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A comment on A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency. Parent comment

Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency by ForHackernews on Monday February 18, 2019 @03:31PM (#19194129)
It's not a subsidy to renewables. Bitcoin miners don't give two shits about whether their energy is green or not.

You want to help level out peaks and troughs of electricty production: Improve battery technology, don't just waste the energy generating sha256 over and over.

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Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency by stale2002 on Monday February 18, 2019 @04:04PM (#19194435)
It is a subsidy, in that this was free energy that renewables were unable to profit from, previously.

Before: The energy from a hydro plants gets wasted when it is night time.

After: Now they get money.

The hydro plant is now making money on something that they were just throwing away, previously, and thus it is a subsidy.

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Re:A faster, more efficient cryptocurrency by foxrob92 on Monday February 18, 2019 @08:18PM (#19195961)
>Before: The energy from a hydro plants gets wasted when it is night time.

Hydro plants can usually turn off relatively quickly. They can be used as pump storage, which is an incredibly efficient way of storing energy - >70% efficiency [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit...

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