US Government Launches New Attempt to Gather Data on Electricity Usage of Bitcoin Mining

Comments

• pivot_root@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Better late than never, I suppose.

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  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This singles out a single industry. Why not data centers in general or also add in AI?

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    • pivot_root@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I wouldn’t consider cryptocurrency an industry. At best, it’s unregulated stocks whose value is backed by speculation. At worst, it’s a waste of resources and a low-risk way for malware authors to profit off of victims.

      Don’t get me wrong, though. AI is also deserving of the same treatment.

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    • bamboo@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      The military is one of the larger stakeholders in AI advancement, and generally doesn’t care about the environment. There will not be a probe that could stifle future advancement in military applications.

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• dgmib@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The economics of Bitcoin mining at scale force it to find an equilibrium where the cost of mining a Bitcoin is just a bit less than the current market value of a Bitcoin.

  Electricity is the only significant variable cost at scale so the amount of electricity needed to mine a bitcoin ends up being a little less than however much a bitcoin can buy.

  Thus one can estimate the total amount of electricity very accurately by simply taking the block rate (6/hr) times the block reward (~6.25 BTC) times the current price of a bitcoin divided by the wholesale price of electricity. You’ll get the upper bound for the amount of electricity being consumed.

  Which by the way works out to around a TWh costing tens of millions of USD every single day. Which is more electricity than a small country

  The only thing that will stop the waste is if the price of bitcoin drops. You can legislate it away, that won’t stop it, it will just move when it’s happening.

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  • GamingChairModel@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    the current price of a bitcoin divided by the wholesale price of electricity.

    Doesn’t this formula assume that electricity costs the same everywhere at that particular moment? The wholesale price of electricity can vary significantly across different parts of national grids, and certainly can vary significantly between countries, especially countries whose electricity prices are denominated in different currencies.

    And then the actual end user price of the electricity can be hedged with futures and other options/contracts/securities, to where two people using power from the same grid are paying very different prices. And once you introduce financial instruments, the bottom line cost might depend on stuff like interest rates or other financial/economic conditions local to that place.

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    • dgmib@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Yes somewhat… the formula has several factors that are constantly in flux, Bitcoin mining is a random process the value can be off entirely by chance. But it’s designed to self-adjust over the long run towards that formula, individual fluctuations cancel out in the long run.

      For electricity price specifically, wholesale prices of electricity tend to be fairly close everywhere bitcoin is mined. Bitcoin mining is more profitable where electricity is the cheapest and is uneconomic in places where the price of electricity is above average. So it only happens where the wholesale price is globally competitive.

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• Tire@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Why? If people paid for the electricity then what’s the problem?

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  • LodeMike@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Drives up costs, causes brownouts, keeps fossil fuel plants open longer, etc.

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    • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It should be the opposite. Crypto mining only makes sense if you’re getting a good deal on electricity, which means they’re probably running on off-peak hours. What that does is encourage electricity generation to increase the base level supply, which should decrease brownouts.

      Brownouts are caused by unexpected peak electricity demand or some kind of equipment malfunction (e.g. inclement weather). It’s not caused by a consistent increase in base level demand, which is what crypto mining would do.

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  • FiskFisk33@startrek.website ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    “what do you mean environmental impact, if people paid for the gasoline then what’s the problem?”

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    • Tire@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Why police how people use electricity? That’s not the problem, the people burning coal and natural gas are the problem.

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• spyd3r@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Should gather data on how many useless and overbugeted government agencies exist, and how to return that money to the taxpayer.

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• maxinstuff@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  We all know the answer - too damn much.

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