Can somebody "in the know" tell me, when this cryptocurrency crap will die a horrible, painfull death?

[Vangeli]

4 minutes ago, Tristerin said:

Wut?

 

Mapped: The world’s coal power plants in 2020 (carbonbrief.org) (can do a slider to show 2000-2020.)

There are coal plants shut down or planned to be shut down even here in the US that legislation is currently attempting to bring back or keep running specifically because of crypto mining.

[SpaceNerden]

Ok this is a battlefield I want none of rn but it’s so fun to watch 2 sides make good arguments against each other

[Vangeli]

With the big crypto/GPU boom over the winter I figure come summer we’ll see the first impacts when, say, LA has their usual extreme heat and potential blackouts with everyone running air conditioners; how will crypto mining stress that further? How many people will stop mining during those times? Probably not everyone so there will be deaths by heat stroke that can and will be blamed on mining.

 

All it takes is “Granny wouldn’t be dead if her air conditioner didn’t lose power, those crypto miners need to be stopped!”

 

Crypto was cool in the beginning but something needs to change. Restarting or keeping coal plants open isn’t the right answer.

[airborne spoon]

3 minutes ago, Vangeli said:

With the big crypto/GPU boom over the winter I figure come summer we’ll see the first impacts when, say, LA has their usual extreme heat and potential blackouts with everyone running air conditioners; how will crypto mining stress that further? How many people will stop mining during those times? Probably not everyone so there will be deaths by heat stroke that can and will be blamed on mining.

 

All it takes is “Granny wouldn’t be dead if her air conditioner wasn’t shut down, those crypto miners need to be stopped!”

 

Crypto was cool in the beginning but something needs to change. Restarting or keeping coal plants open isn’t the right answer.

LA will have brownouts and blackouts because of miners, that's a new level of stupid I've not seen before. More like same as last year where there are more people at home using their inefficient AC drawing more power but at the same time office building are using extremely less power for their AC and building because people aren't at work. Also CA has power issues that stem from the government being a bunch of nutjobs and over population while not expanding the power and water causing all kinds of issues. This has nothing to do with mining.

 

The original argument was made that miners are taking all the GPU's that are meant for gamers, NO! GPU's are made and sold for the sake of doing complex algorithms, this can be for games, video rendering, F@H, mining, or any one of hundreds of other uses. "GPU's are for gamers" entitled much? 

 

There is a supply and demand issue right now for anything that involves any kind of chips so this ends up creating scalpers just like any other time in history, remember beanie babies? Hell when the Wii came out my local store never was short on stock and always had plenty in stock while other places couldn't find any. Being the proud supporter of capitalism i am, i would buy up 5-10 every couple days and sell them at double the price on eBay. Its supply and demand yall need to get over yourselves and if you want something and don't wanna pay eBay prices for it then get out there and find one at MSRP. I randomly walked into my local Micro Center one day (2.5hr drive each way local) and bought a 5900x and a RX6800XT at the same time at MSRP. Stuff is out there but people are entitled and have become accustomed to there always being an abundance of stock of any and all products they can get delivered to their house in 2 days. Well things change and now you have to actively go out and look for things or just happen upon them like i did. I now follow a discord that tracks stock alerts and have bought 3x 3600's and 2x 6900xt's that i put on eBay for $500 over what i paid for them and people still buy them. So as long as people are willing to pay through the nose myself and other investors are going to keep selling, its basic economics, but they don't teach that is schools anymore apparently.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

I'll just leave these here.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/07/china-bitcoin-mining-climate-targets-nature-study

 

Quote

China’s electricity-hungry bitcoin mines that power nearly 80% of the global trade in cryptocurrencies risk undercutting the country’s climate goals, a study in the journal Nature has said...

 

...About 40% of China’s bitcoin mines are powered with coal, while the rest use renewables, the study said. However, the coal plants are so large they could end up undermining Beijing’s pledge to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060, it warned.

 

https://fortune.com/2021/04/20/bitcoin-mining-coal-china-environment-pollution/

 

Quote

One of the great Bitcoin unknowns has long been the amounts being produced, or "mined," in what's believed to be the top locale for mining the signature cryptocurrency: China's remote Xinjiang region. We got the answer when an immense coal mine in Xinjiang flooded and shut down over the weekend of April 17–18.

The blackout halted no less than one-third of all of Bitcoin's global computing power. "We'd seen estimates that high, but this shutdown confirms them," says Alex de Vries, an economist who runs the website Digiconomist, which tracks Bitcoin's energy consumption. "We also learned that the area in Xinjiang where all that mining happens is much smaller than previously believed. It underscores China's dominance in Bitcoin mining, and that dominance raises big security concerns."

The Xinjiang accident highlights that Bitcoin is a creature of fossil fuels—principally coal, the dirtiest of them all. Its rise is even providing a lifeline for the fading natural-gas industry. In the U.S., miners from New York State to Kentucky are repurposing obsolete facilities to supply the cheap power they cherish. That Bitcoin spreads a carbon footprint bigger than Australia's, and that the run-up in its price could triple the carbon dioxide it spews, so far doesn't seem to bother the famous otherwise-green enthusiasts feeding the craze, from Elon Musk to Gwyneth Paltrow.