Some Industrial Bitcoin Miners are Moving to Cheap-Energy Texas (yahoo.com) 108
North America's largest crypto mine is six miles outside Rockdale, Texas, "a four-square-mile town that hosts a Walmart, one other grocery store, a handful of Mexican restaurants and a couple of pizza places," reports the Washington Post.
The miners took over an old Alcoa aluminum facility, creating a "fenced-off crypto compound" with more than 100,000 servers, stacked 20 feet high. "When the expansion is completed by the end of 2022, that number will have more than doubled," the Post reports, citing the company's CEO Chad Harris.
Texas has some of Ameria's cheapest energy prices. But what's really interesting is what happened last month when 94-degree temperatures strained the state's energy grid: Thanks to the way Texas power companies deal with large electricity customers like Whinstone, Harris's bitcoin mine...didn't suffer. Instead, the state's electricity operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), began to pay Whinstone — for having agreed to quit buying power amid heightened demand. That sort of arrangement has helped make the state one of the go-to locations for expanding crypto entrepreneurs the world over, despite its continued agonizing over power shortages. Indeed, Whinstone's new owners are undertaking a major expansion of its facility outside Rockdale, with the intention of doubling its capacity. When fully developed, the crypto mine here is expected to require 750 megawatts of power — enough to power more than 150,000 Texas homes during peak demand.
And it's not just Whinstone. More crypto farms want to move into the area as China, believed to be the nation with the most crypto miners, moves to restrict local bitcoin mining and trading by, among other limitations, ordering power companies not to sell them power. Shenzhen-based BIT Mining said in May that it plans to invest more than $25 million in a Texas data center, while Beijing-based server firm Bitmain is already modernizing the old aluminum plant across the street from Whinstone's Rockdale-area facility.
Rockdale's mayor, a bitcoin miner himself with a rack of computers in his home, says he's met with at least one other firm interested in locating here. Whinstone, which leases shelving on its campus to other crypto miners' servers, has been contacted by "several," the company's CEO said. It's not just happening near Rockdale. Peter Thiel-backed crypto mining firm Layer1 Technologies last year opened a plant near Pyote in West Texas (population 138 in the 2020 census). In February, Canada's Argo Blockchain announced plans to buy 320 acres of land in the same West Texas area within a year... "One good thing about crypto mining is it's adding flexibility to the system," said Peter Cramton, a former board member of ERCOT, the nonprofit that's charged with managing the state's wholesale energy market. "But the problem is it's consuming real resources, doing a function that has no value...."
Bitcoin mines of Whinstone's size may be capable of creating roughly 500 bitcoin per month, the company says. At today's bitcoin value of approximately $34,000, that's $17 million, helping to explain why Riot Blockchain, a publicly traded company, paid $80 million in May to acquire Whinstone.
The miners took over an old Alcoa aluminum facility, creating a "fenced-off crypto compound" with more than 100,000 servers, stacked 20 feet high. "When the expansion is completed by the end of 2022, that number will have more than doubled," the Post reports, citing the company's CEO Chad Harris.
Texas has some of Ameria's cheapest energy prices. But what's really interesting is what happened last month when 94-degree temperatures strained the state's energy grid: Thanks to the way Texas power companies deal with large electricity customers like Whinstone, Harris's bitcoin mine...didn't suffer. Instead, the state's electricity operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), began to pay Whinstone — for having agreed to quit buying power amid heightened demand. That sort of arrangement has helped make the state one of the go-to locations for expanding crypto entrepreneurs the world over, despite its continued agonizing over power shortages. Indeed, Whinstone's new owners are undertaking a major expansion of its facility outside Rockdale, with the intention of doubling its capacity. When fully developed, the crypto mine here is expected to require 750 megawatts of power — enough to power more than 150,000 Texas homes during peak demand.
And it's not just Whinstone. More crypto farms want to move into the area as China, believed to be the nation with the most crypto miners, moves to restrict local bitcoin mining and trading by, among other limitations, ordering power companies not to sell them power. Shenzhen-based BIT Mining said in May that it plans to invest more than $25 million in a Texas data center, while Beijing-based server firm Bitmain is already modernizing the old aluminum plant across the street from Whinstone's Rockdale-area facility.
