Crypto Mining Energy Waste

The cluster debates the energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining, particularly Bitcoin, questioning if it's wasteful or can usefully repurpose excess electricity like flared gas or for heating.

📉 Falling 0.1x Finance & Crypto
2,722
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#2860
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
2
2008
1
2009
1
2010
4
2011
28
2012
12
2013
76
2014
53
2015
68
2016
37
2017
265
2018
224
2019
79
2020
128
2021
792
2022
490
2023
187
2024
182
2025
81
2026
12

Keywords

www.cnbc US HN HTTPS BUT AC BTC SSL POW GPU mining energy electricity crypto waste wasted bitcoin proof work heater heat

Sample Comments

Nextgrid Jul 25, 2022 View on HN

Mining crypto. There's no issues with burning energy that would otherwise go to waste anyway.

booleandilemma Jun 4, 2018 View on HN

Why waste this energy? Couldn’t they devise a way to mine bitcoin with it? :)

ISL Oct 14, 2017 View on HN

It will be both inefficient relative to bitcoin miners and un-free for you. You'll pay for it in both your power bill and battery life.

Larrikin Apr 17, 2024 View on HN

It's better than wasting that electricity on Bitcoin mining

sp332 Sep 9, 2019 View on HN

It's insanely inefficient and the price of the electricity you're burning is much less than the value of the crypto. So you're costing your users money, and you're only capturing a small amount of that money.

newyankee Nov 24, 2020 View on HN

Does this mean no more mining and waste of electricity ?

banachtarski Jul 11, 2013 View on HN

just thermodynamics really. the cpu cycles spent mining bitcoins are in fact costing the user something.

Rygian Oct 27, 2021 View on HN

Because power spent on mining is effectively 100% wasted for no useful computation.

gus_massa Oct 11, 2018 View on HN

If you are going to waste some resources to produce heat, you can mine some cryptocoin (and get a few cents back).

ezfe May 21, 2025 View on HN

Crypto energy usage (bitcoin, proof of work) is literally a waste lol