> For example, if you are using wind or solar or hydro energy, then the energy is still going to be available even if you turn off your mining hardware.

That's only true if you can't sell the energy for more than bitcoins mined for that energy.

And buy bitcoin for that money ... :)

Good point. I was assuming that it would be a surplus of energy that you are not able to sell.

I was interested to learn in the recent indictment that the Russians were using bitcoin as essentially a means of money laundering. The Russia government uses it's budget to mine some bitcoins and used those to buy the servers used to hack the DNC. I imagine criminals and people looking to evade currency controls have similar interests.

I would be very surprised if mining was the sole source of the funding simply because mining hardware is so expensive, and it would take a long time to mine $90,000.

The Bloomberg article says

> the defendants conspired to launder the equivalent of more than $95,000 through a web of transactions

So while they may have done some mining, I think the majority came via other sources.

That is certainly an interesting perspective though – that the increase in hash rate is due to people wanting to evade traditional currency systems to fund their illicit activities. It would not surprise me at all if some governments were involved in this too.

from the indictment [1], statement 62:

The Conspirators funded the purchase of computer infrastructure for their hacking activity in part by “mining” bitcoin. Individuals and entities can mine bitcoin by allowing their computing power to be used to verify and record payments on the bitcoin public ledger, a service for which they are rewarded with freshly-minted bitcoin. The pool of bitcoin generated from the GRU’s mining activity was used, for example, to pay a Romanian company to register the domain dcleaks.com through a payment processing company located in the United States.

63. In addition to mining bitcoin, the Conspirators acquired bitcoin through a variety of means designed to obscure the origin of the funds. This included purchasing bitcoin through peer-to-peer exchanges, moving funds through other digital currencies, and using pre-paid cards. They also enlisted the assistance of one or more third-party exchangers who facilitated layered transactions through digital currency exchange platforms providing heightened anonymity.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download

Okay cool so that confirms what I said that mining was not the sole source of the funds

Or:

3. VCs invest in miners, and the investment money is used to pay the costs until the price rebounds.

It would be cheaper and significantly easier to just buy coins though.

It's not such a clear cut decision. You can only buy once, while the miner can produce for many years, especially now when the ASIC tech reached the state-of-the-art so progress is slower.

No they really don’t. I have quite a bit of experience with modern mining hardware and they aren’t designed to last more than about 6 months or so. It’s about extracting the maximum hashes per watt for the early period of ownership when difficultly is low, damage to hardware be damned.

>> 1. Most people have already invested in the hardware and are therefore okay mining at a loss with the hope that the Bitcoin price will rise again in the future.

It doesn't make sense to mine at a loss, as in that case they can buy more bitcoins at market price, rather than mining them.