Bitcoin Forum

As you probably know, Congress has announced a hearing about Bitcoin energy use.


The official announcement from the House Committee on Energy & Commerce and link to the live stream.

HEARING ON "CLEANING UP CRYPTOCURRENCY: THE ENERGY IMPACTS OF BLOCKCHAINS" (https://energycommerce.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/hearing-on-cleaning-up-cryptocurrency-the-energy-impacts-of-blockchains)

A couple of articles:

Congress Announces Hearing On Bitcoin’s Energy Use (https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/congress-announces-hearing-on-bitcoins-energy-use)


This is the link for the letter from the Climate organisations. (https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e449c8c3ef68d752f3e70dc/t/615f1567488c6f6a85de8eee/1633621351960/Congressional_Sign_On_Letter_Crypto_Climate_Risks.pdf)

Here instead the letter from the Bitcoin Policy Institute (BPI) (https://www.btcpolicy.org/)

Fact-checking Climate Organizations’ Crypto Letter (https://uploads-ssl.webflow.com/61d2416d1d63f07ecbfd010c/61e06fd0387be5288a07d9d6_Climate%20Organizaions%20Crypto%20Letter-01-13-01.pdf)


Congress is preparing an oversight hearing on Bitcoin mining's environmental impact: sources (https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/129336/congress-is-preparing-an-oversight-hearing-on-bitcoin-minings-environmental-impact-sources)


LIVESTREAM LINK (https://youtu.be/HWg731-3id8)


As you know, I have been quite vocal about the myth of “energy waste “ due to bitcoin.
See this thread, for example:

Debunking the "Bitcoin is an environmental disaster" argument (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5325350)

I think that, now that the US is going to be a major player in the mining industry, this hearing might be of utter importance to understand if and how regulators are going to impact mining operations in the US.

We will use this post to collect information, ideas, and results about this hearing.

Bitcoin mining is green and sustainable enough according to Bitcoin Mining Council Q3 2021 report (https://bitcoinminingcouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021.10.19-Q3-BMC-Presentation-Materials-Final.pdf). It is more better than many other industries.

The Q4 2021 report will be released very soon and there is a link to a Youtube video on 19 Jan 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZP3aXUnEoo

End the Fud about Energy against Bitcoin (https://endthefud.org/energy)

Actually I am trying to understand how much the Bitcoin Mining Council is involved in this hearing.
I guess they will back any initiative from the BIP, but just wondering if they will live the lobbying job to this other group or they will take over and propose the self in the first line.

Despite all the dangerous industries that have been producing incredible pollution and destroying the environment for more than 70 years, all these fake experts and hypocrites choose Bitcoin as the main reason for their fight against greenhouse gases. I find it hard to believe that all these hypocrites are so stupid that they can’t understand the most basic math, so I would conclude that they are mercenaries of the banking system and servants of various anti-Bitcoin coalitions operating worldwide.

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I hoped that after China, the whole system would become more decentralized, and the opposite happened. I hope that after all, some strange decisions and laws will not follow, because from some other cases it is evident that US politicians generally have no idea about such things.

I don’t think the system is more centralised now than before the China Ban, as the China has power hasn’t moved to a new destination altogether, but splitted over multiple destinations, even if some of them could be short lived (Kazakistan).
Concentration in mining might be a problem on other level of the supply chain (ASIC foundries, mainly).

Thank you for posting this. I wouldn't know that there would be this kind of hearing if it wasn't for you, OP. I had already set a reminder so I could watch it.

Anyway, we all know all the posts that could help the case on this, and I hope that this way, this is going to be helpful towards proving BTC is better everywhere.

I'm curious whether the hearing will clear up anything or will make the things even worse (because, meh, politics...)
And I would not go so far to say they're "mercenaries of the banking system", at least not all of them. They're more probably manipulated than paid...

sounds like they have already set the agenda (cleaning up crypto) and set the narative as to why (energy impact), before even discussing if its even an impact or a problem or something needing to be handled.

if the hearing was more like:
"blockchains energy use, good or bad" then it would be more unbias. but i think they are looking more so into actualy cracking down on mining.

