Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m...
by tshaddox on Saturday November 06, 2021 @04:44AM
(#29128480)
Electrical power is only fungible in that sense if significant negative externalities exist which allow units of energy to be priced similarly when their sources vary significantly in total (including societal) costs. If societal costs are internalized (i.e. externalities are eliminated) then fungibility would surely disappear, because a unit of energy produced from coal would surely be more expensive than a unit of energy produced from solar.
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Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m...
by skohan on Saturday November 06, 2021 @04:50AM
(#29128518)
Is this a distinction without a difference? If the climate impact of mining were truly priced in, is there any chance this activity would be remotely profitable?
Re:Swedish government agencies say energy-intensive crypto m...
by WanderPanda on Saturday November 06, 2021 @11:51AM
(#29131217)
Of course it would be remotely profitable for some of the miners. The difficulty adjustment is making the consensus kind of invariant of the total amount of energy used. Even security-wise Bitcoin would probably be fine at 1/10 or even 1/100 of its current power usage