[Cryptography] Energy Consumption: Standards Trolls (was: disaster)

[Chad Perrin]

On Wed, Jan 06, 2021 at 06:32:21PM -0600, Stephan Kinsella wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2021 at 2:20 PM Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Jan 05, 2021 at 01:48:11PM -0500, Alex Flanagan wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Bitcoin mining consumes energy, measured by the unit we call a Watt.
> > > > A watt is defined in the ISU as one joule per second.  The unit we
> > > > call joule is a unit of work.
> > >
> > > For the argument "bitcoin consumes too much energy", assuming
> > > emissions are the concern, my response has typically been:
> > >
> > > Energy *production* causes emissions not *consumption*.
> > >
> > > The emissions attributable to bitcoin mined in Iceland are zero. The
> > > energy *consumed* to mine them was *produced* by a zero-emissions
> > > source.
> >
> > I don't care to stake out a position on this matter right now but, just
> > for fun, another possible objection to energy consumption might be
> > economic side effects such as increases in energy demand which, in turn,
> > creates an increase in energy prices, thus perhaps starving other
> > enterprises of access to energy at sustainable prices.
> 
> IIRC, Antonopolis has a different take, in this recent talk
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suk1YNRmuxQ -- I think he says that the
> miners tend to move to where power is cheaper, e.g., in colder areas or new
> power plants where there is not yet enough demand to take all the
> electricity, so they in effect provide a subsidy to those power stations,
> something like that.

That's interesting.  I haven't seen the video yet, but I can see how the
idea might make sense, in theory.

(Sorry about the duplicate message, SK.)

-- 
Chad Perrin