..
for me i see it as this. mining farms dont use the allotted 'residential' capacity of the national grid. they instead purchase from the industrial or excess capacity.
the excess capacity usually goes unused/unpaid, meaning a loss for energy companies. but by having asic farm using it and paying it increases the energy companies profits and thus gives them more money to upgrade and expand capacity..

also most asic farms set up in regions that use renewables. so the "climate" argument is near moot in most cases

but hey, by the title of the hearing it already seems bias toward the negative

lets just hope they use this hearing to incentivise asic farms in fossil fuelled regions to move to renewable regions. or incentivise fossil fuel region power plants to convert to renewable... instead of ban asic farms as a whole.

after all the climate 'solution' is not to tell everyone to stop using electric.. but instead to get the electricity producers to change how its produced

According to what can be read (although such data are very dubious), after China dropped out of crypto mining, the US increased its global hash rate to over 35%, an increase of more than 100% over the previous period. Consequently, all these anti-pollution fighters have now even managed to reach the US Congress, which they will certainly use to try to impose their agendas. A year earlier, something like this would not have been possible, because US miners allegedly had only a 15-16% stake in hash power, now they have more than 1/3 and will certainly not stop there.

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All of them should be sent to school to learn the basics of mathematics and statistics, because if in the past we concluded that according to all relevant research Bitcoin annually consumes about 0.2% of the world's electricity, and more than 50% is from renewable sources. I still think that money is the main motivator, although there are certainly weirdos among them who believe that the earth is flat, that Martians have bases in wheat fields and that Bitcoin is the work of Satan ;)

Politicians won't send them to school, since uneducated people is easier to manipulate every 4 years...
And as long as garlic, holy water and such are still getting on TV as remedies for viral infections in the XXI-th century, I have a feeling that our expectations vs "the world" are, unfortunately, a bit high.

good ol' america, land of the freeky

The title of the hearing does not show it is an investigation or fact finding mission. "Cleaning Up Cryptocurrency" shows that cryptocurrency has being judged before the judgement. Anyways, let us keep the hope alive.
Who or which counsels are representing bitcoin? Who will intercede for bitcoin?

This hearing is going to be a farce. Just a bunch of politicians and environmentalists who don't understand how Bitcoin mining works. They cherry pick easy statistics to make mining seem bad when mining is actually a strong net positive for the environment (promotes the energy sector, promotes green energy production, already heavily uses green energy, etc).


The best thing that could come out of this hearing is if politicians actually listen to the people who understand Bitcoin instead of the ones who don't know undestand Bitcoin, though I put that as a low possibility as the politicians who already think it is bad are likely to think the Bitcoiners are just trying to defend their thing.

The best side effect I could see from this hearing is just convincing more US miners to focus even more on mining from renewable energy just to throw that back in bitcoin opponents faces when politicians and others say that it destroys the environment.

But the whole reason this hearing is happening is a farce so I don't expect it to be a reasoned and educated debate.

The argument that Bitcoin has a bad impact on the environment boils down to the mainstream media continuing to try to stop mining operations. It is no longer strange for us to dismiss things that emerge from the news that they try to distort the facts.

If we talk about the impact of the mining industry, we compare it with executives who continue to oversee the mining of gold, oil, natural gas, coal, nickel, iron ore, tin, silver, and copper. Simply put, we can see from changes in environmental conditions such as soil, air, and water. Isn't that all damaging and detrimental to human, animal, and plant life?

Then what is the most dangerous impact of Bitcoin mining?
Waste of electricity? Don't be afraid to run out of your wits, as El Salvador is mining Bitcoin using volcanic energy.
https://i.ibb.co/tcsp5QL/image.png

The hearing took place, and apparently it wasn’t as hot as expected.

No fireworks at House's Bitcoin mining hearing, but pending climate bills could home in on crypto (https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/131077/no-fireworks-at-houses-bitcoin-mining-hearing-but-pending-climate-bills-could-home-in-on-crypto)

The tone were much more downbeat than anticipated.

Executive summary:


I think the focus was more about a “challenge” of the Chinese reaction of the same issue. And evaluate all the possibilities with an eye to the possible geopolitical implications:

I watched the entire hearing and it was surprisingly positive toward mining and cryptocurrencies. There were no environmentalists testifying and very little discussion on environmental impact, and minimal discussion on any negative impact of energy usage.

