A Texas Town’s Misery Underscores the Impact of Bitcoin Mines Across the U.S.

[ABCbits]

FWIW, it's estimated that 59.9% Bitcoin mining use sustainable power on August 2023 report[1].

Yeah, I would really wipe my ass with Bitcoin Mining Council reports.
It's all clean and so on and when I open every company sec fillings all I see is buying gas powerplant here, coal powerplant there, tied to the grid, and one or two hydropower stations. And  I was curious why they stopped the reports, it's 2024 and the last data is from 2023..well seems like there was a congress inquiry on their power demand and sources after that mad bitch Warren threw a fuss about it so miraculously they've stopped with the estimations.
Take that 59% with a ton of salt, I would be amazed if it's 39% at best.

That's good point, i was wondering why they never release newer report. But other source such as https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci/ghg shows gas emission instead and haven't updated chart which show type of energy source since January 2022.

[mikeywith]

[quote author=mikeywith
If there was one downside to bitcoin it has to be the noise pollution and the huge power consumption. I'm really not sure that the world is better off due to bitcoin now that I've seen these downsides. I can't imagine anyone that is affected by the noise of these mining operations would like bitcoin at all. And I don't recommend they do either!

Unless you are too deep into the "green world" concept which I am not into, then power consumption is a net positive to the world, demand on power by bitcoin increases jobs, adds more value to the economy and in some cases even makes power a little cheaper.

You can simply verify the above by checking GDP vs Power consumption for any country, both move together.

As for the noise, it is not all that bad, out of the thousands of farms around, how many of them are stupidly built in a populated area? As for the farm in question, I would blame that State for it, if they can't regulate noise pollution to protect their people, they are dumb as hell, people are greedy by nature, it is not BTC's fault.

[philipma1957]

Now go have a look at that 300MW farm, thats 100,000 miners, you can't have them all facing a small area that you can control, they need to be spread, each miner can make up to 90db, noise level increases by 10 db everytime you 10x the noise source

1 miner does 90db
10 miners do 100db
1000 miners do 110db
10,000 miners do 120db
100,000 miners do 130db

If there was one downside to bitcoin it has to be the noise pollution and the huge power consumption. I'm really not sure that the world is better off due to bitcoin now that I've seen these downsides. I can't imagine anyone that is affected by the noise of these mining operations would like bitcoin at all. And I don't recommend they do either!

This is true.

I would love to see that company be forced to use liquid cooling .

If you really think about 300 megawatts of heat they could provide 300,000,000 x 4 = 1,200,000,000 btu of heat. My furnace has a 100,000 btu..

And it runs around 4 hours a day in the winter.  So 1,200,000,000/100,000= 12000 homes and X 6 = 72,000 homes could be heated with the wasted heat

So Texas is simply allowing wasted resources.   Just think of the fucking stupidity of the government of the USA.

Every major city in cold weather should have the mines.

Texas should truck ot ship oil to say Boston.  Boston already burns, thousands of gallons of oil to heat homes.

Burn the oil to run a  mine use liquid cooling and pipe the heat to homes.

If you mine doge which never runs out of coins and is the perfect small value p2p payment plan you could heat all of new England all of new york and Chicago.

Plus mine a double use of the fuel.

The solution is right there. This is why I hate both Trump Harris as neither one talks about this and this could work.

Instead mining crypto is the simple mis use of tools the way it is done now.

[ranochigo]

Maybe bitcoin needs to transition to something more environmentally friendly so that it doesn't cause so much noise pollution and fossil fuel useage. I can't be neutral about something like that. sorry.

Unfortunately it seems like you feel like because states don't have specific laws about being an a-hole to your neighbor, you can go ahead and do it and that's not your fault? actually you agree that these were shit companies acting bad. so good for you but it shouldn't take laws to stop a-holes from being a-holes.

We've been through this thousands of times and we've always come to the same conclusion that Bitcoin is not going to transition from proof-of-work to another algorithm. The idea is that the benefits is higher than the cost, but the negative externality is difficult to actually estimate. If you were to shift to something like Proof Of Stake, then Bitcoin isn't Bitcoin anymore and you run into the different issues about PoS.

