Realistically, I suspect there's such a high profit margin that hunting for stranded energy isn't the primary goal right now. Getting cheap ASICs is.

This is why I'm a big proponent of increasing mining regulation. I want to see miners heavily taxed for using carbon sourced electricity and pushed out to the fringes of electricity production. We'll probably need to use regulation to force the industry to actually be the consumer of last resort. Right now, there's just too much low hanging fruit for miners to put in that work voluntarily.