Chinese province stops Bitcoin mining and...

[dan_b]

... saw a reduction in electricity demand of 8GW.



Forgive the slightly "Zany" video presentation style!

Goodness me though - I knew cryptocurrency mining was being talked about as being a total power consumption disaster, but that really does illustrate it - that's more than the entire UK nuclear fleet. And that was only one part of China.

[AE-NMidlands]

more evidence of the environmental consequences of cryptocurrencies:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... ons-soared

Environmentalists in Montana called it the “death watch”. Following years of financial losses one of the handful of remaining coal-fired power plants in the state appeared doomed, its likely fate offering a small but noteworthy victory in the effort to avoid disastrous climate change. But then a bitcoin mining company stepped in to resurrect it.

The Hardin generating station, a 115-megawatt coal plant located a dozen miles from the historic site of the famous battle of Little Big Horn in southern Montana, was slated for closure in 2018 due to a lack of customers only to somehow limp on, operating on just 46 days in 2020. “We were just waiting for this thing to die,” said Anne Hedges, co-director of the Montana Environmental Information Center. “They were struggling and looking to close. It was on the brink. And then this cryptocurrency company came along.”

In a deal struck in late 2020, Marathon, a bitcoin “mining” company, became the sole recipient of the power station’s electricity. It established an elongated data center on 20 acres of land beside the facility that is packed with more than 30,000 Antminer S19 units, a specialized computer that mines for bitcoin. Such thirst for power is common in crypto – globally bitcoin mining consumes more electricity than Norway, a country of 5.3 million people.
As the bitcoin miners moved in last year, Hardin roared back to life. In the first nine months of 2021 alone, the plant’s boilers fired up on 236 separate days. Planet-heating emissions from the burning of Hardin’s coal soared too, with 187,000 tons of carbon dioxide emitted in the second quarter of last year, more than 5000% more than was expelled in the same period in 2020.

and

This race for bitcoin wealth gobbles up an enormous amount of electricity – around 0.5% of total global consumption. The energy used to mine bitcoin every 60 seconds would be enough to power the average American household for 17 years, while the annual electricity consumption for mining would be able to power all kettles used to boil water for tea in the UK for 28 years.

[Mr Gus]

Will read / watch shortly.
However, don't know about you lot but the mouth open in amazement (ala fully charged & half of youtube) simply P155 me off.

I'd really like to see the reports that say that style attacts more attenion of potential viewer numbers (well really, join the dots as to the age, attention span & duration of watch to completion when it starts with such vapid drivel)

It didn't work when Daz made their packaging flourescent orange, nor when super noodles followed "zany = success" it just tuned me off product that employs coked up non creatives, ..yup, even as a teen this would not have worked on me.

Actually, no, I won't watch it & add to the impression that this "works"

Guns, stick to em!

[marshman]

It's not just the power consumption, just think of the sheer number of computing devices they must have to consume that power and the resources (and waste) used to make them. Further in the video (which I did watch most of and at least was "punchy" and "fast moving" so no need to waste loads of time waiting for information to appear) they mentioned the effect on the GPU (graphics processor units - "chips" to you and me) market and prices.