Electricity is too cheap for these uses.
Why is commercial power so cheap and residential so expensive? We could fix two problems by balancing that back.
Because companies > people in the eyes of the state.
It depends on which state, which is even more sad.
My understanding is tha some commercial/industrial users will get a highly variable tariff. This may be cheaper much of the time, but can get ridiculously expensive at times of high demand.
The difference is that a bitcoin farmer can shut down at those expensive times, but a home user still needs to heat/cool their house, run their fridge etc, so the savings cancel out. Because of this, averaging the costs works out easier/better for most home consumers
They don't produce anything except some numbers. A total waste of energy. I had to laugh when this guy I know who is very "progressive" and environmentally concerned got pissy when I pointed out how much energy was wasted on bitcoin mining just because he was into it.
Right this is the fundamental problem. There needs to be some value to the Blockchain application which the crypto tokens support beyond just token speculation.
fuck crypto shit ffs
More like fuck crypto mining. There are cryptos that dont need mining.
If there's no demand for a particular crypto then people mining it can't sell it and go out of business. People mine this stuff because other people will pay them for it.
There is no good reason why this isn't illegal.
Not a good reason, but money.
Crypto is the digital coal of our times.
Whoever Satoshi was, I wonder how he's responding to the thought that he's personally contributed more to global warming than the average billionaire.
Modern day gold rush.
Digging up more and more dirt for diminishing returns while destroying the environment.
Bitcoin using more and more power for essentially the same.
You'd think with all of the money they're pulling in, they'd invest in solar panels or something to lower their overhead.
Or am I making the mistake of approaching the situation with common sense?
Misleading title - the problem is not "crypto", it's pretty much all Bitcoin and the people against the change in the consensus mechanism. Out of the top ~~10~~ 9 coins in market cap, Bitcoin is the only one using proof of work, which demands such high energy requirements.
Ultimately, mining should be banned from the surface of Earth. Let miners build orbital solar panel infrastructure close to the Sun where power is plentiful. See Bitcoin developer Peter Todd's 2017-09-10 presentation on the subject (transcript).
Edit: Fixed URL. Edit2; Add transcript link.
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