Environmental groups urge US government to take action on crypto miners

[aoluain]

Miners to my mind are plugged into the electrical grid, they are consumers of electricity, from the same source as every other consumer from household to industrial.

Not quite accurate. We know from global studies and data that bitcoin mining is one of the greenest industries on the planet, using a far higher percentage of renewable energy than other industries. Bitcoin miners have the advantage that they can set up nearly anywhere, don't need all the expensive infrastructure that other industries need, don't need to be near a population base, and so on. They can go wherever renewable energy is, utilizing energy which would otherwise be wasted and subsidizing renewable projects which would otherwise be unprofitable and therefore not exist.

Of course, I should know this because Saylor is constantly tweeting about it.

Its just a pity that info is omitted when reported on.

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[darewaller]

I really do not understand all these big noise about crypto being not so green. The reality is that we are as green as it gets, think about the cash world, those are papers and usually made from trees that we need in order to survive. If cash has gone so much and for so long, then crypto could go on as well because it is proven that cash didn't kill the world, so why would crypto do that?

I am not sure what the math behind this is, but I am 100% sure that there are some people out there who cares about the world "so much" that they are basically getting paid to just say bat shit crazy things to keep the world a "better" place according to them.

[buwaytress]

Miners to my mind are plugged into the electrical grid, they are consumers of electricity, from the same source as every other consumer from household to industrial.

Not quite accurate. We know from global studies and data that bitcoin mining is one of the greenest industries on the planet, using a far higher percentage of renewable energy than other industries. Bitcoin miners have the advantage that they can set up nearly anywhere, don't need all the expensive infrastructure that other industries need, don't need to be near a population base, and so on. They can go wherever renewable energy is, utilizing energy which would otherwise be wasted and subsidizing renewable projects which would otherwise be unprofitable and therefore not exist.

Definitely the case in Southeast Asia, where we more or less have the same electricity cost models since we all run on a mix of coal/hydro. You register either as a residential or industrial user, the latter gets a far higher rate -- last I checked about 5 times more than a residential user, and it increases with more usage, and with more hours of daily use -- a miner presumably runs 24/7 and will pay the highest tariffs.

It would be impossible to cheat as well since their usage would show up in a heartbeat on any power grid. Residential consumption in Southeast Asia per HH is extremely low considered on a global scale, but industrially, it can be very high compared to a global scale. These guys will clamp down hard and then steamroll your rigs (literally, as I shared last year).

In fact, because the tariffs are much higher for industrial versus residential, most energy-intensive businesses don't plug in but try to subsidize with solar, and we even have special natural gas turbines (Liquified Natural Gas is our cheapest source of fuel, 5% price of gasoline for cleaner burning).

I don't know any miners personally, but I definitely recall several times even in my home town hobbyists trying to work out how to run these gas generators, with solar to produce very cheap electricity  -- the issues in our climate, so close to the equator, is humidity, heat, and of course, noise (the least of the issues, but it's still unwanted attraction).

[slaman29]

Miners to my mind are plugged into the electrical grid, they are consumers of electricity, from the same source as every other consumer from household to industrial.

I say the same as others have mentioned, even if plugged into the grid, they pay a different and more expensive rate, so are more likely to be using alternative cheaper energy. Solar I guess is the most popular answer in all the parts of the world where mining is popular (US, Asia, Africa). Europe too expensive and not enough sun I guess  

No one with any sense listens to anything Musk has to say in regards to bitcoin. Most of his followers are either newbies to this space, get-rich-quickers, or scammers looking to cash in whatever nonsense he tweets next. He manipulates his followers and shills some of the worst altcoins in history to make himself profit, and idiots just follow along blindly. His opinions on bitcoin are irrelevant.

I wish I could agree with you much more but hands up I admit I probably go to the bad sections of the forum from time to time and there's just a lot of accounts who pay attention or get excited by Elon. These I have to say with a kind heart aren't scammers or newbies but naive I guess is the word.

Excited when Elon shoots rockets to moon, when random micronation adopts Bitcoin, etc.

