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Comment by djschnei | Hacker News Reader

> that we free up by making technology more energy efficient

This is 100% a fake problem that clearly does not exist if you understood anything about the energy market. Civilization is at an increasing rate consuming more electricity. Surely, someone who believes carbon emissions are destroying the planet would agree we need to electrify everything. Bitcoin consuming and therefore monetizing stranded and/or temporary excess amounts of energy make accelerated electrification of our society a much more realistic endeavor. Having an electricity dung-beetle, a buyer of last resort, is a revelation.

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Bitcoin doesn't discriminate between green energy sources and fossil fuel energy sources. It encourages production/consumption of fossil fuels just as much as it encourages production/consumption of green energy sources. There's no particular reason to believe that Bitcoin will accelerate electrification.

> Bitcoin doesn't discriminate between green energy sources and fossil fuel energy sources.

BINGO!

If you have something that will buy any left over or unusable stock of product X, the production of X becomes less risky and easier to invest in. This isn't hard. Bitcoin incentivizes energy production and innovation. If you want that energy to be green, bitcoin is still more than willing to buy it from you. Lowering the risk of innovation in the space is obviously good for green energy.

No, this doesn't make sense. If your goal is to reduce fossil fuel usage, and Bitcoin also incentivizes fossil fuels, then there's no reason to expect that Bitcoin will help reduce the share of energy produced by fossil fuels. Worse yet, if it increases total energy consumption, and doesn't affect the percentage produced by fossil fuels, then that will increase the absolute amount of greenhouse gas emissions.

Your arguments work just as well for reducing risk for investing in "marginal" fossil fuel sources.

Bitcoin incentivizes cheap energy production. We need more cheap energy.

Bitcoin does nothing to alter or effect other incentives or disincentives on energy production.

Assuming prices are equivalent, it's net neutral on production mix. However, we've been told renewable energy is cheaper! Therefore it accelerates its adoption.

> monetizing stranded and/or temporary excess amounts of energy

Please stop saying this. Aluminum refining or hydrogen electrolysis fits so much better and actually benefits society.

Seems that the free market is determining that securing an open financial network benefits society more.

How's your at home aluminum refining going? I unfortunately haven't had much luck monetizing my at home hydrogen electrolysis plant :(

I'm talking about scales that matter, not a few kilowatts in your basement.

I subsidized a rather large solar installation on my farm by mining with the excess electricity. This installation drastically lowers my reliance on the grid.

Oil and Gas companies are reducing CO2-equivalent emissions by about 63% by mining with flared natural gas: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/12/23-year-old-texans-made-4-mi...

Large solar farms are being built that otherwise would not have: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-block-blockstream-m...

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