7 Nuclear Power Plants Needed to Power Bitcoin Mining

Mike95060

Mike95060

Work In Progress
https://www.engadget.com/it-takes-a...ts-to-power-our-bitcoin-mining-212441059.html

A study from the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance released on Monday estimates that the global bitcoin mining industry uses 7.46 GW, equivalent to around 63.32 terawatt-hours of energy consumption. The study also notes that miners are paying around $0.03 to $0.05 per kWh this year. Given that a March estimate put the cost to mine a full bitcoin is around $7,500, the average miner still stands to make over $4,000 in profit from the operation.
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I think our species is doomed. I can't but help and see the absurdity in turning nuclear fuel into nothing but arbitrary data. Eons worth of waste to generate nothing tangible. We are gaming ourselves into extinction.
 
Mike95060

Mike95060

Work In Progress
Eldritch said:
You want me to blather on more about fiat currency?

:dunno
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Money is a shared idea. If we go to a gold standard it's still arbitrary that we decided gold has value. Its intrinsic value isn't enough to sustain civilization, you can't eat, clothe or shelter with it. So while I'm willing to admit fiat currency has its pitfalls I think civilization is stuck with it. We could try tally sticks again.
But yeah that's a fun conversation :laughing
afm199 said:
What's new?
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Its just so blatant now. That feels new-ish to me anyway.
 
Eldritch

Eldritch

is insensitive
Mike95060 said:
Money is a shared idea. If we go to a gold standard it's still arbitrary that we decided gold has value. Its intrinsic value isn't enough to sustain civilization, you can't eat, clothe or shelter with it. So while I'm willing to admit fiat currency has its pitfalls I think civilization is stuck with it. We could try tally sticks again.
But yeah that's a fun conversation :laughing
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So, the matter isn't gold, it can be whatever commodity is appropriately limited and stable. The important thing is linking currency to both natural resources and labor, by placing those chains to currency, you are forced to better create reasonable and sustainable practices in pursuit of wealth.

When wealth is just an idea that you can fabricate, the above wasteful nonsense is done to the disadvantage of all participating.
 
T

TylerW

Agitator
I've always considered money to be an abstract metric that's used to measure the value of work done by humans.

Crypto always struck me as odd because it was the value of work that could only be done by computers.
 
stangmx13

stangmx13

not Stan
This is partly why some alt-coins were setup to actually accomplish something with all that computing power, like solving complicated math problems and such. But I dont think any of those have taken off the same way BTC and other top coins have.

However, all that mining did accomplish A LOT. Tons of people were employed to make it all possible - everyone working in power generation, power transmission, computing hardware production, internet infrastructure, lots of software dev, etc etc. Natural resources were used to keep people employed, which kept them living. Mission accomplished.
 
UDRider

UDRider

FLCL?
stangmx13 said:
This is partly why some alt-coins were setup to actually accomplish something with all that computing power, like solving complicated math problems and such. But I dont think any of those have taken off the same way BTC and other top coins have.

However, all that mining did accomplish A LOT. Tons of people were employed to make it all possible - everyone working in power generation, power transmission, computing hardware production, internet infrastructure, lots of software dev, etc etc. Natural resources were used to keep people employed, which kept them living. Mission accomplished.
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Kind of reminds me of Soviet Union where people were employed making some widgets for the sake of making them and being employed. :laughing
 
afm199

afm199

Well-known member
stangmx13 said:
This is partly why some alt-coins were setup to actually accomplish something with all that computing power, like solving complicated math problems and such. But I dont think any of those have taken off the same way BTC and other top coins have.

However, all that mining did accomplish A LOT. Tons of people were employed to make it all possible - everyone working in power generation, power transmission, computing hardware production, internet infrastructure, lots of software dev, etc etc. Natural resources were used to keep people employed, which kept them living. Mission accomplished.
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There's a bit of a fail premise in that. Declining natural resources and increasing population is a one way scenario. I was born in a time when there were about 2 billion people. Today there are roughly 7.5 billion. Somehow that equation doesn't work out well.

UDRider said:
Kind of reminds me of Soviet Union where people were employed making some widgets for the sake of making them and being employed. :laughing
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There was a saying in the old East Germany: "We pretended to work and they pretended to pay us." One of the biggest problems of the reintegration of East and West Germany was that the Eastern workers did not know how to work to Western standards. They were incredibly non productive. Until a new generation was educated, that remained a huge problem, and still is to some degree.
 
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Mike95060

Mike95060

Work In Progress
Eldritch said:
So, the matter isn't gold, it can be whatever commodity is appropriately limited and stable. The important thing is linking currency to both natural resources and labor, by placing those chains to currency, you are forced to better create reasonable and sustainable practices in pursuit of wealth.

