Cryptocurrency Miners Are Building Their Own Electricity Infrastructure (vice.com) 62
ted_pikul shares a report from Motherboard: Access to cheap electricity can make or break a cryptocurrency mining operation. The latest move in the quest for bargain-basement power rates: building out local power grids. Canadian company DMG Blockchain is building what it hopes will be a fully-functioning substation in Southern British Columbia, which is electrified by hydro power. Building the substation is costing millions of dollars and required building an access road to haul equipment. "[...] the utility will test everything as a completed substation and make sure that the town doesn't blow up when we flip the switch," Steven Eliscu of DMG Blockchain said.
Money, like trades and bonds, now crypto... (Score:1)
Honestly I don't care what illusion we all share, because in the end its still an illusion.
Oh Lord (Score:5, Insightful)
Heck, just legalizing Pot would be a huge blow to the price of crypto currencies and that's more thank likely coming (assuming we can get "tough on crime" conservatives with ties to private prison lobbies out of the way). If we finished the job by legalizing all drugs and treating the hard stuff as a medical problem like the Scandinavians do then all you'd have left is generic money laundering and a few traders playing games.
I'm just saying that we as a species have better things to do with the miracle that is electricity than to make it easy for some guy to get his fix or to hide a bit of dirty money...
Dude look at my /. Id (Score:3, Funny)
Oh, and is it just me or is the quality of Trolls declining? I mean, can I at least get a Greased up Yoda doll in here or some of Natalie Portman's Hot Grits (I'd display a trademark symbol here but
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if I'm still posting after this much time I've long since lost hopes, dreams and aspirations. Dry eyes aren't a problem though. Amazon can ship eye drops same day.
Oh, and is it just me or is the quality of Trolls declining? I mean, can I at least get a Greased up Yoda doll in here or some of Natalie Portman's Hot Grits (I'd display a trademark symbol here but /. doesn't support Unicode...)
Sad fact is GNAA killed your goatse BSD dead with its gay apple frist ps0t.
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What are these "hopes", "dreams", and "aspirations" of which you speak?
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Yes, it's used only for money laundering. ...on a public ledger that anyone (governments included) can read. ...where the only place to get cash to an exchange to purchase bitcoin is through a regulated bank. If you are attempting to launder money using bitcoin, you really are a special kind of stupid. By your logic, *all* cash transactions are money laundering. If that were true though (it's obviously not), it would be much smarter using a money system with no public ledger or transaction record of any
Ever hear of Layering? (Score:2)
As for Drugs, we have very, very uneven enforcement of drug policy in America. Solidly middle class folk can often use with impunity while a poor person (especial if their black) can get 2 years for a bag of weed. More if it's a second
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I know this isn't a popular opinion around here, but man, there is something deeply wrong with this much effort being extended for what at the end of the day amounts to little more than a vehicle for money laundering. Folks do know that if crypto ever gets big enough for the big boys to take notice (re: Goldman Sachs) they'll have it under their thumb in no time, right? We're talking about a market that a few guys in China were able to manipulate.
Please take the time to research cryptocurrency. You completely missed how and why it was started and being used. It was designed so NO ONE can control it, own it, track it. So big banks and government can't charge fees or taxes on the money. Yes there are some bad actors that are using it for laundering but that comes with all currencies.
Re:Oh Lord (Score:4, Insightful)
I know this isn't a popular opinion around here, but man, there is something deeply wrong with this much effort being extended for what at the end of the day amounts to little more than a vehicle for money laundering. Folks do know that if crypto ever gets big enough for the big boys to take notice (re: Goldman Sachs) they'll have it under their thumb in no time, right? We're talking about a market that a few guys in China were able to manipulate.
Please take the time to research cryptocurrency. You completely missed how and why it was started and being used. It was designed so NO ONE can control it, own it, track it. So big banks and government can't charge fees or taxes on the money. Yes there are some bad actors that are using it for laundering but that comes with all currencies.
This is just wrong.
Governments don't tax the currency, they tax transactions and the gains made in currency trading. No matter what currency you buy a car with you still have to pay the sales tax.
Banks can charge fees on anything.
Goldman is already involved in cryptocurrency trading and has launched its own cryptocurrency. On both of those they will make money on transaction fees and prop trading, For the latter they will not hold a huge position without a hedge, it would exceed their risk tolerance.
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It was designed so NO ONE can control it, own it, track it. So big banks and government can't charge fees or taxes on the money.
