Cryptocurrency Mining Blamed For Electricity Outages in Iran

[Brooksie359]

1 minute ago, Moonzy said:

Hmm... I wonder what allows you to convert electricity into cash at about 1:9 ratio (as of current rate) without you doing anything much, just click few clicks.

 

Can you describe another process that convert the same amount of energy into more money?

Without much user intervention of course.

This is entirely dependent on the current value of the coin and the difficulty of mining. The price will fall and the difficulty will increase and that will no longer be the case. Also making money by creating an imaginary currency that is backed by nothing is not the same as making money while also producing goods and services. To simply take things at face value and say thar it makes money by doing nothing is ignoring the fact that it is detrimental to environment and has a very shaky foundation that could collapse at any given moment.

[Moonzy]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

This is entirely dependent on the current value of the coin and the difficulty of mining. The price will fall and the difficulty will increase and that will no longer be the case.

Yes, I am fully aware

 

Give me an example of 1:3 then, which is about the ratio for when btc/alt coin was at their lower values post-2017 high

 

Don't dodge the question, prove your point.

 

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

Also making money by creating an imaginary currency that is backed by nothing is not the same as making money while also producing goods and services

You keep calling it imaginary but how?

I can exchange it for cash anytime I want, and I have done so many times.

 

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

To simply take things at face value and say thar it makes money by doing nothing is ignoring the fact that it is detrimental to environment.

It's converting energy into money

Just like any other job, you're doing work, burning energy, by being alive and/or by driving, and using things needed to finish your work for profit.

 

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

and has a very shaky foundation that could collapse at any given moment.

Sure, but that's unlikely to happen, so it's kinda moot point.

 

A company may go bankrupt at any time too, doesn't mean what they did in the process is a waste of energy was it?

 

Now before you say "but crypto becomes nothing once they hit $0"

It paid off my 3900x platform and my 2070S, and my RM850x, and a few other smaller purchases I do for my PC, I also paid off 1.5 of my 3 3060ti by now (yes, I converted some of it to cash already)

So yes, they did do something even if it's $0 right now

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Moonzy said:

Yes, I am fully aware

 

Give me an example of 1:3 then, which is about the ratio for when btc/alt coin was at their lower values post-2017 high

 

Don't dodge the question, prove your point.

 

You keep calling it imaginary but how?

I can exchange it for cash anytime I want, and I have done so many times.

 

It's converting energy into money

Just like any other job, you're doing work, burning energy, by being alive and/or by driving, and using things needed to finish your work for profit.

 

Sure, but that's unlikely to happen, so it's kinda moot point.

 

A company may go bankrupt at any time too, doesn't mean what they did in the process is a waste of energy was it?

 

Now before you say "but crypto becomes nothing once they hit $0"

It paid off my 3900x platform and my 2070S, and my RM850x, and a few other smaller purchases I do for my PC, I also paid off 1.5 of my 3 3060ti by now (yes, I converted some of it to cash already)

So yes, they did do something even if it's $0 right now

You say I dodged your question but I really didn't. I addressed it when I talked about the fact that other forms of making money actually produce a good or service while mining bitcoin does not. You are simply wasting energy to make money when mining bitcoin unlike when a factory worker builds a car or a lawyer writes a legal document. You are making money while also doing something productive and that has value. So you can't simply compare bitcoins worth to the energy cost of mining and say that is equivalent of energy used to make money by producing goods and services. Sure you can currently make money by mining bitcoin and if that is all you care about then go ahead but that won't change the fact that it is a waste of energy and has had a negative impact on global power consumption and stressed power grids across the globe. 

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, Moonzy said:

Yes, I am fully aware

 

Give me an example of 1:3 then, which is about the ratio for when btc/alt coin was at their lower values post-2017 high

 

Don't dodge the question, prove your point.

 

You keep calling it imaginary but how?

I can exchange it for cash anytime I want, and I have done so many times.

 

It's converting energy into money

Just like any other job, you're doing work, burning energy, by being alive and/or by driving, and using things needed to finish your work for profit.

 

Sure, but that's unlikely to happen, so it's kinda moot point.

 

A company may go bankrupt at any time too, doesn't mean what they did in the process is a waste of energy was it?

