23-year-old Texans made $4M last year mining BTC off flare gas from oil drilling

Re:23-year-old Texans made $4M last year mining BTC off flar... by jtsiskin on Sunday February 13, 2022 @01:13AM (#30319703)

Taxes should provide the reason to rein in fugitive emissions. If the negative externalities were properly priced in, they would already be reducing the methane pollution. I’m pretty skeptical they are “creating value” - at this point increasing the hash rate adds approximately 0 marginal security.

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Re:23-year-old Texans made $4M last year mining BTC off flar... by xyzzy123 on Sunday February 13, 2022 @03:48AM (#30320319)

I think the relevant taxes might be fairly difficult and expensive to enforce.

Agree it seems to only be a net win if it displaces other, even more wasteful mining.

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Re:23-year-old Texans made $4M last year mining BTC off flar... by bagacrap on Sunday February 13, 2022 @12:52PM (#30323756)

if you can find a way to turn methane into something useful (ie sellable) that will probably work better than taxes, because it applies regardless of jurisdiction and because taxes can always be cheated (e.g underreport your emissions) whereas corporations will always earnestly chase profits

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