I would argue that they have failed to achieve their stated design goals. Consider that a few big miners now control over half of the Bitcoin mining capacity. Not a monopoly yet perhaps, but certainly an oligopoly. As for tracking, the ledger of all transactions is public for all time. All it takes is one mistake linking your RL identity to a bitcoin wallet ID and your entire transaction history is laid bare. The belief that governments can't or don't track cryptocurrency transactions when the ledger is pub
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No, but please shut down the plastic card companies (VISA, MC, etc). They are wasting electricity while providing a horrible service (bad security, bad privacy) and blocking the market with their dominance.
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The irony is that area of BC is notorious for grow-ops. Once legal they can provide hydro to the potential "Craft cannabis" growers that might pop up there. The area is like weed mecca.
The grey goo theory becoming true (Score:3)
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With nanobots replicating miners.
Minors have been getting together to make more minors for a very long time, long before nanobots existed. What are these kids doing with the nanobots anyway? Then again, maybe I don't want to know.
FFS (Score:5, Funny)
At what point do people ask themselves "Maybe the fact we have to build extra power stations just so we can verify a few transactions means we've gone full retard?".
Never go full retard people...never go full retard.
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Think of the polar bears. SIGH (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately it is and cryptocurrency mining is just making things slightly worst
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That COULD be used to power something that is currently powered by carbon generation.
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Re:Think of the polar bears. SIGH (Score:5, Insightful)
This cryptocurrency mining might be a dead end in short order but I'd think that building these sites are pretty low risk investments. Suppose the mining doesn't pan out, they still have a data center at a site with the cheapest electricity rates they could find. They can still rent out the computing power for lots of things, and it seems to me that there have been a lot of data centers opening up all over North America.
If someone can figure out how to get solar thermal to provide 24/7 power to one of these data centers then that's a bonus for a selling point, they'd have reliable power for running the computers. Put in redundant network links, such as a telco provided main link and satellite backup, and that would be a site that keeps running through a zombie apocalypse.
If we are speculating on getting power to these sites then consider this, micro nuclear power plants. There's been people building nuclear power plants as small as 5 MW since the 1950s, back when they were still figuring out how to make it work. A more reasonable size might be more like 50 MW. I don't know how much power a typical data center uses but if the goal is reliable, cheap, and low carbon, energy source then nuclear is just as good as solar or hydro. The problems for such a reactor is legal, not technical. There's a lot of people out there with experience building and operating these reactors. They weren't called a "small modular reactor", or "micro nuclear power plant", they were called a "naval reactor". We just need to work on the laws that make it so expensive to run outside of a military submarine.
Coming soon to Google Maps (Score:2)
There has been enough controversy lately over Google Maps dreaming up its own names for urban neighborhoods. Wait until British Columbia starts sprouting new lakes with names like Etherium, Monero, Dogecoin...
Roll your own... (Score:2)
Roll your own currency. Roll your own power grid. Pretty soon people will be rolling their own towns, institutions, and power structures to control those assets.
And then we'll be right back where we started. Blockchain doesn't fix that.
Roll your own blunt. It's way more clever and rewarding.
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Rolling your own will likely become the norm in the near future. We have so much automation in manufacturing now that people can get customized pieces and parts for just about anything, and cheap too. You want a transformer for your own substation? Sure, someone will make one to your specifications in no time.
For some stuff that's a bit more out of the norm there might not be someone that will be willing to make what you want, but they'll make the tools you need to make what you want. We see some of thi
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You don't seem to understand what happens when rewards halve. Hint: it usually pushes the value of a coin to near double its value, sometimes more.
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Information of the right sort has material value. Try arguing otherwise to the SEC.
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Correction: with gold mining at least something of material value may be produced. There's no guarantee on the quantity of gold that will be produced.
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Timescale (Score:2)
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Obviously a ringer. Try harder next time, FakeAPK.
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Since they will fail to be able to swim upstream with this new obstruction. I mean, it's better for the environment if they just upgraded an existing hydropower plant to draw more energy.
Just how many times do you believe an existing hydroelectric dam can be "upgraded" to draw more energy? How do you know that these dams have not already been upgraded to the maximum available output? Hydroelectric dams have a hard limit on their output, the amount of rainfall behind the dam. Unless you can think of a way to increase rainfall then there isn't much we can do to improve hydroelectric output. What has happened in much of the USA and Canada is that smaller and smaller dams are being built, w