The anti-crypto thread

[BFG10K]

Great news, crypto's collapsing across the board: https://www.techpowerup.com/282380/...ions-in-less-than-24-hours-did-the-bubble-pop

Also China's banned crypto, though individuals can still have it: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-financial-payment-bodies-barred-122712260.html

The sooner this cancerous parasite is wiped out, the better.

 

[zinfamous]

"A store of value" that fluctuates wildly is not a store of value. It's a spectacularly wasteful form of gambling. Of course, anyone who doesn't see it as wonderful, doesn't understand it. Only true believers understand the value of crypto.

Just like I can't talk about guns around here anymore because I once typed "clip," I can't talk about crypto because I don't think it's essential or provides any real value to humanity (spoiler: it doesn't).

 

[MrSquished]

Just like I can't talk about guns around here anymore because I once typed "clip," I can't talk about crypto because I don't think it's essential or provides any real value to humanity (spoiler: it doesn't).

You can't criticize crypto because some people make money with it. Duh

 

[Muse]

crypto currency dunce here. Of course, I've been hearing about it again and again.

There was a segment on crypto currency on 60 Minutes last night, focused on an island, a beach community where, they said, a billionaire (?) investor through an intermediary, financed a crypto experiment. The small rather primitive community was relatively poor. A sophisticated middle aged surfer semi-retiree living and surfing there (I think that's a fair description) was tasked with implementing the plan and they got a fair percentage of the inhabitants to "buy into" the crypto game... accept crypto currency for services, etc. Not everybody's onboard, but it's working out for some, especially the younger people. Of course, the people involved have cell phones. I didn't feel like I learned a lot.

Now, I had the impression that Blockchain is something with a future, when I heard about it maybe 3 years ago. Is that false? Is that destined for the trash heap? Is crypto currency a dying idea?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Blockchain has a present and future. It isn't going away anytime soon. Whether or not "crypto currency" as we know it survives is less clear.

 

[ultimatebob]

Blockchain has a present and future. It isn't going away anytime soon. Whether or not "crypto currency" as we know it survives is less clear.

There are hundreds of different cryptocurrencies right now, and realistically there is probably a real market for about 5 of them. It will be interesting to see which ones will succeed and become the one true Jesuscoin that everyone follows.

 

[Zorba]

Well, even crypto fanboys should recognize that the Bitcoin process for processing block chain transactions consumes an unnecessary amount of electrical power (and, no, those miners running 7/24 are not consuming just 'green' energy). It should make sense for everybody to be in favor of changes to reduce our consumption of energy whatever it is being used for. I haven't heard anything to suggest that Bitcoin will be moving to a less energy intensive proof of service as Etherium is. I hope Bitcoin follows that route soon.

I am not anti-crypto any more than I am anti-gold, anti-diamonds, anti-lottery tickets or anti-tulip bulbs. However, the value of all of these things seems to be more in the eye of the beholder than in their intrinsic usefulness. The more steps I have to go through to turn something into a loaf of bread, the less confident I am in its value. That is one of the main reason I haven't bought into Bitcoin as an investment.

The advisors who support crypto investing still generally recommend allocating only a very small percentage to crypto and warn that it is a very risky investment that may deliver big gains or big losses. This doesn't sound like a 'storer of value' to me.

In some ways, the very things that enthusiasts put forward as the advantages of crypto are the same things that make me suspicious of it. Perhaps time (another decade of it) will prove me wrong.

Even if it was all green power, that is green power that isn't being used elsewhere. Until we have widespread, cheap fusion power we need to focus on efficient use of power.

 

[Red Squirrel]

If people generate power then they should be able to use it for what they want. It can be cost prohibitive and full of red tape to connect to the grid. Especially something large scale like a hydro dam, but even a small solar setup. I heard of some mining operations actually buying a dam and generating their own power. I say good for them.

 

[Brainonska511]

If people generate power then they should be able to use it for what they want. It can be cost prohibitive and full of red tape to connect to the grid. Especially something large scale like a hydro dam, but even a small solar setup. I heard of some mining operations actually buying a dam and generating their own power. I say good for them.

Just because people can do something doesn't mean we should let them. The externalities of power generation and and the opportunity cost of using that power for crypto should certainly be considered. We could be using that power generation to move more of the grid off fossil fuels.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Just because people can do something doesn't mean we should let them. The externalities of power generation and and the opportunity cost of using that power for crypto should certainly be considered. We could be using that power generation to move more of the grid off fossil fuels.

So if I build a 100kw+ solar plant are you going to pay my cost to run a 135kv line to the nearest existing one and pay for the power I generate?

 

[MrSquished]

If people generate power then they should be able to use it for what they want. It can be cost prohibitive and full of red tape to connect to the grid. Especially something large scale like a hydro dam, but even a small solar setup. I heard of some mining operations actually buying a dam and generating their own power. I say good for them.