 

Now before you say "but crypto becomes nothing once they hit $0"

It paid off my 3900x platform and my 2070S, and my RM850x, and a few other smaller purchases I do for my PC, I also paid off 1.5 of my 3 3060ti by now (yes, I converted some of it to cash already)

So yes, they did do something even if it's $0 right now

A better explanation of what i am trying to say is that in an economy for it to be healthy you need people producing goods and services so energy that goes into that production is very useful. If goods and services aren't produced then having money is useless as you can't buy anything. Cryptocurrency uses a ton of energy on not producing a goods or services and therfore a waste energy. 

[Moonzy]

Just now, Brooksie359 said:

You say I dodged your question but I really didn't. I addressed it when I talked about the fact that other forms of making money actually produce a good or service while mining bitcoin does not.

you didn't give an example, you simply gave a statement

 

you did not provide an example of what you can do, with minimal effort and knowledge, to be as profitable as crypto mining.

 

and bitcoin does produce income, whether you like to admit it or not (you don't, seeing how you kept saying crypto mining is useless)

im getting an "imaginary number" that i can convert to any other currency that i want to, i can buy food and more gpus with it.

 

2 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

You are making money while also doing something productive and that has value. So you can't simply compare bitcoins worth to the energy cost of mining and say that is equivalent of energy used to make money by producing goods and services.

the service is processing transactions for crypto, benefits all people who uses crypto

 

4 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

that won't change the fact that it is a waste of energy

it's not a waste of energy if it's doing something productive, but that's my opinion

as "waste of energy" can have many meaning depending on who you ask, some may say gaming is a waste of energy too

 

6 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

has had a negative impact on global power consumption and stressed power grids across the globe. 

yes, i agree

but this isnt isolated to crypto mining

joe turned on his gaming PC, he's contributing to the issue as well, just to a lesser degree

 

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

A better explanation of what i am trying to say is that in an economy for it to be healthy you need people producing goods and services so energy that goes into that production is very useful. If goods and services aren't produced then having money is useless as you can't buy anything.

how does mining crypto stop other good and services from operating?

 

2 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Cryptocurrency uses a ton of energy on not producing a goods or services and therfore a waste energy. 

refer to above

[Kilrah]

4 hours ago, Moonzy said:

Hmm... I wonder what allows you to convert electricity cost into profit at about 1:9 ratio (as of current rate) without you doing anything much, just click few clicks.

The fact you can do that is the whole problem

[Moonzy]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

The fact you can do that is the whole problem

how is it a problem?

 

there was a service to rent your computing power to process cloud gaming service iirc, but it wasnt as profitable, but requires as little clicks as starting a miner

is that also wrong?

 

is google running servers for profit wrong?

 

it's not my fault mining is profitable, but i sure as heck gonna do it if it is profitable

[Kilrah]

9 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

there was a service to rent your computing power to process cloud gaming service iirc, but it wasnt as profitable, but requires as little clicks as starting a miner

is that also wrong?

 

is google running servers for profit wrong?

Both of these provide a useful service to someone, that's worth something. In contrast crypto has no intrinsic value.

 

I don't see crypto as being sustainable, at least not until it loses what some people find it attractive for currently.

The fact you can get a personal benefit while it lasts doesn't mean it's "right" or viable in the long run. 

[Moonzy]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Both of these provide a useful service to someone, that's worth something.

crypto mining is processing transaction of crypto, in case you didn't know

 

so it's not just running the same code repeatedly, generating the same thing like a timespy loop

 

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

The fact you can get a personal benefit while it lasts doesn't mean it's "right" or viable in the long run. 

i mean... if it's no longer profitable then no one would do it, yes

but what makes it "wrong"?

 

I am genuinely curious, btw

[Spindel]

Someone should seriously make an affordable space heater/mining rig. 

 

I live in a cold country and my house is mainly heated by electric radiators (and a air to air heat pump). A mining rig with a thermostat (just as my radiators) would actually be a excellent idea. Heat my house earn some BTC (or what ever) in the process. The waste heat is used for something I need. 

 

It just can't cost $3000 or whatever that space heater mining rig Linus looked at a couple of years back. 

[Moonzy]

9 minutes ago, Spindel said:

A mining rig with a thermostat (just as my radiators) would actually be a excellent idea. Heat my house earn some BTC (or what ever) in the process.

