The next-generation of currencies was supposed to be very "green," but they require huge amounts of energy and wind and solar aren't enough! You need highly reliable power to "mine" cryptocurrency and only conventional power sources cut the mustard.
Posted on 04/13/2018 8:38:47 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
The Redbank Power Station in Australia was shut down in 2014, but it’s being reactivated for the sole purpose of providing power to cryptocurrency mining.
Local power company Hunter Energy agreed to reactivate the plant for the Australian tech company IOT Group and sell it power at wholesale prices for blockchain applications, CNET reported. Cryptocurrency such as bitcoin uses blockchain to secure transactions and mine new coins. However, cryptocurrency mining uses huge amounts of power, with current estimates indicated it uses as much power as the entire country of Singapore.
IOT plans to offer the power to other companies using blockchain applications.
The 151-MW plant is expected to resume operations in 2019.
The next-generation of currencies was supposed to be very "green," but they require huge amounts of energy and wind and solar aren't enough! You need highly reliable power to "mine" cryptocurrency and only conventional power sources cut the mustard.
This is insanity..............................
I don’t get this.
Isn’t this akin to using real resources to hunt imaginary things?
No worse than the power\ink\parchment for FNR, no?
Considering most of the ‘$$$’ are simply 0’s/1’s in some electronic ledger...
They are not ‘imaginary’ but non-physical, since you cannot hold a bitcoin in your hand..................
WTF?
For what it is worth, and, for a moment, taking this at face value, does this not begin to make an argument for some cryptocurrency taxation to cover infrastructure investment and costs to support the transactions?
The “holy grail” of currency exchange will be burdened with unfunded overhead as it becomes main stream?
I don’t invest in stock markets etc. I take hard tangible things like land, actual physical items.
I’ve never been a binary fan.
Bottom line for us: If you didn’t mine for bitcoin years ago using a few home pc’s running continuously, when the bitcoins were low on the tree, it’s gonna cost you significantly to get in now to go after ever diminishing and higher up fruit.
I heard that there was a boxcar full of millions of dollars of bitcoins that was shoved off a ferry in Lake Michigan.
They are searching for it now with metal detectors. No luck so far.
The current scam is to sell stocks in companies who are making a play in bitcoin. Doesn’t matter if they never make money. When they come to seize the assets in bankruptcy for the mining operation, the primary investors will be sitting on there yachts laughing there asses off.
In Bitcoin (actually cryptocurrency) mining provides a service. That service creates “blocks”. The blocks are used to house crypto-currency transactions. Think of them as containers. To prevent just anyone from creating a container, each currency has established what a container needs to look like. This is called proof of work or proof of stake.
Containers are important because container can be “locked” by using a cryptographic hash. A hash is a one way function that can not be reversed. This allows a hash to act like a validated signature. When transactions are put into a block and signed with a hash, any attempt to change the transaction log will be detected. Further since it is a distributed architecture, a hacker or forger would have to change all the blocks subsequent to the initial change as well. An act that is considered impossible. Thus, blocks are important.
Miners create blocks, but by design, it is not easy. It takes computer power to create a block and only the first person who creates the block gets paid for it. Getting paid for solving this mathematical puzzle is how miners get paid. X amount of coins per block solved/created. In essence, mining turns electricity into bitcoins or other crypto-currency. These can be exchanged for goods, services, products, commodities and money ONLY because there are people willing to make that exchange.
Thanks for explaining it.
This guy won’t be partaking, it seems to be too much of a smoke and mirrors show. Although, our current currency is too. That’s why a lot of us stock up on actual hard items we need.
Some person can have all the money in the world, but if they don’t have the food, water, and means to protect it, then the money means nothing.
At first I thought it was preposterous that cryptocurrency could use much power - after all, what could a single transaction cost on your computer/phone and the back-end server. Then I learned every transaction is spread across MILLIONS of servers and the energy consumption is becoming very serious. This cost must somehow be built into the cost of the currency just the way the cost of printing paper currency and minting coins is built into those currencies (except those costs find their way back to us in our taxes).
I remember a science fiction story set in a post-scarcity economy where currency/value was measured in calories for human labor, watts for energy.
Even when stuff was cheap, energy and physical labor when required had value.
Their looking in the wrong place. I heard it was shoved off a DD in the middle of the Pacific.
“In Bitcoin (actually cryptocurrency) mining provides a service.”
What service, and to whose benefit ?
The service provided is described in my prior post. It is the creation of containers that act to secure the history of transactions.
That sounded like a self-licking ice cream cone. Or should I say a self-licking Ponzi scheme.
But thanks for the explanation.
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