Profit-maximizing corporations has historically exploited the community to their fullest wherever they go. Stopping Bitcoin miners from mining isn't going to stop profit maximizing corporations from trying to exploit whatever they can to maximize their profits. Effective policies will, and unfortunately rules and regulations are the only things keeping them in check. You may think that this is a whataboutism, but truth is no company actually gives a shit about ESG. They only care about money an governments are supposed to be the one to strike the correct balance.

If you want to address the issue once and for all, Texas should implement proper zoning laws and effectively address all of their concerns and issues. I get it, they're assholes but it certainly doesn't help trying to generalize the entire industry as one when there are a few bad apples.

[larry_vw_1955]

Unless you are too deep into the "green world" concept which I am not into,

i'm into not being forced to pay higher electricity prices because of people mining bitcoin.

then power consumption is a net positive to the world, demand on power by bitcoin increases jobs, adds more value to the economy and in some cases even makes power a little cheaper.

i don't think it increases jobs significantly (how many people want to work in a very noisy facility and bitcoin mining operations don't have any real labor costs or anything like a real warehouse) or adds any value to the local economies at all (no product produced) and it definitely doesn't make power cheaper:

When cryptominers come to town, local residents and small businesses pay a price in surging electricity rates.   

A new Berkeley Haas working paper estimates that the power demands of cryptocurrency mining operations in upstate New York push up annual electric bills by about $165 million for small businesses and $79 million for individuals—with little or no local economic benefit.

https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/power-hungry-cryptominers-push-up-electricity-costs-for-locals/

none of that should come as a surprise.

As for the noise, it is not all that bad, out of the thousands of farms around, how many of them are stupidly built in a populated area?

it seems like more and more of them are popping up all over the usa. anywhere they can put one they try to. if it can help them skirt the rules and do it secretively so much the better. but then people start complaining about the noise...

As for the farm in question, I would blame that State for it, if they can't regulate noise pollution to protect their people, they are dumb as hell, people are greedy by nature, it is not BTC's fault.

well BTC needs to be updated to be more environmentally friendly. you can't just have bitcoin mining facilities in every single city making tons of noise 24/7/365 but i guess that's what most people that are involved in bitcoin want. 

[mikeywith]

i'm into not being forced to pay higher electricity prices because of people mining bitcoin.

That logic applies to every other business and even households, it's like saying you don't want people taking hot showers because that increases power prices or new clothes factories or anything that creates a demand on power, you want to enjoy the benefits of capitalism you should also accept all it's downsides.

i don't think it increases jobs significantly (how many people want to work in a very noisy facility and bitcoin mining operations don't have any real labor costs

It does increase jobs not only in the mining farms, in power plants, distributions, transport, gas/coal mines, oil industry and everything that activates the power coming to those miming farms.

and it definitely doesn't make power cheaper:

It does in "some cases" as I mentioned earlier, an example would be in remote areas where there is not enough demand for a power plant and people rely on expensive transmission from the nearest source located 1000km away, mining farms would create the required demand for the electric company to build power plants nearby, cut transmission losses and thus lead to lower power cost.

[larry_vw_1955]

That logic applies to every other business and even households, it's like saying you don't want people taking hot showers because that increases power prices or new clothes factories or anything that creates a demand on power, you want to enjoy the benefits of capitalism you should also accept all it's downsides.

other industries don't have the same level of power consumption as bitcoin mining though so i think its affects are magnified. also people taking hot showers covers just about every single human being here in the usa. everyone gets a benefit from it. not everyone gets a benefit from bitcoin mining operations. very few do in comparison.

It does increase jobs not only in the mining farms, in power plants, distributions, transport, gas/coal mines, oil industry and everything that activates the power coming to those miming farms.

demand for electricity was doing just fine before bitcoin came around though. i don't think that we can argue in favor of a certain activity that has negative environmental consequences such as air pollution and noise pollution just because it marginally increases jobs in very well established and flourishing industries.

