Technology

Since it's a common mistake when discussing cryptocurrency energy use, I should point out that it's really only Bitcoin specifically that uses significant amounts of electricity these days. Most other cryptocurrencies have switched to proof of stake systems, which uses negligible energy.

Green energy is still not free energy.

Every amout of green energy a crypto miner uses is less green energy for everything else. You take 3% (country consumption) of capacity from the green grid, you must up at least 3% the production in existing coal plants.

A law in which country? What would you do if someone in a different country doesn't want to follow that?

Then miners would siphon off renewable energy and other more polluting sources would be used to power the remainder.

They’re not gonna build more green power supply just to help out crypto miners.

Problem is energy from the grid is just energy. You'd get crypto companies buying "green" energy leaving the dirty enegery for everyone else. It'd be meaningless.

Ultimately crypto mining is a pointless industry. It benefits the miners financially but doesn't produce anything meaningful, while expending huge amounts of energy and polluting the world as a result. It's also an extremely energy wasteful way to run the infrastructure needed to maintain crypto currencies.

It wouldn't matter if we were in some Nuclear fusion powered utopia with an abundance of energy. But we're not - we're in the middle of a climate crisis and desperately trying to move over to green energy. Growing demands for energy for crypto is countering that.

The real solution is to tax crypto mining - for example tax then on every kWh they use. Regions that entice crypto operations in are chasing fools gold - the costs out weight any local economic benefits of new data centres being built.

If you mean their own green energy that they have to buy, set up, and maintain on their own, then sure. Force them off grid and bring enormous financial consequences if they pollute to make their energy

It is a waste of energy either way which could have been used for actual useful purposes. So no, that is not a helpful solution.

Make a law to power everything with green energy

Like a carbon tax? We've been talking about that for years.

It could help a bit, but I think then there would just be less green energy available for the other applications.

They would get around that with green washing the way a lot of companies are these days.

Why not use that energy for something useful?

Generally speaking, pollution etc. is what economists call "external cost". It should be penalized in some way, and the usual tool is taxation. It's not just AI and Crypto that should pay for non-green energy, but everyone. It's massively simpler that way too, and massively simpler = harder to circumvent and manipulate.

Simplicity's bad side in this is that it's difficult to slap a "correct price" on pollution. I.e. difficult to calculate how much actual damage they're causing.

In actual world, thanks to rampant corporatism and other forms of fuckery, what we're actually doing is subsidizing these fuels, which is of course completely ass-backwards. Just removing the subsidies would already help a lot, but actually penalizing those energy forms even just a little would be huge.

Why not just pass a law that no one can generate electricity except from green sources? It sounds so easy when I put it like that.

Are you thinking that sprinkling the buzzwords "AI" and "Crypto" on an "only green energy" kind of provision would allow lawmakers to leverage hype to cut through right-wing resistence to green energy mandates in a way that a more blanket (or even just not-Crypto/AI-focused) provision couldn't?

Force this unnecessary tech bullshit to invest in becoming self-sufficient through green energy

Too much

T - double O. It's a different word.

There is no such thing as "green" energy, all energy has an environmental extraction/capture cost. Crypto has insane per user power usage, AI isn't quite as bad but it's still much higher than normal websearch. Both should be used sparingly in cases where they actually make sense.

Carbon offsets and credits, Wikipedia

Only proof of work crypto currencies require a ton of energy and the only way it's profitable is by buying energy that would otherwise be wasted like methane flaring or excess renewable generation.

Something topic-adjacent is going down in BC, Canada right now.

We had a large timber company that branched out into crypto mining, augmented with solar. They made an absolute killing with this pivot, and wanted to expand. But need a metric fuck-ton of electricity. The local utility company denied them, citing their own issues with keeping up with demand in the near future. The timber company sued them, and I think it settled to this:

https://vancouversun.com/business/local-business/crypto-mining-company-loses-bid-to-force-bc-hydro-power

I would say this is a dangerous slope to go down, since electricity is just electricity and IMO shouldn't matter how it's used as long as it's payed for. It's like the Net Neutrality situation where it shouldn't matter how/what data is being transmitted through their network shouldn't be discriminated for/against as long as it's getting payed for.

Tax the greenhouse effect from the energy production, UBI to give people the money to afford what they need.

Trying to moralize every action on the market is a losing game though. I mean is this, the fediverse, worth the energy, are games, streaming, plant lights for your indoor plants?

It's better to leave that to be individuals choices but make sure that the cost of the consequences are on the individual making the choices.