Why don’t they use environmentally-friendly slide rules instead? I used one in math class when I was a kid, and it worked out fine for me.
Posted on 07/06/2021 9:33:32 AM PDT by dayglored
* Local residents say a power plant is heating Seneca Lake and emitting huge amounts of greenhouse gases.
* The gas-fired plant is used to power at least 8,000 computers that are mining bitcoin.
* The plant's CEO says it's operating within the law, and has created 31 jobs.
Local residents have blamed bitcoin mining for heating up the largest of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York, with one saying it's "so warm you feel like you're in a hot tub," according to a report by NBC News.
Their complaints centre on a gas-fired power plant that's being used to power at least 8,000 bitcoin mining computers. The plant draws water from Seneca Lake for cooling, then discharges the warmed water back into the lake.
Bitcoin mining is the process by which new bitcoins are created. The mining is done by specialised computers that solve complex calculations on behalf of the bitcoin network.
The power plant, Greenidge, which is being closely monitored by the Department of Environmental Conservation, is allowed to suck in 139 million gallons of water and discharge 135 million gallons daily. The discharged water can be as hot as 108 degrees in the summer and 86 degrees in winter, per permit documents viewed by NBC News.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Methinks this "hot-tub" complainer is swimming next to the discharge pipe or something...
Well, that should solve inflation, then. We’ll just mine all the money we need.
is allowed to suck in 139 million gallons of water and discharge 135 million gallons daily
Where does the 4 million gallons go ?
Can someone please explain to me how a computer mines for other bitcoins? Can someone please show me a bitcoin?
Why don’t they use environmentally-friendly slide rules instead? I used one in math class when I was a kid, and it worked out fine for me.
I figure it's either leakage+evaporation, or they drink a cubic frackton of coffee.
Why does solving equations that no one uses have any intrinsic value?
A bitcoin is just a number. A really really long number, and a very special one, that has certain special properties (like being related to prime numbers, etc.). "Mining" is the process of trying bazillions of combinations of numbers, to try to come up with a new one that meets the requirements (properties).
When that's done, it gets verified in the bitcoin network as being a valid new bitcoin number, and it carries the current value of one bitcoin (many thousands of dollars).
That's a wildly over-simplified explanation. Here's a better but more technical one.
“ The plant’s CEO says it’s operating within the law
Perfectly fine then.
“Can someone please explain to me how a computer mines for other bitcoins? Can someone please show me a bitcoin?”
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I could have but converted all of mine to neutrinos.🤗
IMO there's no INTRINSIC value to bitcoins, any more than there's intrinsic value to paper Federal Reserve Notes. It's all a matter of agreement between the involved parties.
The computing is to come up with new numbers that meet certain requirements.
steam?
Public key (i.e. address derived from the public key) on the left is what would be in the blockchain with some value associated with it. There's probably no value on this public key because they are displaying the private key. The private key on the right is used to sign a transaction transferring the value associated with the public key to a new address / owner. The transaction is sent to the network of miners who make sure that the signature on the transaction created by the private key can be verified by the public key.
The owner of the bitcoin (or ethereum in this case) owns that cryptocurrency by knowing the private key and not showing it to anyone (unlike the example above). Everyone else knows someone owns an amount of cryptocurrency associated with a public key / address on the blockchain. The cryptocurrency is really nothing more than that data on the blockchain.
Cryptocurrencies are the only currencies backed by the investment of energy and destruction of computer hardware.
New math, remember? Doesn’t have to make sense.
What? You expected a mass and energy balance?
We sent men to the moon and brought them back safely on little more computing power than slide rules. I had several when I was in high school, including a circular slide rule.
What about global warming? It seems that bitcoin is now one of the largest contributors to global warming.
With Biden trying to save the earth, maybe he should start with banning bitcoin minning!
Not all cryptocurrencies use “Proof of Work” to validate transactions. Many use “Proof of Stake.” Proof of Work takes quite a bit of computing power while Proof of Stake does not. BitCoin (BTC) is a Proof-of-Work currency. Etherium (ETH) while starting as Proof-of-Work is going to be a Proof-of-Stake currency very soon.
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