Rockdale's mayor, a bitcoin miner himself with a rack of computers in his home, says he's met with at least one other firm interested in locating here. Whinstone, which leases shelving on its campus to other crypto miners' servers, has been contacted by "several," the company's CEO said. It's not just happening near Rockdale. Peter Thiel-backed crypto mining firm Layer1 Technologies last year opened a plant near Pyote in West Texas (population 138 in the 2020 census). In February, Canada's Argo Blockchain announced plans to buy 320 acres of land in the same West Texas area within a year... "One good thing about crypto mining is it's adding flexibility to the system," said Peter Cramton, a former board member of ERCOT, the nonprofit that's charged with managing the state's wholesale energy market. "But the problem is it's consuming real resources, doing a function that has no value...."
Bitcoin mines of Whinstone's size may be capable of creating roughly 500 bitcoin per month, the company says. At today's bitcoin value of approximately $34,000, that's $17 million, helping to explain why Riot Blockchain, a publicly traded company, paid $80 million in May to acquire Whinstone.
Crypto people⦠(Score:2, Interesting)
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Post bank balance.
This will end in tears (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This will end in tears (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This will end in tears (Score:5, Funny)
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I used that term because BEN SHAPIRO CALLED HIMSELF THAT!
Ben Shapiro knows he's a "little Jewish man", and seems quite comfortable in pointing this out. Is Ben Shapiro antisemitic? That seems to be a common accusation, which makes no sense.
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A riot is the language of the unheard.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The worst echo chambers in the USA are our universities. Ben Shapiro going to speak at Berkeley cost the university $600,000 for security. If the university took free speech seriously then they'd kick out any student committing assault and battery against anyone speaking. ...
They do take free speech seriously. And if Shapiro had to pay for the damage his lies cause the campus, he's shut himself up
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Shapiro didn't cause the damage, the rioters did. He didn't ask them to do this damage, and if he did then the university would have every right to deny him a platform.
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Re:This will end in tears (Score:5, Funny)
As a local Texan, I don't want them here.
Why not write to your gover... congr... sena...
Never mind.
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This is an ideal customer to help support reliability of the grid, because they are willing to stop consuming if there are critical power needs, which are rare.
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Two huge differences between water and electricity:
1. Electricity storage is much harder than water storage, relative to daily grid demand. Grid supply needs to match demand ~instantaneously, whereas reservoirs can balance supply and demand across months or years. Yes you can do various forms of power storage, but those tend to be effective on the scale of a day or two rather than months -- they're decent at shifting solar supply from 3pm to 7pm, but not from March to July.
2. Electricity production is limit
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Why does everyone keep repeating this as if cryptocurrency has no utility? The gold and banking industry which crypto replaces each consume more than double BTC and that is without consideration of the overall harm the oil backed dollar does to environment and crypto mining is essential to the security of the cryptocurrency infrastructure. It isn't merely wasted cycles.
Yo
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Wait, I thought Bitcoin was supposed to be private (Score:3)
You mean anyone can see that I paid $49.95 (whoops, $65.42, whoops, $35.69, wait now it's $25.29) to www.LovelyLadiesAndLonelyGoats.xxx back in January?
Remind me again what purpose it has over a VISA-branded debit card, then?
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Remind me again what purpose it has over a VISA-branded debit card, then?
As a buyer, there's zero benefits to using cryptocoins. Real payments methods don't involve going on an exchange to buy imaginary internet money, and then hoping that it doesn't fluctuate in a downward direction before you can spend it, and finally hoping that you don't encounter an issue with your purchase where the ability do a chargeback might come in handy (such as your item being porch pirated and the seller responds with "sucks to be you").
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Not exactly. Everyone can see that a particular bitcoin address paid that site, but they need to go extra work to link it back to you. There are services that will assist you in making that more difficult, and other coins that try to make it impossible.
The reason it's popular for illegal stuff is that if you are careful transactions can't be traced. Problem is most people are not careful enough.
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Non essential users agreeing to cut power in a crisis, and being compensated is just good policy. The nursing home that is a 100F needs power. Paying to encourage proper distribution is fine. This is simply a case where people complain because they care more about politics over good policy. Texas also gives university scholarships
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Paying to encourage proper distribution is fine.