What's your point? The vast vast majority of miners don't generate any of their power

 

[Zorba]

So if I build a 100kw+ solar plant are you going to pay my cost to run a 135kv line to the nearest existing one and pay for the power I generate?

This is a red herring. If you are off the grid somewhere, and build solar or wind on your property whatever. If you are taking power off the grid, or taking land that would otherwise go to grid generation, then no you can't do whatever you want with it.

I seriously doubt much mining is done off grid with 100% green power.

 

[gorobei]

This is a red herring. If you are off the grid somewhere, and build solar or wind on your property whatever. If you are taking power off the grid, or taking land that would otherwise go to grid generation, then no you can't do whatever you want with it.

I seriously doubt much mining is done off grid with 100% green power.

actually the smart money miners were moving to iceland(geo-thermal) and PacNW(hydro) as far back as 2014/15, it was mainly china and a few other places that were mining on non-optimal dirty power because either they werent free to move or couldnt afford to. there were plenty of articles on it at the time. even now texas(wind) and i think colorado(hydro?) are trying to court miners with green power. there was even a coal plant in the south-east that was mining during off demand hours to keep their peaker turbines operating at a profit.

the part most people dont get is most power is ad hoc, produced at the time of. none of it gets stored, so whatever is being produced either gets used or gets wasted. power generation is by turbine, so it is integer based. most are built to operate at a fixed speed to generate 60hz(usa) so you cant run them faster to increase output. you have to spin up another turbine during peak hours, hence peaker plants.

if demand is say 12 turbines in offpeak and 15.1 in peak hours, the power company has to spin up 16 turbines and all the extra electricty goes unused/wasted. the company therefore goes to great lengths to accurately forecast demand to figure out exactly how many turbines they need at all hours. if they can find clients who have consistent/constant demand to sell that power to it is worth it. they could run a peaker turbine in off peak hours selling the power to a miner and avoid the effort/wear of spinning up and down.

the ability to sell what was previously wasted extra output makes previously expensive peaker usage profitable. this can result in lower prices for residences in the area. there is a news article about a utility that brought a previously unprofitable hydro plant back online because miners brought enough demand. miners in green power areas effectively subsidize development.

with china banning crypto the large majority of dirty power miners were forced to move. since you have to move anyway, those that could afford to moved to places with cheap power(just like the guys in 2014/15) which was more likely to be green. there were a few who couldnt move that far and ended up in kazakhstan, most of those were older less powerful asic miners.

the main problem is there is no accurate survey of exactly who is mining where on what power source. most news reports quote the same group that comes out with a sensational back of napkin math number on crypto power usage, but never shows the exact numbers or breakdown. they supposedly use the number eth nodes and approximate from there.

 

[Zorba]

actually the smart money miners were moving to iceland(geo-thermal) and PacNW(hydro) as far back as 2014/15, it was mainly china and a few other places that were mining on non-optimal dirty power because either they werent free to move or couldnt afford to. there were plenty of articles on it at the time. even now texas(wind) and i think colorado(hydro?) are trying to court miners with green power. there was even a coal plant in the south-east that was mining during off demand hours to keep their peaker turbines operating at a profit.

the part most people dont get is most power is ad hoc, produced at the time of. none of it gets stored, so whatever is being produced either gets used or gets wasted. power generation is by turbine, so it is integer based. most are built to operate at a fixed speed to generate 60hz(usa) so you cant run them faster to increase output. you have to spin up another turbine during peak hours, hence peaker plants.

if demand is say 12 turbines in offpeak and 15.1 in peak hours, the power company has to spin up 16 turbines and all the extra electricty goes unused/wasted. the company therefore goes to great lengths to accurately forecast demand to figure out exactly how many turbines they need at all hours. if they can find clients who have consistent/constant demand to sell that power to it is worth it. they could run a peaker turbine in off peak hours selling the power to a miner and avoid the effort/wear of spinning up and down.

the ability to sell what was previously wasted extra output makes previously expensive peaker usage profitable. this can result in lower prices for residences in the area. there is a news article about a utility that brought a previously unprofitable hydro plant back online because miners brought enough demand. miners in green power areas effectively subsidize development.

with china banning crypto the large majority of dirty power miners were forced to move. since you have to move anyway, those that could afford to moved to places with cheap power(just like the guys in 2014/15) which was more likely to be green. there were a few who couldnt move that far and ended up in kazakhstan, most of those were older less powerful asic miners.

the main problem is there is no accurate survey of exactly who is mining where on what power source. most news reports quote the same group that comes out with a sensational back of napkin math number on crypto power usage, but never shows the exact numbers or breakdown. they supposedly use the number eth nodes and approximate from there.