I suspect that there will be other hearings in which the environmentalists will get their chance to speak.

The representative from Virginia even asked the Bitfury speaker to talk to him later about building mining operations in Virginia.

Definitely, because there is nothing there to discuss as all of the data points to other sectors having a more negative impact on the environment than Bitcoin and all these hypocrites ain't saying anything against those. It is clear that this is just some conspiracy against the cryptocurrency industry and they want a takedown by any means necessary.

It is a pity that all these hypocrites did not show up to get entangled in their lies - and if they need legal help, they should turn to the Swedish government, which has been trying for months to persuade other EU members to ban crypto mining.

US politicians are not going to easily ban something that creates economic opportunities and brings taxes, especially when arguments for banning are so weak. So I'm not surprised that this hearing was positive, after all the hearing about Facebook's Libra also turned positive for Bitcoin.

having watched the 2 hour video. many things were stated wrong, many seemed positive.
i didnt feel that it was a war against crypto. but more of an intro to further discussions.

i found things funny that they worry about 'grid operators' able to meet the demand of crypto..
yet the ~38TWH worldwide(better guess) is nothing in comparison to other industries.

EG if people travel on average 20miles a day for work/leisure. an electric car scenario of all 290million cars being EV in a decade, would need over 1000TWH a year just for the US
 
if governments think 38twh WORLDWIDE (14TWH US) is a problem now.. yes US only 14twh.. . then they have a real problem in the electric car plan for 2030 which would need over 1000twh

14 vs 1000. i think they need to concentrate more on regulating and making the EV industry more efficient

I have followed this up. This people are not actually to take bitcoin down, and I think that is not there intention. US as a nation has a unique and unbiased ideology. Which is Liberty.
So, bitcoin is about liberty, US government cannot go against their ideology.
Besides, bitcoin has created and is still creating numerous opportunities for the people.
People are at liberty to chose the finance or investment they want to get into.

This is why I don't think this kind of hearing or discussion will progress into something serious. Because there are more pressing matters to address. Like you mentioned, if they looked at EV industry requirements in the years to come, then, they better address it now because 2030 is not very far. So for me, the discussion regarding energy use of bitcoin may not really be serious in tackling it right now. They will find out as they go deeper that this won't need urgent attention from them because there are more important things to address.

yea governments and utility companies should not be in the business of telling people:
to 'turn down their heating and insteadsnuggle a pet to stay warm (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59946622)'.
to unplug their TV's at the wall socket instead of putting them on standby

and instead should make power plants/utility companies incentivized to upgrade to keep up with capacity.

one issue with utility companies is the cost of electric. back in the days of only 1-2 utility companies serving an entire nation meant that the 'bidding' of allotments of twh's was highly strengthened by just 2 companies buying thw from the grid and these bulk contracts meant better deals. but now with dozens of utility companies. its diluted their buying strength, and also sucks more of the bills 'profits' into the utility company admin offices. rather then going more direct to power plants.

governments should try getting the money to power plants so they can upgrade to renewables faster. rather then letting utility companies keep the profits and tell customers to switch devices off

Yeah, I always get curious and even sometimes furious when all these narratives about bitcoin energy consumption. I sometimes feel all these are just a bid to destroy the reputation of bitcoin and have reason to keep it from soaring high, because we cannot compare the energy consumption of bitcoin and that of industrial energy consumption.

I have faith on initiatives taken by bitcoin miners and devs to stay greener as much as possible. Over the years, I believe bitcoin might be more green than fiats as most countries are not having any proposal to strop using paper money but bitcoin already started working on making use of renewable energies.

Right they will only blame bitcoin with all these bullshit excuses and not expose what affect other things have on the environment that are far more worse than bitcoin mining.The congress and all other government houses will try to figure out some new way to defame the image of bitcoin and mining is one of the biggest thing they have in their minds not in hands as just claiming this or that will not help them in making people fools.

Here is one example of the same and their so called federal reserve is not of much environment friendly mining which is clear from the pictures :


So now who's environment friendly? Take a note about how many workers and labour have died during gold,coal and other metal minings and what affects they have on environmental status of that particular area and compare it with btc mining then answer would automatically be clear.

