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Comment by Terry_Roll | Hacker News Reader

Plenty of crypto mining places using old hydroelectric dams around the world. It also means the maintenance of said hydroelectric dams are paid for. Even oil companies are looking at ways to harness the energy from burning gases on oil rigs for crypto mining. In a way, crypto is turning the world greener by not wasting energy.

https://bitcoin.ca/canada-just-got-a-huge-new-bitcoin-mining...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-hydro-put...

https://biv.com/article/2021/07/former-canfor-sawmill-site-n...

https://www.sentiman.io/hydroelectric-dam-new-york-crypto-mi...

https://screenrant.com/hydro-plant-green-crypto-mining-costa...

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Fine, except that that is completely false. Crypto mining mainly runs on carbon-emitting generation, much of it stolen where that is easiest, and actively speeds arrival of climate catastrophe.

It is a bold thing to claim that crypto mining is run on stolen power. Stolen from whom, may I ask?

The Sun, the largest nuclear reaction in the solar system!

This power plant is run by a very sloppy operator who wastes ~99.99% of energy. The management team should be fired and sued for such gross negligence.

> It is a bold thing to claim that crypto mining is run on stolen power. Stolen from whom, may I ask?

It's a bit surprising to me that you that you hadn't heard about this yet. I've come across dozens and dozens of news reports on this phenomenon. There are at least three different versions how this is typically done:

A) By illegal hookups directly to the power grid, so the victim is a power company (and thereby effectively all its customers).

B) By someone who secretly runs mining rigs at, for instance, their place of work, so the company or organization is stuck with the power bill while the criminal gets to mine using "free" electricity.

C) Via Cryptojacking, i.e. by remotely installing mining malware on people's computers/devices. In this case, the power is "stolen" from whoever has to pay for the electricity bill for that particular device.

If you are interested in news reports on specific instances of this happening (and typically someone getting caught), just do a web search for "mining stolen power".

The percentage of electricity stolen for mining is dwarfed by the amount of electricity stolen for other means. Energy company executives in my country are almost always sell it on the side, so thank you very much for your concern that some very small part of it is stolen to power bitcoin mining.

And it is known that all major mining pools which consume maybe 80% of all power run on energy bought at commercial rates.

I'm not a miner, nor I want to be one, but I can hardly stand this baseless smearing of bitcoin on the pretense that it hurts environment. Energy producers produce energy, and sell it at some price. Whoever buys that energy can use it however they like it. If you want to help the environment, well, advocate for building nuclear power plants instead of coal and oil ones.

> old hydroelectric dams around the world

My local power company owns several small, old dams, and uses them to supply peak power. That's valuable enough to maintain them.

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