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

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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