It does in "some cases" as I mentioned earlier, an example would be in remote areas where there is not enough demand for a power plant and people rely on expensive transmission from the nearest source located 1000km away, mining farms would create the required demand for the electric company to build power plants nearby, cut transmission losses and thus lead to lower power cost.

and what happens when that mine shuts down or moves somewhere else?

[mikeywith]

other industries don't have the same level of power consumption as Bitcoin mining, though, so I think its effects are magnified.

The entire worldwide BTC power consumption is about 20GW, and that assumes 30w/th, which is 100% more than the current most efficient gear.

20GW is roughly 175 TWh annually, which is less than 0.5% of the total power the world uses annually; it is a tiny fraction.

If you really want to protest against power waste and pollution, you should start with the military-industrial complex, those guys steal your tax money, polute the air you breath, suck a dozen more energy than BTC does, and directly contribute to the killing of thousands of innocent people.

As for hot showers, it makes no difference, again, this is how it works, every second you spend in the hot shower makes life harder for the next person (applying your logic).
 

[ranochigo]

other industries don't have the same level of power consumption as bitcoin mining though so i think its affects are magnified. also people taking hot showers covers just about every single human being here in the usa. everyone gets a benefit from it. not everyone gets a benefit from bitcoin mining operations. very few do in comparison.

Most of them certainly do. Chemical, oil processing, military consumes power in the order of the hundreds. It's unlikely that everyone benefits proportionally from these either.

demand for electricity was doing just fine before bitcoin came around though. i don't think that we can argue in favor of a certain activity that has negative environmental consequences such as air pollution and noise pollution just because it marginally increases jobs in very well established and flourishing industries.
and what happens when that mine shuts down or moves somewhere else?

I think that is quite a myopic perspective of looking at things. Your perspective that Bitcoin Mining is bad comes from this single instance in Texas where they introduce ridiculous benefits and kickbacks to the miners to entice them to come over and mine in their state while having no apparent benefits to the local. That is unfair to the wider mining industry, and you are pinning the fault on Bitcoin for these negative side effects. I'm wondering why you're not faulting the local governments, or the individual companies (RIOT, MARA), etc. They are in fact, why this is an issue at all. We've never heard of anything like this happening when Bitcoin mines were in China.

I share the same sentiments, but my criticism has always been localized to the state and these few companies. I hope that you recognize why PoW is necessary, and in the grand scheme of things, the cost and benefits of Bitcoin mining is well justified. If you want to solve this issue, write to Ted Cruz to do something about it. It's apparent that something is wrong when Texas is one of the only states with this problem.

[mikeywith]

That's good point, i was wondering why they never release newer report.

It is very easy to manipulate these figures to help draw a certain conclusion; the reality is renewable energy is expensive and not highly available; when companies claim 90% green or renewable energy, they are just lying; maybe they got that figure of 1-day reading.

When mining was done in China, during the rainy season one could easily claim that 99% of bitcoin mining is done using hydropower, but then right after September when the monsoon is over they go back to burning coal like mad, so would result in figures that state miners use 99% coal, you can easily cherry-pick numbers here and there.

One thing we know for sure is that every business owner is a greedy person, Bitcoin mining would work just fine using pens and papers, or an Excel sheet running on a 50w machine, if people start using nuclear bombs to mine it, it doesn't make bitcoin bad, it just proves that people are greedy and governments are corrupt.

[FP91G]

That's good point, i was wondering why they never release newer report.

It is very easy to manipulate these figures to help draw a certain conclusion; the reality is renewable energy is expensive and not highly available; when companies claim 90% green or renewable energy, they are just lying; maybe they got that figure of 1-day reading.

When mining was done in China, during the rainy season one could easily claim that 99% of bitcoin mining is done using hydropower, but then right after September when the monsoon is over they go back to burning coal like mad, so would result in figures that state miners use 99% coal, you can easily cherry-pick numbers here and there.

