i explain this because many large farms dont contract with energy suppliers for the 500thw consumption/utility amount. but they actually do deals outside the norm to buy up some of the excess
I'd imagine that there are other places that the excess power could be directed to, though, if our current electrical requirements subside and allow for the allotment to other developments.
imagine if ASICS never happened whereby we were still in the GPU era of people connecting rigs 100% to domestic energy consumption/bill/supplies
also knowing the GPU hashrate, an kwh used per ghash.. imagine how many petawatthours would be used a year at todays hashrate..
That's exactly the kinds of things I love to see - but currently, it just seems like we're taking these increases in efficiencies and taking them as initiative to buy way more miners and continually push up total consumption- but I suppose that bitcoin as a system means that there's not much we can do to directly make changes for how much electricity it requires.
so i hope with lunch, dinner and dessert, i have given you enough food for thought to be full and happy
Thanks man, I thought I had a nice and full dinner but this one topped that.
Why in this case should we consider only the situation that bitcoin is extracted using coal, gas or oil, that is, carbon sources of such energy? Even in China, the main source of mining is hydroelectric power. If you use renewable energy sources - the energy of the sun and wind, then mining will not seem so energy-intensive, and even more so that it harms the environment.
The idea of bitcoin mining using renewables is addressed both in the original post and sporadically throughout the thread. Just because we account for renewable sources doesn't mean our consumption magically disappears - something that can be said for the world we live in, really. Is that enough to hide behind?
think about gold mining and production or the banking industry. these also use incredible amounts of energy. bitcoin has one advantage over them---miners can pick up and flock to regions where energy generation is cheaper and more sustainable.
as long as humans continue to use money, this problem isn't going away.
Mmm, still feels like we're aggravating the problem and having a mindset that this disadvantage is okay as long as we remain decentralized and all that good stuff.