Coal Power Station Recommissioned Exclusively for Bitcoin Mining
A coal power station is Sydney is being brought back from the dead, exclusively to sell cheap electricity to blockchain mining companies.
This is arguably a regressive move from a resource allocation standpoint.
Blockchain enthusiasts often cite that crypto-mining can be used as a grid load balance in areas of high renewable energy and hydro power. They argue that mining can take up the slack from renewable energy power plants that would otherwise have to be throttled back and wasted during times of excess.
This has been used as a decent counter argument against the view that proof-of-work (PoW) blockchains are not sustainable and drain power from the grid that would otherwise have a more important use. But developments like this one in Sydney seem to cancel out those kinds of argument.
It is certainly questionable whether Blockchain, at this stage, has enough of a purpose / contribution to society to justify this kind of exclusive and incremental use of finite resources.
Proof of Stake is eventually coming for some blockchains, like Ethereum, but there are likely to be a number of significant blockchains that will stay on PoW forever, Bitcoin being one of them.
Full Article on CNET
That is horrible! and at the other hand no big wonder... bc mining companies think of solar and wind as crap power as they need 24/7 constant cheep energy for their monsters to compete.. so this was just a question of time...
and it even gets worse... as there are big whales owning loads of ETH they made with their oversized mining rigs, they will very likely make moves against CASPAR or proof of stake in generell as it will render their mining rigs worthless... (forks, etc...)
unfortunately blockchain it is just a great snapshot of how people generally behave..
True. It would be expected that miners will lobby against Casper (and that in itself is insane for an industry only 5 years old). But while Vitalik is 'in charge' I can't see that being successful. I doubt many Ethereum miners are investing in equipment now that has a pay back period of more than 6 months. If they are, they are gambling on an unlikely outcome.
On the other hand, every Ether they mine now is an Ether that will be staked in PoS and earn transaction fees forever, so mining as many as you can pre-fork would be logical.
Wow!
Putting a decommissioned plant back in operation is a considerable effort, and investments of $100 000 if not millions. I believe whoever is behind this is not only targeting bitcoin miners, but energy consumers in general. And they must have made a business case exercise and found out the investment profitable. But it is a shame that they did not spend that ammount of money on wind or solar power instead.
Not sure about that. The article doesn't explicitly say whether they would target any other customers types. Just that they will sell to mining companies at 'pre-grid' prices. Which could suggest these are co-located mining companies and the whole operation is on a campus that does not need to feed power into the grid.
its is definitely millions and only makes sense because it was only mouthballed and could be reopened cheaply.. and because hunter valley has dirt cheap coal just next door and of course the Australian government killing the carbon tax...
so even in one of the most promising sun trenched states men can create an environment where solar power is not yet competitive... just horrible...
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Hi all friend...