To ease load on aging grid, state program offers energy credits to bitcoin miners to curtail their power consumption.

  • exohuman@programming.dev
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    2 years ago

    Honestly, why allow them to mine on the grid at all until it is upgraded? It’s just a big wasteful use of energy that uses public resources but doesn’t benefit the public at all. It just prints money for the guys doing it.

      • WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        Sure, but I don’t know how much that would matter. In the short-term, batteries might be a viable solution, but $31million would get you about a ~15MW storage system from my understanding, which is about 1 order of magnitude too small to be more than a rounding error and 2 orders of magnitude off from being a fix. Also, electric companies profit off of cryptominers (which theoretically could be used to improve the grid) and ERCOT sees them as a flexible demand that can be turned off in emergencies (at the cost of money).

          • WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social
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            2 years ago

            That’s 15MW for 4 hours. Typical period of tight conditions is probably more like 1 hour, so 4 hour capacity is overkill for what Texas has been going though this summer). You could get more capacity for a 2 hour period. I think Texas peak power demand was about 100GW (I think that excludes some parts of Texas that aren’t part of the Texas grid at the East and West ends)

    • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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      2 years ago

      Because it’s Texas land of the free.

      Individuals can do whatever they want and the costs are set appropriately. Mining bitcoin is more profitable than the cost of electricity. They can either jack the prices up for everyone, or pay miners not to mine. It’s cheaper to pay.

      Is it cheaper to ban mining or improve infrastructure? Sure, but there is no societal good, only individual. Banning mining would be an “infringement on the right to make money”.

      Texas.

        • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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          2 years ago

          Yeah, well. A lot of Texans have a strong belief in who qualifies as an individual, and who may as well be property.

    • yata@sh.itjust.works
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      2 years ago

      Honestly, why allow them to mine on the grid at all until it is upgraded?

      There is absolutely no reason why anyone should be allowed to waste energy on that pyramid scheme shit in the first place.

      • havokdj@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Bitcoin is not a pyramid scheme because nobody controls bitcoin.

        FIAT is closer to a pyramid scheme than bitcoin. Do I like bitcoin? No, I prefer monero when it comes to crypto transactions because it actually serves a purpose, but it is the truth.

        • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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          2 years ago

          It basically is. Crypto itself has no inherit worth. You don’t actually own anything. It is purely speculative. If the value of crypto collapses today, there is nobody who will ever recoup any value.

          Let’s contrast that with the stock market. Are a lot of people screwed as well? Yes. But the business has physical assets that can be sold or auctioned off to recoup something

          • havokdj@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            Actually, yes, you DO own crypto. If you hold the private keys to your crypto, you OWN that crypto.

            To own is to have something that you control. If you have the private keys and nobody has the seed phrase or the spend address to your wallet, literally no one can take it from you.

            Everything you just said applies to any form of currency. Don’t tell me you actually believe FIAT is backed by anything.

            stock market

            Stop. You’re already fucking up there. Cryptocurrency as a concept is not meant to be a stock. Yes there are people who treat bitcoin and shitcoins as such, that doesn’t make it a stock. That is the mistake that many people and so many others make on a daily basis. This is why I don’t support shitcoins, the only currency you should support is one with a purpose, such as the many time aforementioned monero.

            If the Japanese yen had the volatility that it could go from now to worthless to 3x it’s current value in a week, would you not put money into it at the dip and cash out at the peak? Yet yen is not a stock, it is a currency. Currency is something you exchange for goods.

            The word pyramid scheme does not apply to bitcoin, it applies to RUGPULLS, but nobody controls bitcoin.

            • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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              2 years ago

              Crypto is not backed by anything. The US dollar is backed by the credit of the US government. Crypto is not backed by anything.

              • havokdj@lemmy.world
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                2 years ago

                credit of the US government

                That is literally nothing. It’s worth what they say it is worth.

                Bitcoin and monero is worth the efforts of the community to support it. Pretty much nothing backs FIAT, that is LITERALLY what fiat is, fiat is Latin for “let it be done”.

                You can argue that without FIAT currency, crypto has no value, but in reality that is not the case because they have their own value. That value is determined by the community as well as the difficulty and abundance of coins. It is literally more stable than real world cash, you just have to USE it as such. ACTUAL COINS, not shitcoins.

                • hddsx@lemmy.ca
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                  2 years ago

                  The US government has an entire country it could liquidate if it really had to. It just is not linked to gold. There is nothing to liquidate for bitcoin. It is pure speculation. It is simply not backed by any physical value - and never will be.

      • Caveman@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Capitalism. Socialism would allocate energy and eliminate BTC mining. Social Democrats would give people energy allowance for home use and increase the price by taking it. Pure capitalists say it’s good.

      • JokeDeity@lemm.ee
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        2 years ago

        All your downvotes are for using the words pyramid scheme. It’s a lot of not great things, for sure, but it’s not a pyramid scheme.

    • xkforce@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Because its Texas: the state run by idiots that refuse to connect to the rest of the american grid because if they did, theyd have to actually get everything to code eventually.

      • WalrusDragonOnABike@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        They also built much of the solar in one region instead of diversifying. So even when other places are under fire-weather watch from high winds, we can have low wind energy because of low winds where they’re built…

    • alvvayson@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Because normally they make a small profit on the miners. They just didn’t expect prices to shoot up.

      I am sure they will change their contracts to have contingency clauses for the future.