Comment by foepys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by foepys | Hacker News Reader

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This is absolutely false. A fairy tale told by those who want you to buy their crypto currencies. Take Wenatchee, a village in Eastern Washington, USA, for example. Wenatchee has very cheap power because the water dam is very close nearby.

When crypto currency miners poured into the city, the power grid got overloaded and the local authorities had to raise prices drastically. The city finally decided to ban all mining but there are still many rogue miners left, operating from basements around the city. They let the local population foot their costs by mining for cheap and leave when prices need to rise to support the grid.

Mining crypto currencies is morally corrupt and hurts our environment more than anything ever before without generating any value.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/09/bitcoin-m...

https://www.wenatcheeworld.com/news/2018/feb/23/wenatchee-ba...

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/wenatchee-washington-and-the...

The articles you cite seem to support the idea that miners are moving to areas where clean energy is under utilized.

I agree with your point about the local issues caused by this. It doesn't refute the idea that miners are using energy that would otherwise be unused.

> Mining crypto currencies is morally corrupt and hurts our environment more than anything ever before without generating any value.

Seems like a bold claim. Is running an electric space heater morally corrupt? Is mining while using the heat morally corrupt?

Do you think crypto currency mining is worse than meat farming, actual raw material mining and all uses of the combustion engine?

As for value, right or wrong, the markets disagree.

Never thought I would live to see a morality argument about how we move our ions. Not taking a side or poking fun, just in genuine awe.

Stop being deliberately dense. The act of "moving ions" has huge externalities, mainly in the form of pollution, and that is obviously the morality that is being referred to here.

Your comment is like saying you're baffled that shooting someone is immoral because it's just "moving metal around".

Or maybe that just means, that power in Wentachee is over-subsidized?

That seems to be failure of subsidy, not so much crypto.

That's ridiculous, of course bitcoin has value.

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