Reality is people who can afford it will just keep on keeping on, whereas the poor get to sit in the heat.
This is simply a case where people complain because they care more about politics over good policy.
Anytime we're talking about a utility like internet, telecom, housing, electric, this accurately describes the pro-privatization camp.
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Sounds like an informed, dispassionate opinion. Not biased at all!
What's it to you? You clearly have contempt for crypto and for Texas, you should be delighted if they fail together. Seems to me all you care about is bitching about shit you know nothing about.
GPUs are not involved in bitcoin mining (Score:2, Flamebait)
So people making GPUs ...
GPUs are not involved in bitcoin mining. Bitcoin requires ASICs and have for quite some time.
The GPU shortage is largely due to Etherium mining. Etherium may be switching from proof-of-work blockchain maintenance to proof-of-stake. The latter does not waste electricity like the former. Etherium is, in theory, only using proof-of-work mining to solve the early distribution problem that proof-of-stake systems have.
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Collapsing buildings. A power grid in shambles. Chinese companies flooding in.
Gee, these Blue States are terrible.
Oh wait.
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Miami is the blue island in a red sea in Florida and building inspections are a local thing. This has nothing to do with bitcoin, but OK.
The Texas power grid is not "in shambles", except when we have Alaskan temperatures for a week, which has happened once in my lifetime. In fact, adding customers like these miners who are willing to shut down in critical consumption periods helps the grid reliability and is smart - it raises revenue needed for growth and reduces risk.
It's funny how the left love immigratio
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You forget also the massive amounts of air conditioning that would be required to keep all those mining computers cool. Last I checked, Texas was not a very cold place.
I can't imagine electricity is so cheap in Texas that this is actually worthwhile on a large scale. I mean, it's bad when it gets cold, it's bad when it gets too hot (see people complaining about their thermostats being set to 77F during high consumption periods...).
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You have no idea what you are talking about.
First, bitcoin is mined with custom asic devices, not GPUs, at least by people who know what they are doing.
Second, it doesn't "roll coal" -- miners are moving to Texas, specifically west Texas, because of the cheap, clean energy (solar & wind). So Elon is happy, not sad. Bitcoin mining now uses substantially higher percentage of clean energy than normal energy consumption and as miners leave China and come to Texas, this percentage improves as China are the o
Re: This will end in tears (Score:1)
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Bitcoin (Score:5, Insightful)
is evil.
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is evil.
... and a con. [urbandictionary.com]
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Bitcoin is evil? What kool-aid are you drinking? The evil is the financial industry which is the source of cronyism and corporatism that has subverted democracy and freedom in the US. Crytocurrencies are disrupting that evil.
They should move to Ukraine ... (Score:5, Interesting)
And simply steal [businessinsider.com] the electricity ...
A huge underground cryptocurrency mining operation has been busted by Ukraine police for allegedly stealing electricity from the grid.
Police said they'd seized 5,000 computers and 3,800 games consoles that were being used in the illegal mine, the largest discovered in the country.
The mine, in the city of Vinnytsia, near Kyiv, stole as much as $259,300 in electricity each month, the Security Service of Ukraine said. To conceal the theft, the operators of the mine used electricity meters that did not reflect their actual energy consumption, officials said.
Iran (Score:2, Troll)
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right, been failing for China for over half a century and GDP will surpass USA's in six years.
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China does indeed have central planning for its energy. The situation will last indefinitely, strong central control is the normal and equilibrium condition for human nations throughout history.
Not saying it's good, nor that I would want to live under it, but it will continue to work for China.
What is your link to twitter monkeys or you trying to say? That China is abusive to people and tramples right? Yeah, like almost every government ever, being human in a nation historically and normally sucks shitty
China is a failure (Re:USA) (Score:2)
right, been failing for China for over half a century and GDP will surpass USA's in six years.
A nation with four times the population and not exceeding the USA in economic output is a failure. With China and USA having nearly identical land area the inability of China to keep up is also a failure.
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What it doesn't do is have as much money.
So you admit China is an economic failure, I was just wrong where that failure existed.