@wkdpaul should know how

but really just run any budget PC and it should be great for it, as long as the wattage is fine

you don't really care about efficiency/profitability anyways, if you're just replacing your heater

 

if you do, look at 3080 or 3060ti, they're the best hash per watt i think (esp the 3060ti)

but 3060ti is only 120W if configured correctly, so you're gonna need like 4 of them to make a decent space heater.

 

you can add an arduino or something to take input from thermocouple and run files in your PC to launch and stop miners, it should be do-able

 

but do make sure your PC components dont overheat in the process, components running hot still kills them

though mining gpu rarely breaks 65c if configured correctly anyways

[Spindel]

6 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

@wkdpaul should know how

but really just run any budget PC and it should be great for it, as long as the wattage is fine

you don't really care about efficiency/profitability anyways, if you're just replacing your heater

 

if you do, look at 3080 or 3060ti, they're the best hash per watt i think (esp the 3060ti)

but 3060ti is only 120W if configured correctly, so you're gonna need like 4 of them to make a decent space heater.

 

you can add an arduino or something to take input from thermocouple and run files in your PC to launch and stop miners, it should be do-able

 

but do make sure your PC components dont overheat in the process, components running hot still kills them

though mining gpu rarely breaks 65c if configured correctly anyways

But I want one, preferably with passive cooling (natural convection and radiation), that can fit under my windows like my current electric radiators to prevent the cold convection from the windows when it's cold outside. 

 

Heating a house isn't just about throwing W of heat into it. If you want proper thermal comfort you should also think about where you put your heat sources and have a decent mix of the heat being emitted by radiation and convection. 

 

Where I live the standard for radiators is beneath the windows for 2 reasons. 

1. Stop the cold convection from the window

 

2. A radiative balance to the window (the radiator is warm and the window is cold) which from a thermal comfort perspective makes a human standing 1-2 m away from the window feel that entire wall as a radiationally neutral surface. If you can keep most surfaces radiation neutral you can lower the air temperature and still achieve thermal comfort. It's not only the air temperature that determines if you feel cold or not it's also radiational imbalances between differens sides of your body together with draughts and humidity. 

 

 

 

[RageTester]

48 minutes ago, Spindel said:

Someone should seriously make an affordable space heater/mining rig. 

Problem is you don't need heating all year long, and mining rig becomes old and not profitable fast...

Just get a cheap oven, cook food and release the heat.

[TehDwonz]

On 1/13/2021 at 7:03 PM, Brooksie359 said:

Miners back at it again sucking up all the electricity lol. And people say that mining doesn't have a significant impact on global energy consumption. Maybe people can make a new cryptocurrency that doesn't waste vast amounts of energy. 

Best ban PC gaming then. That truly has no output that is useful.

[WkdPaul]

3 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Both of these provide a useful service to someone, that's worth something. In contrast crypto has no intrinsic value.

I use it as subsidized heating for my office and the adjacent room in winter, don't know about you, but to me heating that is making me more money than it cost me electricity has pretty good value !!!

 

Also, it's not imaginary, the fraction of BTC I mined out of curiosity a few years back bought me my current rig when BTC was at a high point in Jan 2018 ... and what was left when it went back up in the past year has bought me a few peripherals (around $200 worth IIRC).

 

Quote

I don't see crypto as being sustainable, at least not until it loses what some people find it attractive for currently.

The fact you can get a personal benefit while it lasts doesn't mean it's "right" or viable in the long run. 

I personally don't care if it's not sustainable in the long run, and BTW just to be clear, I honestly fail to see how BTC can be used as a currency replacement for day to day activities seeing all the delays to approve a transaction at low and/or reasonable cost ; one time it took over 3 hours for one of my transaction to complete (around $100 + $3-4 in transaction fees) ... that's slower than when I transfer money out of, or into, my long term savings account (it's money tied up in stocks and mutual funds, it's called a TFSA in Canada) !!!

 

BTW, I'm not excusing the behaviour reflected in the OP, if you're in a warm country that has issues with electricity supply, it's pretty shitty behaviour and a selfish thing to do when it results in rolling blackouts. But from the article, it seems most of the issues are from non registered mining farms because they don't want to stop mining during peak hours.

Edited January 21, 2021 by wkdpaul

[Moonzy]

47 minutes ago, TehDwonz said:

Best ban PC gaming then. That truly has no output that is useful.

hey, the output is dopamine and endorphins!

very important to contract my face muscle so i go from  to  

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, TehDwonz said:

Best ban PC gaming then. That truly has no output that is useful.

