No country for Bitcoin miners. PoW change when?

[pawel7777]

...
But a change to PoS is a different story. Some time ago I started a thread about that in the German forum. I'm still not convinced - neither to definitively discard PoS nor to support a change now. More investigation about the Nothing at stake problem is needed, in my opinion.

Same here, I'm still on the fence on which is better PoW or PoS. ETH seems to managed to mitigate Nothing at stake risk, but the solution requires use of smart contract so can't be used for Bitcoin.

I'm guessing that if change of PoW is ever going to happen, it will be a PoW/PoS hybrid. You get the best of 2 worlds. If announced in advance (say 2-3 years) then good actors (miners, manufacturers) don't get penalised, as they have enough time to plan their strategies etc. It's not a brilliant solution, as it doesn't solve the power consumption issue, only reduces incentive by 50%, but would make the network more robust and more resistant to government regulations (i.e. ban on mining).

[darkangel11]

I think that eventually miners will have to generate their own electricity.

The problem with going off grid is that mines are the most efficient in cold climate and such climate is not the best for solar panels. You get less exposure throughout the year and have to clear the snow. In warm areas panels are great but mining equipment not so much. A nice idea would be to buy some old, semi abandoned dam in suitable climate and use the power for mining. That's a huge project, but doable if one had a couple million USD to spend.

[pawel7777]

...
The problem with going off grid is that mines are the most efficient in cold climate and such climate is not the best for solar panels. You get less exposure throughout the year and have to clear the snow. In warm areas panels are great but mining equipment not so much. A nice idea would be to buy some old, semi abandoned dam in suitable climate and use the power for mining. That's a huge project, but doable if one had a couple million USD to spend.

You don't necessarily need a dam for hydro-plants, and it doesn't have to be super expensive. If rumours about Bitmain's profits are true, then Jihan could easily afford to build his own, small hydro-plant. Check this one, it was built as a community project: http://www.stockport-hydro.co.uk/

There's also geothermal energy (available only in some regions), which is probably the best and cheapest energy source in cold-climate countries.

[d5000]

I think that eventually miners will have to generate their own electricity.

The problem with going off grid is that mines are the most efficient in cold climate and such climate is not the best for solar panels. You get less exposure throughout the year and have to clear the snow. In warm areas panels are great but mining equipment not so much.

There are some regions suitable for solar energy and mining hardware. Probably the largest is the Altiplano/Atacama area in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Peru. It's a high plateau at about 2500-4000 meters of altitude, with a mean temperature of about 5-10 degrees Celsius, but an extremely high amount of sunshine hours (take La Quiaca with its 3,400 sunshine hours as an example), and snow is very rare. In Mexico and Colombia, as well as in China, there are smaller regions with similar characteristics.

It is very likely that a large part of miners would move into these regions, if there are no political or legal obstacles.