Bitcoin miners win legal battle to keep mum about energy use [US]
Bitcoin miners win legal battle to keep mum about energy use [US]
Bitcoin mines are energy-hungry data farms.
Everyone is a bit shit here (including whoever came up with that title...). No one "won" anything here.
DoE wanted to use "emergency" measures to survey miner's energy use, which is likely outside of the scope of the original intent of such powers (which appears to be why the judge granted a temporary restraining order?).
The Bitcoin miner's claim the data release would cause "irreparable harm to their business..." If that's not an admission of guilt, then I don't know what is.
This is dumb but only because we don't worry about energy use any other time. Tons of places in my city keep all their lights on 24/7 unnecessarily, we all are sitting on a "useless" social media, video games and movies and music are all energy uses. I don't want the government to start limiting energy use on things it deems unimportant. Who gets to decide what counts? Just implement a carbon tax and energy use will go down if people don't want to pay. We don't need to police everyone's usage, we just need the cost to actually reflect the externalities.
The economic drivers of Bitcoin mining make it so that the cost of the electricity needed to mine a Bitcoin will always be just a bit less than the value of a Bitcoin.
Every time speculators hype up the value of Bitcoin the amount of money wasted on electricity increases.
Bitcoins are mined at a preset rate of 6.25 bitcoins every 10 minutes. Which does at least get cut in half every few years. But this waste of energy is going to continue so long as there’s a market for Bitcoin.
[…] use roughly as much electricity as all of the nation’s home computers combined
Bitcoin mining also risks stressing out the power grid in Texas, a crypto hub in the US where the state’s grid operator has paid Riot more than $31 million in energy credits to curb its electricity use during heatwave-induced demand spikes. Bitcoin mining has also brought sputtering fossil fuel power plants back to life and raised electricity costs for some residents in New York.
It's clear why the survey is necessary.
Why did they make it an emergency survey in the first place? Is there no "normal" survey alternative?
Genuine question: If I use a cryptocurrency such as Monero for its privacy benefits (only for spending, not as an investment), am I indirectly making crypto mining more profitable and hurting the environment?
ps. I don't use any crypto yet.
Edit: actually I don't care that much about private money. What if I were to just use some crypto because it's convenient? Would that be bad?
The computers that run the stock market have gotten to keep their electricity consumption a secret for over 40 years.
It's like that meme of the two spidermans pointing at each other.
Does anyone know how much energy the banking system uses?
Edit: lol so much downvote for a reasonable question? Enjoy your inflation and your money being sent overseas by your masters squares
https://www.youtube.com/live/1jOUnFH-Ins?si=DNiscpajsDoUmbvd
yaaay.
Good for them. Fuck governmyth overreach