Bitcoin energy use in Iceland set to overtake homes, says local firm - BBC News

[Deli]

23 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

No, we demonize them for jacking up prices... The sooner countries start outlawing these fake currency's the better.

There are more than 1,500 types crytocurrencies now. I bet most of them will disappear eventually. There is just no way the economy can support all of them.

[GoldenLag]

28 minutes ago, Deli said:

There are more than 1,500 types crytocurrencies now. I bet most of them will disappear eventually. There is just no way the economy can support all of them.

Im expecting there to be around 5-10 left after a collapse. Non-mining currencies are gonna be a majority among them. 

[maartendc]

22 hours ago, Tiberiusisgame said:

If this truly became an issue for Iceland, they would mandate maximum power draws or caps for each house. They're socialist, after all.

I think the issue is more commercial mining enterprises with 1000's of machines in a warehouse, not a miner mining with perhaps 10 GPU's at home.

 

I would be easy to find, identify and tax the former, not so much the latter.

 

Perhaps if they start taxing the mining farms, they will start to go "underground" and try to tap electricity? This kind of thing has been a struggle for years with weedfarms, they use a lot of electricity for lamps, but they usually tap the electricity illegally in order to stay under the radar.

[Teddy07]

Does anyone know why these mining farms in especially Iceland pop up?

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

No, we demonize them for jacking up prices... The sooner countries start outlawing these fake currency's the better.

When people are still stuck in 2010 and still haven't accepted that most cryptos are non minable tokens 

[Blademaster91]

5 hours ago, Yoinkerman said:

So, single digit % of total power output?

 

Again.  Bitcoin mining is definitely the issue.

Again,you missed the point of the article, a few "data centers" aka mining farms are using as much power as all 340k homes in Iceland,it's an issue when it uses more power than the entire home population, not to mention the significant environmental impact mining could be making in places that have less renewable energy. But sure,let's blame factories that are actually valuable in economic assets to Iceland instead.

58 minutes ago, Teddy07 said:

Does anyone know why these mining farms in especially Iceland pop up?

The power is likely cheap there,and since it's mostly renewable they can have the image of being "green" for setting up farms there, either they're going to punish everyone and raise the price of power or hopefully start at least regulating or banning cryptomining.

 

[mr moose]

Doesn't anybody read the article before getting offended?  

[Eaglerino]

On 2/12/2018 at 12:44 PM, Energycore said:

Yeah, I'd agree completely that mined cryptos are simply put not sustainable. At the very least though, countries like Iceland should tax bitcoin mining. It's not hard to find a significant miner - any household or other real estate that's consuming electricity over the usual is a tell. I do believe miners at the very least should give back to the country they're mining in.

I don't know about other countries laws but how would that work? "Oh Mr Household, your energy spiked, can we intrude on your private living quarters and make sure you aren't bitcoin mining so we know whether or not to tax the crap out of you?" I know energy spikes can also mean they're growing drugs, but I would hope Iceland has a different process to searching your house that requires more proof than using energy

[Energycore]

56 minutes ago, Eaglerino said:

I don't know about other countries laws but how would that work? "Oh Mr Household, your energy spiked, can we intrude on your private living quarters and make sure you aren't bitcoin mining so we know whether or not to tax the crap out of you?" I know energy spikes can also mean they're growing drugs, but I would hope Iceland has a different process to searching your house that requires more proof than using energy

I think the start's simple - a household spikes abnormally in power usage: check its internet connections. The household's internet constantly giving requests to a known crypto pool? Then it's very likely that they're mining. It's also likely (though less so) that the power spike is because of mining.

 

Then once you've determined that there are connections being made to the pool, send them a letter "Hey we think that you may be mining bitcoin and not paying its taxes, be aware that they're taxed for X amount, and if you don't declare them you'll be subject to audit etc".

I know it's not a perfect solution but I bet someone with both tech an law enforcement experience could come up with something that works.