One thing we know for sure is that every business owner is a greedy person, Bitcoin mining would work just fine using pens and papers, or an Excel sheet running on a 50w machine, if people start using nuclear bombs to mine it, it doesn't make bitcoin bad, it just proves that people are greedy and governments are corrupt.

Nuclear and hydroelectric energy is also considered green energy, so many mining companies use this energy and they can claim that 100% of their mining is powered by green energy.
The largest hydroelectric power plants are in China and Brazil and their capacity is impressive.

[larry_vw_1955]

Most of them certainly do. Chemical, oil processing, military consumes power in the order of the hundreds. It's unlikely that everyone benefits proportionally from these either.

those industries you mentioned there's no opting out of them. example: the usa goes to war. your tax dollars support that. you don't get to opt out. there is no such thing. but if you disagree with bitcoin or don't have a personal need for it, you're not forced to participate in it. so why should you have to shoulder expenses from it like higher electricity bills?

I think that is quite a myopic perspective of looking at things. Your perspective that Bitcoin Mining is bad comes from this single instance in Texas where they introduce ridiculous benefits and kickbacks to the miners to entice them to come over and mine in their state while having no apparent benefits to the local. That is unfair to the wider mining industry, and you are pinning the fault on Bitcoin for these negative side effects. I'm wondering why you're not faulting the local governments, or the individual companies (RIOT, MARA), etc. They are in fact, why this is an issue at all. We've never heard of anything like this happening when Bitcoin mines were in China.

obviously i fault the companies. they're the worst. but if bitcoin didn't exist then neither would they. You never heard about noise pollution from bitcoin mining operations in China? Maybe that's because they have more serious pollution problems there to deal with like industrial and air pollution. And so the noise pollution issue doesn't get as much press.

According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, industrial pollution has made cancer China's leading cause of death.
Every year, ambient air pollution alone kills hundreds of thousands of citizens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollution_in_China

i think the government of china is ultimately responsible for all of their pollution problems. not having enough regulations and things.



Attorney Mandy DeRoche from Earthjustice, which has campaigned against Bitcoin mines, told TIME : 'Historically, Bitcoin miners go to the cheapest source of electricity with the least amount of regulation, and they do the cheapest thing possible. 'It's one of the reasons why noise pollution from crypto mining tends to be so much worse than traditionally-operated data center operators.'

https://www.msn.com/en-za/health/other/inside-the-awful-disturbing-health-crisis-in-america-s-bitcoin-town/ss-BB1pJIKr#image=5

So bitcoin mining companies research and try and take advantage of local governments who are unaware of the noise pollution issue of having large mines. So its hard to put the blame on local governments who are in that type of situation having to play "catch up". Hopefully they do though, for the sake of local residents health like in Granbury Texas those poor folks were in hell. I'm not sure how that all played out either. They might still be suffering.

I share the same sentiments, but my criticism has always been localized to the state and these few companies. I hope that you recognize why PoW is necessary, and in the grand scheme of things, the cost and benefits of Bitcoin mining is well justified.

I don't think that Satoshi could have foreseen these type of issues popping up. How big bitcoin mining operations would get where they would go and take over an entire town and envelop it with noise pollution. Satoshi was a genius but that's one thing he definitely did not foresee. 

If you want to solve this issue, write to Ted Cruz to do something about it. It's apparent that something is wrong when Texas is one of the only states with this problem.

Anywhere bitcoin mines locate there is going to be a noise pollution issue from what i can tell. It just so happens that alot of mines choose to locate in Texas right now. But as time goes on, expect them to locate in alot of different states most likely. A mine in everyone's backyard. What a disaster!

[philipma1957]

dude i have seven hammers.

all for various tasks. Ask me how many of my neighbors did i ever hurt with my hammer 🔨 s.

answer none. why is that ? because i care about people and practice the following rule “ do onto others as you would have them do onto you”

now on saturday in near by NEW YORK CITY three a-holes used a hammer to torture a couple.