Okay so this is interesting topic for me to debate over and give more possible explanations in favour of Bitcoin and going to collect more facts and figures about the same and post in this thread.Congress lies won't live any longer neither their fake and useless talks.

You know I always wondered why US and Asia are so against nuclear energy and I know the bomb and plant meltdown are problems but the first to me is not even related and the second can always be improved.

I read that in Europe even nuclear energy will be classified as green. Instead of expensive and politically crippling energy, if everyone began using the same nuclear technology in some countries of Europe, wouldn't all this arguments lose their value (they have value now because they are being said by people in power backed by fossil fuel and other mining industry).

Blaming mining for climate change is not right. The problem is with the sources of electricity, not with it being in high consumption. The US is a very wasteful country. They waste tons of food, people live in huge houses, they are not even a part of major ecological global agreements. It's a fact that based on the US ecological footprint per person, we'd need 5 Earths (https://www.overshootday.org/how-many-earths-or-countries-do-we-need/#:~:text=Here's%20how%20we%20calculate%20that,if%20everyone%20lived%20like%20Americans.) if everyone lived the same way as people there do. It's worse than any other country in the world, to the best of my knowledge.
And now they care about crypto mining? It's great that the fact-checking alternative was written, and I hope it will be taken into account. I also hope the US will actually start caring about the ecology, but Bitcoin is not the right place to start.

Kazakhstan energy challenges:

Another bitcoin mining facility shutdown in Kazakhstan due to insufficient power supply from the country's electricity recent shortage encountered, the report stated that the entire country had an experience of blackout due to high demands of energy (power) used in mining activities. While stating that the disconnection is slated to last till 31st of January 2022.


Base on the report we had, the bitcoin mining company complains been incapacitated to source for finance due to the cost of it mining activities it incurred.

We are not denying the fact that bitcoin consumes energy. But my problem is why bitcoin energy consumption is always treated in isolation. While others are treated together and seen as normal, bitcoin is always singled out and treated as a menace.
It is because they want to drag the the reputation of bitcoin to zero and then they will kill bitcoin. But can they?
They cannot kill bitcoin. I know one day the last bitcoin will be mined and I will wait to hear their excuses again against bitcoin.

the use of minin bitcoin energy is always at issue. This has become news that is heard quite often and is always a problem that continues to be discussed, because bitcoin is always associated with global warming that will threaten this earth. Mining more extreme than bitcoin is certainly still a lot and not only creates problems with excessive energy use, but also very serious environmental problems.
Bitcoin is currently also using renewable energy or using energy from nature so that the energy burden will not be too heavy and environmentally friendly.

The use (you are right, “the use”, not the “waste” of energy for bit pin mining is a false problem.
The total energy used for bitcoin mining is about 0,05% of the total energy production.
It’s not bitcoin roel to make energy production clean, but bitcoin mining can have a positive role on this.
See these two treads:

Debunking the ""Bitcoin is an environmental disaster"" argument (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5325350)
ALPS BLOCKCHAIN: mining in Italy from 100% renewable energy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5359284.msg57904934#msg57904934)

 I read an article recently talking about the United States Office of Science and Technology saddled with the responsibility to request for public opinions from the people on the possible  impacts of the crypto mining energy and the effect on the environment (https://beincrypto.com/u-s-government-seeks-public-opinion-on-crypto-energy-use/?utm_source=thecryptoapp) after considering possible reason behind the proposed EU ban on bitcoin mining as a result of the challenging PoW and the effect of waste and unutilized energy posing environmental climate change.

I understand and know that bitcoin mining does not constitute to the global environmental hazard as energy loss as a result of mining is not upto ⅛ of the global energy loss due to inefficiency and this become one of the reasons bitcoin places no environmental degredation, as the government now divert attention in considering the rate of energy loss during petroleum refining, heavy duty equipment and facilities, production companies,  automobile exhaust, fire/material burnings, and the likes.

I discover a recent move by the United State most recognized oil and gas company  Exxon Mobil (https://www.google.com/amp/s/cointelegraph.com/news/exxon-mobil-is-using-excess-natural-gas-to-power-crypto-mining-report/amp) which is set to make an effective utilization of the energy loss in refining petroleum for bitcoin mining as it tends to extend this development within the regions it has some of it plant stations such as: Argentina, Germany, Nigeria and Guyana. It can be concluded that bitcoin has not come to constitute to the environmental hazard but rather bringing a solution to it.

