No, that's a different argument. Your second point says that, not your first. I just replied to your first.
For the second argument, that's less crazy, but still not true. Electricity thrown away is a very very trivial amount compared to the amount Bitcoin uses. And there are still surpluses that are thrown away despite cryptocurrencies using power. Bitcoin doesn't tap into the grid and run only when there is a surplus; virtually all miners run it regardless of the current energy price on wholesale markets. If they didn't, we'd see huge fluctuations in the hash rate and they should match the renewable electricity production closely. It clearly doesn't do that, so apparently it's not being used this way and doesn't fund renewable energy that would otherwise not be built.
> I'm sure they'd happily give that electricity to DeepL too, if they asked.
Oh come on now, that's like arguing that "I'm sure the thief would have given the bike back if asked nicely!" Have you ever heard of a power company asking "who has the best purpose for this power that I'm uselessly producing here?" I've only ever heard "it looks like we'll need more power for <some purpose> soon, therefore we will build <some power plant> in <some place>".
> Have you ever heard of a power company asking "who has the best purpose for this power that I'm uselessly producing here?
Yes, that's exactly what they ask. Have you actually tried to visit a powerplant and talk to them about this? I did. This is exactly what they ask when they can't find enough demand for their electricity - they need someone to take it, that's why negative electricity rates exist.
> they should match the renewable electricity production closely. It clearly doesn't do that
Geothermals, nuclear, hydro, wind + global network with a huge amount of participants = it's hard to distinguish individual localized factors.
> Electricity thrown away is a very very trivial amount compared to the amount Bitcoin uses.
Not at all. Annualized waste electricity from EU is multiples more than what Bitcoin uses annually. Then we count in China, India, ...
> I've only ever heard "it looks like we'll need more power for <some purpose> soon, therefore we will build <some power plant> in <some place>".
Nobody is building powerplants for Bitcoin (except for very few geothermals) - it's absolutely not profitable. It's much better to put that electricity into the grid for consumer or industrial usage; providing it to Bitcoin miners is done when nobody wants more electricity but they have it anyways.
This is like asking for a source on where 5G was shown not to cause corona. There is a difference between critical thinking and questioning generally accepted statements. You know as well as anyone that energy transportation isn't free or easy, why ask as GP to show that? You're implying that it's more environmentally friendly to build a big power plant in the middle of nowhere, then ship a bunch of ASICs there as well, and then mine bitcoin, rather than just not do that and use the investment money to renewable energy somewhere else. Heck, even if you did build a power plant in the middle of nowhere and intend to ship computers there, why not ship machine learning there?
For example I know that DeepL has megawatts of GPUs for learning for the purposes of translation. There is no latency issue here, they can do this anywhere in the world. It's clearly better to use the energy for these purposes than for mining proofs of work.