China will continue to fail so long as the government treats people like expendable commodities. In the US Navy and US Coast Guard there is a rating, a military specialty, called "damage control". In wartime their job is to, as the name implies, control the damage to the ship and crew. In peacetime they are responsible for the general maintenance of the ship. The Chinese navy has no equivalent. They expect a crew to
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So you admit China is an economic failure
I wouldn't call bring hundreds of millions of people out of poverty a failure. You seem unable to think outside of a presidential election cycle.
China will continue to fail so long as the government treats people like expendable commodities.
China locked down and reduced the virus to negligible levels inside their borders. The USA's response was to treat their people like expendable commodities - some even suggesting people die in order to keep the economy going. While that one particular president is gone, the states that follow him continue his policy. Good luck with Tennessee banning measles vaccine
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Iran has trouble moving power around... power wires and join points explode in high heat.
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colocate (Score:3)
Okay, time to colocate mining with gas pipes that freeze. Win-win, warm pipes keeps the gas flowing to make electricity to mine bitcoin to make the heat to keep the pipes warm. What could go wrong?
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That's actually I great idea -- datacenter is laid out linearly along a thousand-mile pipeline, another CPU every meter of length, specially-shaped heatsink strapped onto the pipe. Truly distributed infrastructure.
Cooling (Score:2)
Good luck keeping everything cool in that Texas heat.
Will their miners even be profitable ... (Score:3)
Do their miners even have the necessary regulatory approval for the US?
The advantages of mining in China were not simply low cost power but that ASICs were made there so shipping costs were minimal and ASICs only had to meet the environmental and safety regulations being enforced in a local industrial site. I'm not sure the ASICs I've seen make it to the US are compliant. A high profile site like this one may not be able to slip through the cracks like some hobbyists in the US.
At least the lawyers will make some coin.
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Shipping from China is very cheap, about $3.5K per container, that's nothing compared to cost of what's inside. Think of all the cheap chinese toys, clothes and dollar store crap we get in those containers and shipping wasn't an issue either.
As for environment and safety, no problem. Ship chassis separate from boards and power supplies, bolt 'em together here. No different than you building your own custom thing, right?
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Shipping from China is very cheap, about $3.5K per container, that's nothing compared to cost of what's inside.
The time it takes a container to go from site to site also effects the profitability of the hardware.
Ship chassis separate from boards and power supplies, bolt 'em together here. No different than you building your own custom thing, right?
Not on an industrial scale where you have to pay people to do the work.
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35 days to ship mining gear from China to USA, not long at all.
Wrong, very cheap to assemble on industrial scale compared to monetary yield of gear, done all the time, would even be cheap with union IBEW worker given expected profits from gear.
You are making pronouncements without even doing back of envelope ROI. Spending some hundreds of thousands to make tens of millions is a no brainer for these people.
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35 days to ship mining gear from China to USA, not long at all.
Mining hardware has a very short useful lifespan. As newer faster miners are produced the difficulty level increases. We are talking windows oo the order of 12-18 months where a particular generation of mining hardware may be profitable. Losing one month to relocation is a huge deal.
Wrong, very cheap to assemble on industrial scale compared to monetary yield of gear, done all the time, would even be cheap with union IBEW worker given expected profits from gear.
Again, the profitability is dropping over time. Also these mining ASIC are not industrial scale, they are somewhat consumer scale devices. Matter of fact a small number are sold to hobbyists operating them themselves. There is a
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huge numbers of devices would have to be assembled somewhere anyway, not seeing how your objection has any validity. Cost tiny compared to yield, simple ROI justification.
A shipping pipeline means newer things can be arriving all the time. It's not like they will do one shipment and wait 12 or 18 months.
The stuff comes from China anyway, the stuff they're using now mostly came from China.
People who can do the math are doing the move, so you have no argument.
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huge numbers of devices would have to be assembled somewhere anyway, not seeing how your objection has any validity.
Part of ASiC profitability is the extremely low cost of manufactuing, assembly and internal shipping in China. Start shipping and assembling in the US and you add to the up front sunk costs (ASiCs have near zero salvage value, literally recycling heat sinks and little else). This adds months of necessary profitable mining time, months that difficulty increases may prevent. One would make more on day1 by taking all the money to be spent on parts, shipping, assembly and power and just buy the bitcoins and hol
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yes quite sure, look it up. Not talking about buying a container, talking about using one for shipping.