Bitcoin Mining Council wrote a letter to the EPA trying to shed some light on the supposed bitcoin needy consumption:

https://i.ibb.co/tCcQKt7/60028368.jpg (https://twitter.com/saylor/status/1521106193997086721?s=21&t=2K4DKtrwvAE9QqGsudj3HA)

they try to sound helpful until they put their foot into their mouth, by saying the opposite of what they pretend to intend to say..

they claim mining farms have nothing to do with the power generation. but then say things like this

so they spent many paragraphs saying that mining farms have nothing to do with power generation methods.. then slightly flip by saying 2 examples "Ameren and Greenidge" do have links to it, but only represent 2% of world bitcoin mining (meaning more then 2% of american mining)
and then flip again to say that marathon.. america's biggest mining farm. does have coal facilities. is currently using them, but intents to stop using them in the future.
..
its like saying "im sorry police officer but i dont think my son is a thief you have no evidence he is a thief, and i have never personally seen him steal anything.... oh wait there was that one time i seen him steal the family car, and that other time he told me how he used the car to do a bank robbery, but that doesnt count right.. oops i just gave you some evidence, anyway, tell my son we love him and we will visit him once a month for the first 5 years of his incarceration"

..........
its just as bad as when the bitcoin mining consortium also exaggerated the numbers to say that bitcoin mining was using 150-250TW when actual numbers were more like 50TW.

what are they playing at.. do they even read their letters/memos/presentations before publishing to see how their sentiments come across..
they want to sound like they are helping while actually giving the ammo to the opposition to fire off on everyone

Congress will listen more to the people filling their pockets with tax money and/or bribes ....or even opportunities to profit from tenders. The uninformed "Tree huggers" do not have a clue what they talking about, because they are moved by the agenda that are pushed by mainstream (paid) media.

The calculations that supports "energy" myths regarding Bitcoin mining, have been debunked many times before... but nobody are listening. It is easier to be spoon fed by the mass media, than doing the math on their own..... or to compare Apples with Apples. (Ask these people to calculate how much greenhouse gasses and pollution are caused by the mining and manufacturing of Fiat currencies... eg. nickel, copper, and zinc and plastic & paper &  cotton notes)  ;)

I don't necessarily agree with you that "tree huggers" have money, but for sure, there is a certain amount of the information space that fails/refuses to account for actual facts - or even to account for a lot of the practicalities that come through bitcoin's possible role in various aspects of energy balancing - whether involving some of the incentivizing of more energy production from less expensive sources or even having some discussions that involve how bitcoin mining may well start to serve larger and larger roles in the innovation of vertical integrated operations in jurisdictions that do not strive to stifle that and can figure out ways to possibly benefit from having bitcoin operations in various places around the world, if they could get over the idea that magical internet money (namely bitcoin - and not referring to the various shitcoin smoke and mirror scams) does actually also serve various public purposes that end up serving as a good use of energy as compared to some other ways that energy might be used to prop up some of the fiat money system behaviors that are likely way less efficient and way less in the public interests than they are made out to be whether we are considering the Cantillon effect or just considering the various ways that the printing of money makes a fool out of the people and their supposed consent to such ways that inflation ends up robbing them in more subtle ways that the solid aspects of magical bitcoin money provides standards and surely does not cost very much (in terms of overall energy usage) as the exaggerated and largely ill-informed (misleading too) claims like to throw out into the public discourse on the topic.

**presentation note... I am thinking that maybe I should have put a period somewhere in my above paragraph/sentence?  perhaps?  perhaps?

This energy issue has always prevailing in the debates and now the Congress just want another propoganda to defame the image of bitcoin by showing that through mining energy many other works could be done like officials have also stated that through single bitcoin transaction many US household could consume electricity and many more to come.

But have they not given any importance to that how miners are moving to energy efficient and renewable methods? The hash rates have increased and energy consumption has decreased with 25% and more than 60% is now green energy consumption for mining purpose.

https://i.ibb.co/LCFC3pW/Screenshot-20220503-170750-01.jpg (https://ibb.co/qRSRv1f)

So they will ignore these charts and keep on debating on the same topic but how many banks are other monetary services contribute to the total energy usage in US only? Much more than btc so if you are having some POW based coin that have the capability to change the financial system but with some electricity which miners are trying to solve also disturb them and they suddenly become so environment friendly? This is same old bullshit which they are not bored of .