Do we ban hammers no. we punish the a-holes.

you use cops and laws to do that.

it is not complicated.

the issue is not the hammer (btc) it is the way a-holes used it.

lucky in NYC the cops got the a-holes.

now in texas the law says small fines and restrictions on law suits. So basically texas is allowing people to use btc like a hammer of sound.

if btc did not exist the same texas  a-holes  would use scrypt and do the same thing or ai or folding or some other loud ass mis use of crypto mining

[ranochigo]

those industries you mentioned there's no opting out of them. example: the usa goes to war. your tax dollars support that. you don't get to opt out. there is no such thing. but if you disagree with bitcoin or don't have a personal need for it, you're not forced to participate in it. so why should you have to shoulder expenses from it like higher electricity bills?

That sounds like an issue that is specific to any industry that consumes tons of electricity. Any industry that siphons a lot of electricity will result in a higher overall demand on the grid. I don’t think the residents should be shouldering the increased burden, but it does seem to be a failure of the state.

Any industry that can potentially cause a degraded standards of living to the locals should compensate them. Unfortunately, this is an ongoing issue way before Bitcoin. For profit maximizing companies, they don’t care. I fail to see how this is a localized issue to Bitcoin and removing it would solve the issue once and for all.

obviously i fault the companies. they're the worst. but if bitcoin didn't exist then neither would they. You never heard about noise pollution from bitcoin mining operations in China? Maybe that's because they have more serious pollution problems there to deal with like industrial and air pollution. And so the noise pollution issue doesn't get as much press.

Or maybe they’re in the secluded and rural areas?

i think the government of china is ultimately responsible for all of their pollution problems. not having enough regulations and things.


So bitcoin mining companies research and try and take advantage of local governments who are unaware of the noise pollution issue of having large mines. So its hard to put the blame on local governments who are in that type of situation having to play "catch up". Hopefully they do though, for the sake of local residents health like in Granbury Texas those poor folks were in hell. I'm not sure how that all played out either. They might still be suffering.

Similarly, lax regulations and cryptofriendly policies in Texas has enabled these problems to surface.

If you think the local governments are unaware of the potential effects, then you’re dead wrong. This issue has been there for a long time and they simply don’t care. The focus of the politics isn’t on these kind of issues currently unfortunately.

I don't think that Satoshi could have foreseen these type of issues popping up. How big bitcoin mining operations would get where they would go and take over an entire town and envelop it with noise pollution. Satoshi was a genius but that's one thing he definitely did not foresee.  

In his defence, I don’t think he is an environmentalist. If Bitcoin started out with Proof of Stake, then we probably wouldn’t have Bitcoin today or any other crypto for that matter.

Anywhere bitcoin mines locate there is going to be a noise pollution issue from what i can tell. It just so happens that alot of mines choose to locate in Texas right now. But as time goes on, expect them to locate in alot of different states most likely. A mine in everyone's backyard. What a disaster!

I believe there is a better way to deal with it than trying to change the fundamental mechanism of a trillion dollar currency, multi billion mining industry.

Make your local senator care!

[philipma1957]

 As I said if they liquid cool and pipe the heat to homes it would work.

Large cities in cold cities need lots of heat.

the need to heat the complex below is real they use old oil burners to heat them.





all of these all over the world could be heated by mining and liquid cooling burning the same fuel you do now.

the will of leaders is simply not there. the answer is real and would work

[stompix]

~

That's good point, i was wondering why they never release newer report. But other source such as https://ccaf.io/cbnsi/cbeci/ghg shows gas emission instead and haven't updated chart which show type of energy source since January 2022.

Cambridge has stopped doing those because they admitted the data they were getting was inconsistent and flawed.
The mining Council which is basically the stock-listed miners and Foundry was doing that for PR, you can claim everything and you can portray yourself as a good guy to win investors until, well, consequences 

It is very easy to manipulate these figures to help draw a certain conclusion; the reality is renewable energy is expensive and not highly available; when companies claim 90% green or renewable energy, they are just lying; maybe they got that figure of 1-day reading.