When wealth is just an idea that you can fabricate, the above wasteful nonsense is done to the disadvantage of all participating.
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I agree with you. Wealth being tied to labor is always going to give my left leaning heart warm and fuzzies.

Do we agree that wealth is created by labor + resources + intelligence?
 
stangmx13

stangmx13

not Stan
afm199 said:
There's a bit of a fail premise in that. Declining natural resources and increasing population is a one way scenario. I was born in when there were about 2 billion people. Today there are roughly 7.5 billion. Somehow that equation doesn't work out well.
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I dont understand what you are implying.

We will always use natural resources and some portion will go to producing more people. It doesnt matter if the final product is bitcoin or a car. Resources were used. A thing was produced. Someone profited off the sale to buy more things. Repeat.
 
afm199

afm199

Well-known member
stangmx13 said:
I dont understand what you are implying.

We will always use natural resources and some portion will go to producing more people. It doesnt matter if the final product is bitcoin or a car. Resources were used. A thing was produced. Someone profited off the sale to buy more things. Repeat.
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How many people do you believe the earth will support, in the face of ever declining natural resources? I've seen, in my lifetime, LA become a sprawling fifty mile wide habitat, when it was once many miles of bare desert to San Bernardino. I've seen the US population triple, the oceans stripped of the top tier of fish ( The big easy to catch fish are gone. We're eating fish now that nobody would buy fifty years ago. The oceans are ravaged. The watershed in the California Central Valley is at the lowest level ever, and collapsing. There are areas of soils subsidence there of 10-20 feet. We're killing our rivers to pump water to LA.) That bleak picture is repeated all over the world. A growing population is a curse beyond measure.


In 1865 the SF Bay was the world's largest Salmon habitat. They fished it out in ten years. It now supports about 1/10th the former Salmon population.

Don't get me started on climate change and the damming of the Nile. North Africa and Egypt are in dire straits right now, and nothing good is on the horizon.
 
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mercurial

mercurial

Well-known member
Bitcoin isn't a currency, it's a sham of an asset. There is little to no point in comparing its utility to fiat currency, because it has none; at least not beyond facilitating money laundering and tax evasion. Oh and did we mention that because of lopsided distribution of ownership, its price is hopelessly manipulated?

There is little in modernity that is more despicable than bitcoin.
 
stangmx13

stangmx13

not Stan
afm199 said:
How many people do you believe the earth will support, in the face of ever declining natural resources? I've seen, in my lifetime, LA become a sprawling fifty mile wide habitat, when it was once many miles of bare desert to San Bernardino. I've seen the US population triple, the oceans stripped of the top tier of fish ( The big easy to catch fish are gone. We're eating fish now that nobody would buy fifty years ago. The oceans are ravaged. The watershed in the California Central Valley is at the lowest level ever, and collapsing. There are areas of soils subsidence there of 10-20 feet. We're killing our rivers to pump water to LA.) That bleak picture is repeated all over the world. A growing population is a curse beyond measure.

In 1865 the SF Bay was the world's largest Salmon habitat. They fished it out in ten years. It now supports about 1/10th the former Salmon population.

Don't get me started on climate change and the damming of the Nile. North Africa and Egypt are in dire straits right now, and nothing good is on the horizon.
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How do you mean to relate this to bitcoin resource use? I can guess where you are going, but I dont want to misunderstand your point.
 
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afm199

afm199

Well-known member
HappyHighwayman said:
If people are paying market value for the electricity who cares what they do with it?
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Exactly, and in fact, in the name of efficiency, we need to build more coal powered electricity plants to provide greater opportunity for everyone to mine Bitcoin!

Just think, greater utilization of our natural resources, and the government could start Bitcoin mining industries in the poorer city areas.


Win Win. You, Sir, are genius!
 
Eldritch

Eldritch

is insensitive
Mike95060 said:
I agree with you. Wealth being tied to labor is always going to give my left leaning heart warm and fuzzies.

Do we agree that wealth is created by labor + resources + intelligence?
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No, because in the fiat currency model, it is created by Government and purchased by labor.

afm199 said:
I was born in a time when there were about 2 billion people.
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Holy Crap. I heard the Black Plague killed about 1/3 of the population, so when you were little, it killed 600,000,000 people? What was that like in those days? :wow
 
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afm199

afm199

Well-known member
Eldritch said:
Holy Crap. I heard the Black Plague killed about 1/3 of the population, so when you were little, it killed 600,000,000 people? What was that like in those days? :wow
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It was scary. We had to walk to school and nobody knew how to be politically correct.
 
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