[AnonymousGuy]

20 minutes ago, Energycore said:

I think the start's simple - a household spikes abnormally in power usage: check its internet connections. The household's internet constantly giving requests to a known crypto pool? Then it's very likely that they're mining. It's also likely (though less so) that the power spike is because of mining.

 

The power usage is coming from commercial buildings, not homes.

 

The way to fix this on a residential scale is to put in tiered pricing based on usage, indirectly taxing BTC miners and the few people who are above average without mining.

[Energycore]

Just now, AnonymousGuy said:

The power usage is coming from commercial buildings, not homes.

 

The way to fix this on a residential scale is to put in tiered pricing based on usage, indirectly taxing BTC miners and the few people who are above average without mining.

Yeah for sure. My country has tiered pricing where the lower tiers are actually subsidized and the higher you go the more it costs. Just a single RX 480 puts me in tier 2 where electricity costs around $16/KWh.

 

What I described should be doable for commercial buildings as well though. See high power consumption -> ask that they declare what the building is doing with that.

[Guest]

14 hours ago, Generallee said:

 

Eh, maybe these fucking miners will be useful after all, if their stupid meme coin production strains coal power plants too much, maybe we'll see nuclear power as a standard sooner in many countries

 

Or (more probable) electricity will just become too damn expensive and I swear i'm gonna start breaking the legs of everyone who pronounces the word hashrate

Nuclear power isn't the best option. Renewable sources are far better. Solar power has reached a point where its pretty feasable for most people to get them

[mr moose]

2 hours ago, Eaglerino said:

I don't know about other countries laws but how would that work? "Oh Mr Household, your energy spiked, can we intrude on your private living quarters and make sure you aren't bitcoin mining so we know whether or not to tax the crap out of you?" I know energy spikes can also mean they're growing drugs, but I would hope Iceland has a different process to searching your house that requires more proof than using energy

 

1 hour ago, Energycore said:

I think the start's simple - a household spikes abnormally in power usage: check its internet connections. The household's internet constantly giving requests to a known crypto pool? Then it's very likely that they're mining. It's also likely (though less so) that the power spike is because of mining.

 

Then once you've determined that there are connections being made to the pool, send them a letter "Hey we think that you may be mining bitcoin and not paying its taxes, be aware that they're taxed for X amount, and if you don't declare them you'll be subject to audit etc".

I know it's not a perfect solution but I bet someone with both tech an law enforcement experience could come up with something that works.

 

No one cares about mining in domestic dwellings,  that's just more money in the bank for power companies.  The issues is supplying the number of data centres who have applied for a supply contract.   That is why the source in the article knows what the power is being used for, he is talking about corporations seeking to get power supply deals for their mining data centres.  Also, commercial power is usually on different plans and contracts than domestic.

[Shreyas1]

On 2/12/2018 at 11:44 AM, Energycore said:

Yeah, I'd agree completely that mined cryptos are simply put not sustainable. At the very least though, countries like Iceland should tax bitcoin mining. It's not hard to find a significant miner - any household or other real estate that's consuming electricity over the usual is a tell. I do believe miners at the very least should give back to the country they're mining in.

Wait but what if you have a virus or go on sites that run mining scripts? Do you deserve to be taxed then? 

[Energycore]

16 minutes ago, Shreyas1 said:

Wait but what if you have a virus or go on sites that run mining scripts? Do you deserve to be taxed then? 

Generally this virus wouldn't make your household consume dozens of kilowatts of power so it shouldn't trip the alarm, but if it does and you get the letter you'd probably be able to appeal and say hey, I'm not mining. Also helps users identify that they've been infected.

[IceCold008]

Makes you wonder how many big factory size data miners there are in Iceland. And i'm not talking about Joe Bloggs in his mothers basement with one PC mining bitcoin, Im talking about industrial size rows of computers with GPU's stacked up to the ceiling and there is quite a few of them. 

 

Seen a few videos of some of them, impressive stuff but the amount of energy it requires to run them all 24/7 will be mind blogging. 

[DrMacintosh]

I want my free money regardless of the consequences 

[Okjoek]

So wonderful they're able to harness geothermal energy... aaand they wasted it on imaginary coins.