Hihi, I love the other narrative, we installed x MW of solar panels, that would rival our x MW of coal, forgetting the capacity =/ production.
Same BS that Germany is doing right now, showing the high percentage of "renewables" and forgetting about the 10%-15% of imports from good old nuclear power from France

Bitcoiners need to learn and understand that if unicorn farts will produce energy at 0.1 per kwh, we will see unicorn farting as the major source of electricity for farms, if it's going to be cheaper to burn holy books, then that will be.
Businesses will only care about the price, then they will try to greenwash it because investors are second in importance.

The entire worldwide BTC power consumption is about 20GW, and that assumes 30w/th, which is 100% more than the current most efficient gear.
20GW is roughly 175 TWh annually, which is less than 0.5% of the total power the world uses annually; it is a tiny fraction.

You know that this comparison is not right either.

I know I'm going to piss a lot of people on this but when you have 18 million people eating, going to work, playing, producing stuff, doing sex, watching tv, washing clothes and microwaving popcorn, averaging each year around the same GDP as the BTC market cap and still consume less than a system that supports 400k transactions a day it's not really a fair comparison.

But, halvings are going to solve this problem, with nobody eager to increase block size the reward will slowly go to levels where the consumption won't be able to grow anymore.

[mikeywith]

You know that this comparison is not right either.

I know I'm going to piss a lot of people on this but when you have 18 million people eating, going to work, playing, producing stuff, doing sex, watching tv, washing clothes and microwaving popcorn, averaging each year around the same GDP as the BTC market cap and still consume less than a system that supports 400k transactions a day it's not really a fair comparison.

That is a valid argument but you can counter it by saying BTC provides more than just 400k transactions, it provides self-custody and breaks away from the centralized monetary systems, that is the actual value of Bitcoin and not the number of transactions, it would still be worth as much even if it was doing only half the transactions.

Again, even hot showers are debatable, to someone who has no access to hot water they consider that a waste of energy, but fine, let's exclude all household activities including the non-essentials, how much power do weapon manufacturies use?or those fake-ass expensive brands that only the rich buy, you will find a lot of useless industries that burn a lot more power, but then again, to many others, that won't be useless, so it is all subjective.

As you said, BTC power consumption will be self-reduced over time, there is no need for the crying that anti-bitcoiners perform everyday, some of them lobby against Bitcoin for it's environmental "damage" and don't say a word about all the militiary activites that destroy lands and nations, it is ironic.

[vapourminer]

As I said if they liquid cool and pipe the heat to homes it would work.

Large cities in cold cities need lots of heat.

the need to heat the complex below is real they use old oil burners to heat them.

[...]

all of these all over the world could be heated by mining and liquid cooling burning the same fuel you do now.

the will of leaders is simply not there. the answer is real and would work

smallish city i worked in 20 years ago still had the steam pipes and distribution system from back in the day underground. everything was heated with steam.. all the building on main street and more all connect in multi level unground tunnels. steam and water pressure gauges from the 20s and 30s still there and working. point being some cities likely still have most of the infrastructure already there to experiment in.

was way cool to explore.

[philipma1957]

As I said if they liquid cool and pipe the heat to homes it would work.

Large cities in cold cities need lots of heat.

the need to heat the complex below is real they use old oil burners to heat them.

[...]

all of these all over the world could be heated by mining and liquid cooling burning the same fuel you do now.

the will of leaders is simply not there. the answer is real and would work

smallish city i worked in 20 years ago still had the steam pipes and distribution system from back in the day underground. everything was heated with steam.. all the building on main street and more all connect in multi level unground tunnels. steam and water pressure gauges from the 20s and 30s still there and working. point being some cities likely still have most of the infrastructure already there to experiment in.

was way cool to explore.

thank you. I had a childhood friend that had a union job as an engineer in NYC. He work in the Empire State building and it used water for cooling ie a 900plus foot swamp cooler. a concrete shaft buried in the buildings center. It also had hot water heat radiators. So yeah this could be used.

It is unfortunate that governmental will to build and do good shit with tax dollars is dying off world wide. Other than building conventual weapons for wars like Israel vs Hamas or Ukraine vs Russia.