The U.S government wants to crack down on the ballooning energy consumption of Bitcoin miners.

Just 137 crypto miners use 2.3% of total U.S. power — government now requiring commercial miners to report energy consumption::The U.S Energy Information Administration is now requiring large-scale cryptomining operations to report their energy consumption. Inevitably this will bring about new regulations that will restrict the energy consumption of miners in the future.

    • rdyoung@lemmy.worldEnglish
      840·
      11 months ago

      Seriously. This is so much bullshit. The bigger operations are out in the north west where hydro power is abundant and cheap. I’m sure plenty of others have made moves to run on solar or wind as well. Power costs make or break profitability for a crypto mine.

      Everyone downvoting this has no idea what it takes to mine crypto. If I cared enough about the peanut gallery here I would find one of my spreadsheets from years ago where I calculated the cost of mining versus buying directly. Most of the time for individuals and those wanting to hold it, buying was the best option. The only way these big operations make any money is getting kwh as cheap as possible and taking a fee from those paying them to mine for them.

      Even with commercial rates, you’d have to be a trump size moron to setup shop in and around any city or town full of people.

      • smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        31·
        11 months ago

        You are talking like if this was creating any real value. Replace “mining crypto” with “wasting” in these.

          • riodoro1@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            Fuck. You can !?

            I’ve been turning off my stove every time i used a hair dryer for nothing?

        • SeaJ@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          11 months ago

          I don’t think you understand how electricity works. Like at all. Do you think things max out at using 1 kWh? Why 1kWh and not simply 1 Wh? Or why could they not use 1 MWh? Should I inform the power company that they are clearly billing me wrong since they claim I use over 8760 kWh per year?

          Instead you should be surprised that they are consuming so much goddamn power for something that has little use.

        • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
          3·
          11 months ago

          …what? Are you implying there aren’t enough hours in a year to use up that much energy? That doesn’t make any sense. What do you imagine is the maximum amount of energy a single person can use then?