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Shipping costs may add overhead that makes a lot of ASICs not economical to run.
You're trolling right? Shipping costs are tiny in the scheme of a bitcoin mining operation. You could literally ship thousands of PCs, or 10s of thousands of ASICs for the cost of running a bitcoin mining operation for about an hour.
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Shipping costs may add overhead that makes a lot of ASICs not economical to run.
You're trolling right? Shipping costs are tiny in the scheme of a bitcoin mining operation.
Its not the shipping charges, its the time. ASIC miners have a relatively short profitable lifespan. The returns, the profitability, is diminishing over time, making it more difficult for older miners to pay off any additional expenses. Some miners will likely be scrapped rather than relocated.
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ASIC miners have a relatively short profitable lifespan.
No they don't. ASIC miners are profitable depending on the relative mining and the cost of bitcoin. Shit man GPU mining has been profitable for the past year, anyone with a first generation ASIC miner was laughing.
As for time. I don't think you quite understand just how quickly we get things to the other side of the planet. A shipping container can get to anywhere on the globe within 3 weeks. If ASICs became unprofitable after 3 weeks then the world would be a fantastic place and Bitcoin wouldn't exist at a
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ASIC miners have a relatively short profitable lifespan.
No they don't. ASIC miners are profitable depending on the relative mining and the cost of bitcoin.
Which historically gives ASICs 12-18 month lifespans. Beyond that a device is considered too risky.
Shit man GPU mining has been profitable for the past year, anyone with a first generation ASIC miner was laughing.
A unicorn sort of event. And GPUs are mining etherium not bitcoin.
As for time. I don't think you quite understand just how quickly we get things to the other side of the planet. A shipping container can get to anywhere on the globe within 3 weeks.
I don't think you understand the diminishing returns of an ASIC miner. Depending on where that 3 weeks hits the profitability of an ASIC can be greatly impacted.
If ASICs became unprofitable after 3 weeks then the world would be a fantastic place and Bitcoin wouldn't exist at all.
Un
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And GPUs are mining etherium not bitcoin.
GPUs were mining both. I think it's quite clear you're not paying attention to the market at all.
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And GPUs are mining etherium not bitcoin.
GPUs were mining both. I think it's quite clear you're not paying attention to the market at all.
No. GPUs were not mining bitcoin, they haven't been profitable for bitcoin in a really really long time (a decade or more ?). You are probably confused with people who are paid to mine etherium and alt-coins for others, they are often paid for this service in bitcoin by the buyer.
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Depends if hell freezes over or overheats or gives TX grid any other reason to raise prices.
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Will their ASIC miners even be profitable after shipping them from China to Texas? Shipping costs may add overhead that makes a lot of ASICs not economical to run. Plus the delays that eat into the economical lifespan of an ASIC.
Obviously, or they wouldn't do it.
Do their miners even have the necessary regulatory approval for the US?
Yes, because there is none. You have the right to use a computer without a license. Your question has kind of a scary, government sycophant slant to it. You don't need permission from the government to do things.
The advantages of mining in China were not simply low cost power but that ASICs were made there so shipping costs were minimal and ASICs only had to meet the environmental and safety regulations being enforced in a local industrial site. I'm not sure the ASICs I've seen make it to the US are compliant. A high profile site like this one may not be able to slip through the cracks like some hobbyists in the US.
The mining pool in question generates $17 million a year and you think they are concerned about one time shipping costs? That just seems odd. Most computers and phones in the world have components from China, and these don't even directly produce revenue. Why would
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Do their miners even have the necessary regulatory approval for the US?
Yes, because there is none. You have the right to use a computer without a license. Your question has kind of a scary, government sycophant slant to it. You don't need permission from the government to do things.
You misunderstand. There is a host of agencies and acts that have regulatory or other power over consumer and industrial electronics. For example an OSHA inspection declaring the mining hardware unsafe.
The advantages of mining in China were not simply low cost power but that ASICs were made there so shipping costs were minimal and ASICs only had to meet the environmental and safety regulations being enforced in a local industrial site. I'm not sure the ASICs I've seen make it to the US are compliant. A high profile site like this one may not be able to slip through the cracks like some hobbyists in the US.