As someone that has designed gas turbine engines, you really don't understand how they actually work. More load equates to more drag on the generator, which adds more drag to the turbine, requiring more fuel to keep it turning at the required speed. Just like an AC motor, more load, more drag, more current to maintain speed. Some power plants can adjust to the load very quickly, others slowly, but they can adjust. A 500MW power plant isn't sitting there pumping out 500MW regardless of demand and dumping excess to a resister bank when no is using the power.

You are right they have to have enough turbines spinning to meet the peak demand for a given time period and there are idling costs associated with that, but they are not binary off/on systems. We should be moving loads such as car charging to off peak times to help flatten the demand curve, if we actually cared about being green.

Regardless, miners are using green power that could be going to other purposes if they weren't using it. Think you can waste power just because it's renewable, if just like thing excessive waste is fine as long as it goes into a recycling bin or you can eat a cupcake because you ran a mile (there is a specific name for this, but I can't remember what it is). If we add 1GW of green power to the grid, but use it to justify increasing our demand by 500MW, we have only actually removed 500MW of fossil fuels, not 1000MW.

 

[gorobei]

As someone that has designed gas turbine engines, you really don't understand how they actually work. More load equates to more drag on the generator, which adds more drag to the turbine, requiring more fuel to keep it turning at the required speed. Just like an AC motor, more load, more drag, more current to maintain speed. Some power plants can adjust to the load very quickly, others slowly, but they can adjust. A 500MW power plant isn't sitting there pumping out 500MW regardless of demand and dumping excess to a resister bank when no is using the power.

You are right they have to have enough turbines spinning to meet the peak demand for a given time period and there are idling costs associated with that, but they are not binary off/on systems. We should be moving loads such as car charging to off peak times to help flatten the demand curve, if we actually cared about being green.

Regardless, miners are using green power that could be going to other purposes if they weren't using it. Think you can waste power just because it's renewable, if just like thing excessive waste is fine as long as it goes into a recycling bin or you can eat a cupcake because you ran a mile (there is a specific name for this, but I can't remember what it is). If we add 1GW of green power to the grid, but use it to justify increasing our demand by 500MW, we have only actually removed 500MW of fossil fuels, not 1000MW.

yes i know about turbine load(went down a rabbit hole on why power distribution is measured in ms, and a bunch of vids on how the network balances multiple turbines in non-intuitive ways) but most people arent going to sit around for 30 min to grok through that.

each type of plant has its own way of adjusting, for the stuff i was researching hydro/geo-thermal the main point was that peak demand was met by opening a valve to the idle turbines. gas/coal/oil have their own procedures for peaker plants and the complexity-expense for the combined cycle types sounds like a nightmare.

load balancing has gotten to the point that utilities are trying to adjust demand rather than supply by offering incentive programs to residential customers where you get a notice on your phone app that tells you to lower your power usage. if enough do, they can avoid firing the peaker and pass on the savings to the customer.

the thing about miners and green power is that the majority of wind/solar/alt power is still on the slightly more expensive than fossil with subsidies (coal still manages to be the cheapest in some situations due to historical infrastructure). in order for some of the green types to get over the startup expenses and cross over into profitable/expansion phase, they need large constant demand. residential and even commercial dont have that kind of 24/7 demand, and major industrial have already moved to the cheap source locations and arent likely to move (expand maybe, but not move). miners are one of the few that will pay for that power, and more importantly the profitability of crypto is enough to allow them to pay for it. those other more politically acceptable uses cant pay that much so they arent an economically viable option for the utility.

 

[biostud]

The thing is, as long as it is not stable, it will not be used as a currency, and if any of the current cryptocurrencies get stable, they are not interesting as an investment/gambling product.

 

[ultimatebob]

The thing is, as long as it is not stable, it will not be used as a currency, and if any of the current cryptocurrencies get stable, they are not interesting as an investment/gambling product.

True, but I could argue that the US dollar isn't all that stable right now, and people are still reluctantly using it

 

[sdifox]

True, but I could argue that the US dollar isn't all that stable right now, and people are still reluctantly using it

your argument is wrong.

 

[ultimatebob]

your argument is wrong.

Are you sure? Inflation is up to 9% this year. If you were dumb enough to sign a long term contract to build something last year for a fixed dollar amount, you're kinda getting screwed right now. Your material and labor costs went up roughly 10%, but the check you're getting at the end of the project didn't.

It's the "Bitcoin is not a currency because it doesn't have a stable value" argument, but on a smaller scale.

 

[sdifox]

Are you sure? Inflation is up to 9% this year. If you were dumb enough to sign a long term contract to build something last year for a fixed dollar amount, you're kinda getting screwed right now. Your material and labor costs went up roughly 10%, but the check you're getting at the end of the project didn't.