Nope that is not nearly the same. We are talking about people running rigs with tons of gpus in them and running 24/7 passively so nobody is actually using it and it simply runs on its own. For gaming it provides entertainment and jobs for a vast amount of people and is a huge industry. Also people don't game 24/7 and don't require 20 3080s to play a game. Getting rid of gaming would be a huge detriment to whole world while you could get rid of cryptocurrency tomorrow and it would effect very little. 

[WkdPaul]

6 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

*snip*

you could get rid of cryptocurrency tomorrow and it would effect very little. 

Pretty sure the people having a job because of crypto would disagree (not talking about the mining farms, but rather the companies that sprouted around cryptos).

[StDragon]

51 minutes ago, wkdpaul said:

Pretty sure the people having a job because of crypto would disagree (not talking about the mining farms, but rather the companies that sprouted around cryptos).

As much energy as that wastes, trying to justify its uses by keeping the people involved in crypto industry employed is tantamount to the 'Broken Window Fallacy'

BTC is a pyramid scheme.

[linuxChips2600]

7 minutes ago, StDragon said:

BTC is a pyramid scheme.

You know that a pyramid scheme involves actively recruiting people, whereas you don't have to recruit anyone to start mining BTC or any other cryptocurrency (at least afaik), right?

Edit - not that I like cryptocurrency to begin with.

[WkdPaul]

8 minutes ago, StDragon said:

As much energy as that wastes, trying to justify its uses by keeping the people involved in crypto industry employed is tantamount to the 'Broken Window Fallacy'

I never said crypto has to be kept alive so that people don't lose their jobs, I simply stated, that banning crypto outright WOULD have an effect, you're putting words and meaning where there wasn't.

 

Quote

BTC is a pyramid scheme.

Except it's not, this gets thrown a lot in this thread, but it seems most don't know the definition of a pyramid scheme (I do mine with 2 GPUs, I never had to send any money to anyone up a pyramid to be able to do so, and nobody is giving me money to be 'enrolled' into being able to mine).

 

If we have to compare, crypto is a lot closer to stocks than anything else.

Edited January 21, 2021 by wkdpaul

[linuxChips2600]

1 minute ago, wkdpaul said:

If we have to compare, crypto is a lot closer to stocks than anything else.

 

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, wkdpaul said:

Pretty sure the people having a job because of crypto would disagree (not talking about the mining farms, but rather the companies that sprouted around cryptos).

I would disagree. If they have a company that revolves around cryptocurrency then they likely have something in place in the case that cryptocurrency crashes as it is extremely volatile. I am sure they could figure something else out just fine. Cryptocurrency is pretty isolated in that if it were to fail it wouldn't have a huge effect on things. Gaming on the other hand drives a ton of demand in many different areas from game development to consoles to gaming related computer hardware and peripherals. The world would be a much worse place without gaming while the same is not true for cryptocurrency. 

[WkdPaul]

1 minute ago, Brooksie359 said:

I would disagree. If they have a company that revolves around cryptocurrency then they likely have something in place in the case that cryptocurrency crashes as it is extremely volatile. I am sure they could figure something else out just fine. Cryptocurrency is pretty isolated in that if it were to fail it wouldn't have a huge effect on things. Gaming on the other hand drives a ton of demand in many different areas from game development to consoles to gaming related computer hardware and peripherals. The world would be a much worse place without gaming while the same is not true for cryptocurrency. 

Binance

BitMain

Coinbase

BitPay

CoinCards

BitRefill

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust

 

and that's just the companies I know.

 

Not knowing about something doesn't mean it is defacto useless and can be discredited. And this industry being small doesn't mean it has no effect on things (remember, we're in a thread about rolling blackouts in a country because of how much illegal mining farms there are ... it's bad, yes, but the power companies over the world would see a BIG difference in income if mining stopped overnight, whether we like it or not).

[Moonzy]

7 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Getting rid of gaming would be a huge detriment to whole world while you could get rid of cryptocurrency tomorrow and it would effect very little. 

If humans were to die out right now, the Earth would still rotate the sun and animals would most probably be better off.

 

What's your point?

 

Gaming, mind you, is still not a major hobby for many people, if it were to die out, many people just shrug

 

Just because something is prepared to fail, doesn't mean it's fine to fail

Just because you bought insurance doesn't mean you should be reckless