[Dumbsize]

The main problem is with mining of crypto using non-renewable sources of energy, but at present, miners are changing their source of energy to solar or other sources.
But the government should take some serious actions instead of blabbering about saving the environment.

[SpenserReed]

As the crypto space continues to grow with many investors in the United States, industry leaders and lawmakers have stepped up to address issues around financial risks as well as the potential impact on the environment from Bitcoin (BTC) mining.

I really think that mining BTC is not a serious problem for the environment, we have much more problems with other pollutants that do not bring any benefit in return.

[bittraffic]

Suppose they have made the government take action for these miners, how are they going to regulate the ones in China which even when the  government bans it, are doing underground?

Let's say the governments are working together to fight miners. I'm already seeing this to happen when miners are going to ask for permits before they can mine. This will make BTC centralized and in the end, its the government itself will be mining BTC which they could exclude transactions to get through.

[justdimin]

Suppose they have made the government take action for these miners, how are they going to regulate the ones in China which even when the  government bans it, are doing underground?

Let's say the governments are working together to fight miners. I'm already seeing this to happen when miners are going to ask for permits before they can mine. This will make BTC centralized and in the end, its the government itself will be mining BTC which they could exclude transactions to get through.

This has been talk of everyone in the energy sector, we shouldn't look at it that way. When people want to save the world and drop the usage of energy or producing bad methods for energy (petrol, gas etc) people ended up talking about "what about china and how they pollute the world!!!" so much and consider it an unfair economic disadvantage when they can pollute but people in the USA can't that it sounds a lot like "they are killing the world for money, we should kill the earth for money too!!" to me.

Just produce clean energy and then keep using bitcoin miners, we should not stop using energy by stopping mining, we should produce that energy in a clean way, much better method.

[DapanasFruit]

Unfortunately, there are so many pro-environment groups that will never accept reasons or will never change course once they are focusing on a certain industry like Bitcoin so for them either the government make Bitcoin mining illegal or we are doomed towards the end of the world as we know it. And it can be impossible for anybody to convince them otherwise as theirs can be likened to being part of a religious cult. And you can find so many of them right there in New York.

[Kakmakr]

I just love it when the Banking "shills" and "FUD" spreaders gets a blood nose from the real facts! They say, if you want to hit someone, you will find a stick to do it ....and this is very true for Bitcoin. The problem is..... the group that are dishing out the punishment... have a lot of skeletons in their own  closet. 

How can Banker shills attack Bitcoin's energy use, if the money they are distributing to people are being tainted with pollution and emissions and environmental damage from cotton farming ...destruction of trees and also Nickel, copper and Zinc mining. 

[Gyfts]

So the 23 house members that sent out the letter were all democrats, of course.

They've adopted a wild "green" energy policy platform which is anti-oil and gas. So even if crypto usage were to be relatively small compared to other payment processors, they'd still demonize it because it might contribute slightly to global emissions. They'll describe bitcoin using pejorative talking points, none of which make any sense.

Green energy lobby is powerful in the U.S -- they're not needed. A few radical environmentalists in congress is enough, they don't need to be paid off.

[evichi]

I am almost sure the environmental group is sponsored to engage in this action. The environmental group refuse to see the "log of wood" in their eyes but were able to see "the speck of dust" in another's eye. That is the way to describe this scenario. The world is faced with serious environmental pollutions from industries including nuclear waste, that are, IMO,1000% more hazardous when compared to energy pollutions from generating power used in mining Bitcoin. But these wastes continue to be tolerated in our environment because of some royalties they pay to government. Nothing serious is done about these wastes. Our ocean are filled with oil pollution, etc. yet they are just treated with kids glove.

However, there are efforts to use solar in mining Bitcoin, such technology should be encouraged by all crytpto enthusiasts. There are other green energy alternatives, like Dams, Wind energy, battery, that can be adopted to power Bitcoin mining. If government mean well, they should rather encourage the use of these eco-friendly alternatives.

To have Bitcoin, is to have your own bank with no third party encroachment. Proof of Work (Bitcoin algorithm) is a lot more secure, decentralized and not easily manipulated, when compared to Proof-of-Stake that somewhat have some level of centralization. IMO, the US government is making effort to have some level of control on crypto.