It's the "Bitcoin is not a currency because it doesn't have a stable value" argument, but on a smaller scale.

Inflation has to do with confidence in a currency how?

 

[biostud]

True, but I could argue that the US dollar isn't all that stable right now, and people are still reluctantly using it

The dollar is quite stable, the inflation is not mainly driven by "printing dollars" but rather increased energy costs, and other bottlenecks in the market.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

The thing is, as long as it is not stable, it will not be used as a currency, and if any of the current cryptocurrencies get stable, they are not interesting as an investment/gambling product.

They are by default used as the currencies to process single state changes on their respective networks. They're not aiming to be used as "fiat replacement" currencies to buy a cup of coffee. Not when USDC runs on top of these networks... things changed a lot after Ethereum... more than 5 years ago.

 

[PowerEngineer]

yes i know about turbine load(went down a rabbit hole on why power distribution is measured in ms, and a bunch of vids on how the network balances multiple turbines in non-intuitive ways) but most people arent going to sit around for 30 min to grok through that.

each type of plant has its own way of adjusting, for the stuff i was researching hydro/geo-thermal the main point was that peak demand was met by opening a valve to the idle turbines. gas/coal/oil have their own procedures for peaker plants and the complexity-expense for the combined cycle types sounds like a nightmare.

load balancing has gotten to the point that utilities are trying to adjust demand rather than supply by offering incentive programs to residential customers where you get a notice on your phone app that tells you to lower your power usage. if enough do, they can avoid firing the peaker and pass on the savings to the customer.

the thing about miners and green power is that the majority of wind/solar/alt power is still on the slightly more expensive than fossil with subsidies (coal still manages to be the cheapest in some situations due to historical infrastructure). in order for some of the green types to get over the startup expenses and cross over into profitable/expansion phase, they need large constant demand. residential and even commercial dont have that kind of 24/7 demand, and major industrial have already moved to the cheap source locations and arent likely to move (expand maybe, but not move). miners are one of the few that will pay for that power, and more importantly the profitability of crypto is enough to allow them to pay for it. those other more politically acceptable uses cant pay that much so they arent an economically viable option for the utility.

I have groked through these issues for more years than I wish to acknowledge, and so will offer some feedback on your argument.

As you suggest, it is always a challenge to balance the minute-to-minute generation and load across an electrical system (and there effectively only three covering most of North America). Imbalances quickly result in deviations from the 60 Hz nominal value; deviations beyond a few tenths of a hertz will trigger load or generation tripping (and perhaps lead to uncontrolled black outs). Traditionally, users of electricity have been allowed to choose the timing and amount of the energy they demand -- and the electric utilities adjusted the outputs from their generators to match their demands. Reliance on renewable generation challenges this paradigm because its outputs are based on what mother nature is kind enough to supply at any particular moment (you can decide to generate less than possible but no one likes to do that as it is an irretrievable lost opportunity ). This leaves utilities with less controllable generation to balance the electrical systems, and that is why there is so much interest in compensating with controllable loads.

When it comes to the adoption of greater amounts of renewable generation, what electric utilities really need are customer loads that are (or can be) shaped to better match the intermittent outputs from wind and solar plants. In other words, loads that can go away when the wind isn't blowing and/or the sun isn't shining. Large, constant demands are the LAST thing needed.

FWIW, those "smart" miners are moving to the Pacific Northwest to take advantage of lower rates subsidized by power generated at federal hydro projects. Any cheap power they receive through locating in a subsidized area is just taking that cheap power away from others in the region. There is no hydro power in the Northwest that is being spilled for lack of demand.

 

[BFG10K]

More great news!

Crypto Trading Volumes in India Collapse 10 Days After New Tax: Crebaco

The volume on WazirX, the country's largest exchange, has plunged by 72%.

www.coindesk.com

EU bans high-value crypto-asset services to Russia for closing potential loopholes in existing restrictions - Times of India

Cryptocurrency News: The European Commission, in a continued series of sanctions against Russia, announced and introduced the fifth package of restrictive measures against.

timesofindia.indiatimes.com

https://tickernews.co/250-billion-crypto-crash-which-digital-tokens-have-taken-the-plunge/

https://tickernews.co/former-ethereum-developer-virgil-griffith-sentenced-to-63-months/

 

[ultimatebob]

Crypto seems to have fallen into a trading range now. Every time I look, Bitcoin is around $40,000, Ethereum is around $3,000, Solana is around $100, and Dogecoin is around 14 cents.

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Was thinking about crpyto.

The problem is there is no moat. There is nothing preventing from new currencies from appearing. And seeing how inventing one and taking a bunch of "coins" for yourself can be an easy money grab ....... there's aot of motivation to do so.

So over time there will be more and more competitors all fighting over a fixed cash dollar equivalent.