| > Consume as much renewable cheap energy as possible .. I agree that this is true. However you may have missed the nuance of my argument. Apologies if I wasn’t clearer. Let me explain: Not all elecricity is the same. For most industries or residential uses, electricity only has value if there is demand for it in real-time. Energy storage technologies are neither mature nor economically viable, with the exception of Hydro dams which depend on supporting geography. Bitcoin creates a market for this intermittent excess electricity in real time. There is no other market demand for intermittent electricity and therefore no market price. Were it not for Bitcoin mining the variability of wind and solar would make their energy available when not needed by the grid and the excess load would simply be shed. As a result the cost of these renewables would be higher since they would no longer be subsidized by mining. Miners are unique in that the capital cost of a miner is dwarfed by the energy cost. So turning off a miner when demand (and therefore price) of electricity is high makes perfect sense economically. No other industry has a similar use case for stranded or highly variable electricity. |
This should incentive people to build energy storage not burn through it...