Bitcoin Mining Energy Debate

bitcoin works just fine with any power source, not just conveniently located grid energy. you can mine bitcoin in a remote place and transmit the network data much more easily than you can transport/transmit energy. you could raise the price of fossil fuels by a factor of 1 million and crypto mining would be the least affected of any industry. so go right ahead and try it.

Bitcoin allows you to convert excess energy into money. Because it can be mined anywhere at any time, it's priced to the global low cost of energy. It doesn't make sense to use expensive energy sources.Much of energy production is meant to meet peak demand and storage is difficult. Bitcoin mining is a great way to monetize energy that has a low market value and would likely go to waste.If you want to price energy or put a tax, by all means. But you shouldn't discriminate aga

Bitcoin mining can possibly finance the building of new solar / wind farms without government subsidies. In time, mining will become less profitable and it makes sense to sell the energy to grid. Obviously, fossil fuel energy should be taxed more heavily to get rid of it faster.

Yes, though it's better that people mine Bitcoin this way than off coal powered grids.

Not all electricity is created equal. I don’t think Bitcoin miners should be allowed to fire up an old coal power plant just for the sake of mining Bitcoin, but in the case of renewables, like hydro, wind, solar, etc., there is going to be, at times, more electricity generated than we can use or store. All other use cases aside, the ability for Bitcoin miners to turn excess or otherwise wasted electricity into revenue is to the benefit of 99.9% of US citizens by way of lower power bills and/

Should put a bitcoin mine in the power plant to use the excess power.

That's not true at all. If the power were not used by Bitcoin miners, it would be used by other industries, and less more-expensive (coal etc) power produced by other power plants.

The green energy used by bitcoin miners would be used by others if bitcoin didn't exist. Instead those others use dirty electricity.

This is the same logic that says bitcoin encouraged green power building but in reality they just absorb the excess power from the cheapest source available so they're essentially offsetting any new power generation by simply consuming more power when it's available. They anchor the rate around what is profitable to mine at so power doesn't get lower unless/until mining becomes less profitable.

https://futurism.com/bitcoin-mining-company-buys-entire-coal... sums it up for me.