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Re:Internet disrupted in Kazakhstan amid energy price protests by stefan_ on Wednesday January 05, 2022 @09:29AM (#29809359)
Where is the arbitrage? Mining crypto in Kazakhstan with subsidized energy can not do anything to reduce the MWh price in Germany. There is only up and up as energy is irrecoverably burned for crypto.

Even better, the price of crypto is so high that it can be profitably mined even in countries with very high consumer power prices. I want to see you travel to Kazakhstan and tell them that paying 35 cents per kWh now that all the production goes towards crypto has had the positive effect of eliminating inefficiencies - namely the consumption of people living there. You might not make it back alive.

Re:Internet disrupted in Kazakhstan amid energy price protests by SilasX on Wednesday January 05, 2022 @05:18PM (#29815875)
>Where is the arbitrage? Mining crypto in Kazakhstan with subsidized energy can not do anything to reduce the MWh price in Germany. There is only up and up as energy is irrecoverably burned for crypto.

I already said in the comment that it is "probably not possible everywhere". But to clarify that hypothetical, the arbitrage would be reselling the energy to whatever energy use-cases exist in Kazakhstan that aren't subsidized (which probably exist since it's unaffordable to subsidize energy everywhere in a country without bound).

Also, really? Is that your standard for the merit of an argument? Whether Kazakhstanis will kill you over it? I explained in detail how the efficiency manifests in another comment [1], and (also) already said it doesn't necessarily cancel the negative effects of crypto.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29809318

Re:Internet disrupted in Kazakhstan amid energy price protests by BlueTemplar on Wednesday January 05, 2022 @10:06AM (#29809845)
Price doesn't matter, profit does. And mining difficulty automatically adjusts to price so that the profit (also from transaction fees) tends to zero (whether from the top or from the bottom). I've seen the average Opex estimated at 60%, but that was some years ago...

(Also, an expectation of prices being higher than they "should" would mean that one has to consider an incoming crash and the whole operation should probably start getting wound down, so as not to be left holding the bag with now (almost) worthless cryptocurrencies and mining rigs. In that sense, yeah, you're probably better off staying closer to home, which I'll assume to be one of those "high consumer power price" countries.)