As per the latest reports of Mining council they are briefing about the usage but you see only a few percentage cares to listen to them :

 https://i.ibb.co/zGgrqWt/Screenshot-20220503-170542-01.jpg (https://youtu.be/uotDxbKJmlo)

Will see forward to the hearing and what next they come up with but the council is also ready for defending itself and raise up the bitcoin to ordinary people in true representative.

I take the report on Bitcoin mining energy consumption as a political tool to undermine the cryptocurrency industry and also to make way for centralized financial control of the bank and other traditional financial institutions who see and passive the cryptocurrency industry as a threat to their existence monopolistic control. The greenhouse institutions are also established by the government as an agency which makes it clear that their judgment is at the mercy of the government and how their passive bitcoin, Bitcoin prove of work POW is a highly decentralized system that does not allow for third-party involvement so the most centralized autocratic government have negative appetite towards decentralization since it gives total freedom.  What the government lack is infrastructure if the UK or US have updated infrastructure that converts various carbon dioxide and guaranty eco free global space the activities of Bitcoin miners will become a way to generate revenue I believe the United state will look in that direction if I were part of EU Parliament I will have voted against a total ban of Prove of work cryptocurrency mining. Let's look at it that the whole fight was based on stereotyped and sentimental judgment.

We should in other words advise the governments to first take care of the already environmental catastrophe in place as a result of natural resources  mining and other environmental pollutions needed to be given serious attention of which affect lives than bitcoin energy usage which has no implication on health and lives of human being.


Its part of their motives but they never knew that bitcoin has gone beyond the era of getting influenced by news especially of this manners, they have tried in many ways to counter the role and adoption of bitcoin but the resistive force is far beyond their imagination because because is not just accepted by the governments for adoption but the people have gone far beyond their expectations adopting bitcoin.

Well i never expected such from government because bitcoin is decentralized and this alone is a plus bonus for individuals adoption, not to talk of how they have been launching CBDC against bitcoin which has no any inference or change to what is on ground, the fact remains fiat currency is fiat and bitcoin remains decentralized digital currency and nothing can be changed about the two as it remains constant k.

Bitcoin mining has won a good edge here again in providing access to rehabilitation and reuses of one old and abandoned ineffective hydroelectric power plan in Mechanicville, but to my greatest surprise, this is the most astonishing part of it all.


Indeed bitcoin is more preferably than the hands over of the government in an establishment to be successful, bitcoin is providing more insights to maximizing opportunities in various energy and power sectors for effective utilizations, here they believed bitcoin mining could profit them than any form of centralized authority in handling the operations of the old abandoned power plant.

This is going to be pretty hard to convince otherwise when the amounts are right there. I mean electricity is obvious and how much you could sell them for which will mean that it's going to be something that is basic since you only calculate what you would earn by selling it, and what you would earn by using it to mine. That's good enough, and if you are a big enough company then you could do both, half of it goes to mining, and half of it goes to selling it and covering the expenses which would allow you to not sell any bitcoin at all, it's basically free.

You are both breaking even thanks to selling left over electricity, and you are also using half to get free bitcoin as well.

US has the capacity to mine bitcoin because there is a constant light supply. And since the moved was spearheaded by the Congress, the governing council will do something to it. And that means, the government will be fully involve in the adoption of bitcoin. Waste can be converted to energy so using bitcoin energy will make the mining companies more active.

At first I had not noticed the article was from one year ago.. so we need to take that into account, as well in terms of what calculations that the power plant operators might have been making last year versus how they might reconsider the matter this year with bitcoin having dips bringing it perhaps 1/3 the price as it was at various points last year... but still in the end, many of us know that bitcoin can be a quite profitable investment so long as you don't get too greedy about matters, and you are able to figure out ways to balance your cashflows so that you do not get overleveraged in one direction or another.