The mining pool in question generates $17 million a year and you think they are concerned about one time shipping costs? That just seems odd.
As I indicated previously, its not simple the shipping costs but the mining time lost in transit. That mining pool is not static. There are newer more powerful ASICS joining the pool and driving the difficult up. ASIC miners end up having a relatively short useful lifespan. The time lost in transit can really
Texas is the next California (Score:2)
Uh, CA fails occasional to protect their power grid so down goes the state. Texas has the lowest prices, but the power company sometimes sends out huge bills when there's too much demand, and occasionally the system goes down. Not much difference.
MA's power competitor law just gives "feel good" options that raise prices... there's a true price to running the grid, and no way to safely make it cheaper.
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The part about a “true price to run the grid” is not really true— it is about what you invest in and where. Today, the distributed generation model with micro grids (Monorail!) requires less capital investment, maintenance, and lead time than all other options, but it is damaging to the business models of the utilities.
Utilities make more money by spending more money— their guaranteed rate of return means that costs will only go up. The only way to fix the cycle is to lower their pow
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Local energy? California has no where to put it... they've already allocated every bit of their space. Guess that's what Oregon is for...
Texas still seems next down that path... too much heat there to place a power plant.
Texas needs nuclear power (Score:1)
T. Boone Pickens tried to make money on wind power in Texas but the fracking boom on natural gas killed that. Or was it his plans to use the right-of-way for the power lines to run a water pipe?
I recall claims of Pickens trying to hide his plan to drain an aquifer in north Texas in order to feed water demand in central Texas. It seems people found this out and delayed Pickens' plans long enough that his window to make a profit on windmills closed.
Natural gas prices will almost certainly rise again, and wh
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Pickens was done by 2010? There was a few years of stagnation on wind power growth but since then it has steadily increased.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_in_Texas
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Pickens was done by 2010? There was a few years of stagnation on wind power growth but since then it has steadily increased.
That sounds about right. I recall he spoke about it in his TED Talk in 2012. I'm not going to watch it again now to pick up all his points but he did mention natural gas as a "bridge fuel" to whatever it was that comes next. He mentioned wind, nuclear, and just more natural gas as the next fuel. Link to the talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/t_bo... [ted.com]
Judging from Pickens' talk and other sources we can expect Texas to expand the use of onshore wind and nuclear fission, with plenty of natural gas as the "bridg
'Industrial bitcoin miners' (Score:4)
Seriously this cryptocurrency thing needs to go the way of Pogs, Beanie Babies, and the dinosaurs.
Public Externalities (Score:2)
Public utilities get to burn fossil fuels in exchange for offering the public a fairly stable supply of electricity. The pollution is tolerated because it is in the service of the public. I strongly suspect that legislation will be coming along shortly to remove exceptions from those emissions not created on behalf of the public.
They'll probably tax the heck out of their emissions, after all, the public isn't paying those taxes. So it won't upset voters, in fact it might make them happy.
Just what we need (Score:1)
Texas gonna Texas (Score:3)
"But the problem is it's consuming real resources, doing a function that has no value."
Exactly!
These power sucks are coming to a state with intentionally weak regulation of the power grid and whose government refuses to mandate that producers maintain a ready reserve. What could possibly go right?
The Texas power buying consumers at large will have to shoulder the higher rates that will be necessary to build more capacity to supply these parasites. And when the grid fails again, conservative knuckle dragging cockbites will declare "hurrr wind p0wer suks lol".
Shit storm approaching (Score:2)
Aside from all of the "tExAsS gOtZ teH tUrD wUrDz p0w3r gR1D hA hA hA!!1ONE" comments that will no doubt flood this comments section, this represents a colossal waste of computing power and energy to produce more FIAT bullshit currency that really won't be worth a damn when the shit hits the fan. When will this madness stop?
Hopefully, if the world ever does gain a lick of common sense, this "compound" will be repurposed to something such as Folding@home or SETI, stuff that will ever benefit man kind and bet
This is why we need an eco tax (Score:2)
Like the EU: https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_... [europa.eu]