When we attempt to figure out what various enterprises might do, or how they might choose to balance their use of debt, and various ways to create cashflow so that they can potentially accumulate both bitcoin and cash in order to sustain their operations, we know that sometimes they end up getting into trouble because they might overly leverage in one direction or another - and even with something like attempting to run a hydro power plant with a purpose of accumulating bitcoin, I would consider it a better operation to attempt to attempt to employ some kind of a hybrid model in order to serve the public with electricity at the same time as mining bitcoin, even though they may have concluded that the bitcoin portion of the business is more profitable, and part of my rationale would be that a power plant may have had public funds in the past, and there continues to be various kinds of ways that the public has concerns over its own energy costs and have beliefs that the public has an interest in benefiting from energy production - especially if there have been various ways that the hydro power plant might have been involved in providing electricity to the public in the past and might have received various kinds of public funding at various points in its life, too.  Another thing when any kind of industry has potential with interfering with the water supply (or flow) and there might be questions about whether the public has an interest in those kinds of activities, even if they might be completely on private land.

I guess that part of what I am trying to say is that there could be some potential for public (and/or governmental) backlash if such a hydropower plant were to be 100% dedicated to mining bitcoin rather than figuring out ways to proclaim that the public interest is also being served by providing electricity, too... and what that divide would be might be discretionary within the plant rather than having such production imposed by governmental entities.. even something like 50/50 could be a starting point or even a target point, but it might not necessarily be the best way to allocate such operations, and maybe even the owners and/or experienced people (experts) in the various industries of bitcoin mining and/or energy production would know until they put the operation into practice for several years to find some zone of operation allocations that they believe work for their particular plant based on a variety of considerations, geography, infrastructure already in place, upkeep of the infrastructure, bitcoin price and difficulty level fluctuations, changes in the regulatory environment, etc etc).

Out of the estimated 90,000 dams in the  United States  (https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/05/06/dams-nonpowered-hydropower-energy/)only about 2,200 of them generate hydroelectric power. These hydropower resources, however, account for 7 percent of national energy production and contribute 37 percent of the nation’s renewable energy supply. In 2016, a U.S. Department of Energy study forecast that hydropower in the United States could expand from its current capacity of 101 gigawatts to nearly 150 gigawatts by 2050. This growth would come not from new dam construction but from upgrading existing hydroelectric resources, adding pumped storage capacity, and retrofitting nonpowered dams for hydropower. Hence, there have been a growing effort to retrofit so-called nonpowered dams, or any dams created for a need other than hydropower, for electricity production.

This can serve as an opportunity for Bitcoin miners because the people in such locality already have an alternative source of power and it could be less expensive because it is far better cheaper than constructing a new dam. Typically the dam’s operation is not changed, so there is usually much less opposition from communities and environmental groups than there would be to a new dam project.

I couldn't but rather save myself in watching the 3:25 (three minutes, twenty five seconds) video clip https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1561065069210963971?t=dYG8ZJ44eCmvFrWDPk-K-w&s=19 where i finds the new interesting benefit of bitcoin mining which now emerge with the use of "Coal Waste" in generating the energy needed for the mining activities of bitcoin instead of laying them to waste in compounding to the environmental hazard and for these coal wastes got sinking down into the ground causing more harm in polluting the environmental ecosystem, this could thereby cause the underground waterways suffers huge detriment of the heavy metals with their respective casinogens, bitcoin have always been the awaited multi versatile solution to all prospects that key into it opportunities.

More needs to retriate about bitcoin mining and environmental impact.

https://i.imgur.com/3GDjsF4.jpg
source  (https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1563217113019740161?t=AtBiZidHjiV-ctk6Lw-c9w&s=19)

This is actually what we meant by bitcoin mining being environmental friendly, emissions from the mining activities are rather a solution to the toxic effect of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere, but carbon dioxide has a strong benefits on human breathe, aquatic lives and the entire environment of the ecosystem including plants, no degredation felt during the process of bitcoin mining into the atmosphere, unlike the natural resource mining that causes a depletion in the ozone layer through the effect of Co (carbon monoxide) and difficulty on living organism breathing rate, contermination of the water and so on, but bitcoin mining is friendly with the environment.
Another benefit serving a solution is:  Bitcoin mining being used to reduce harmful methane emission  (https://twitter.com/DocumentingBTC/status/1562939343181713409?t=WXqGRZVXq4FMGPyahzFFIA&s=19)