It's So Cool When You Fuck The Climate & The Grid So Crypto-Bros Can Keep Ponzi Schemes Afloat!!
EDIT
In Bonner, Montana, a small city in Missoula County, the Bitcoin company HyperBlock set up in 2016 and almost immediately began cutting into the community’s supply of hydropower from the Salish-Kootenai Dam; County Commissioner Dave Strohmaier called the plant’s energy use “grotesque” and equal to as much as one-third of the county’s household demand. HyperBlock went bankrupt when Bitcoin plummeted at the start of the COVID pandemic. The county subsequently enacted a first-of-its-kind zoning ordinance requiring, among other things, that cryptominers supply their own, new renewable energy sources.
A similar scenario has played out in upstate New York. The region initially drew cryptominers with its abundant supply of cheap hydropower electricity from the 2.6 gigawatt Niagara Power Project. In 2017, when the Bitcoin company Coinmint set up in the vacant space behind the Family Dollar Store in Plattsburgh, a city of less than 20,000 residents, electricity costs were one-third of the national average. Bitcoin miners had registered as industrial consumers, says Colin Read, a professor of economics and finance at the State University of New York, Plattsburgh, who was also Plattsburgh’s mayor at the time. “And our industrial rate was less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour, which might be the lowest in the world.” But Plattsburgh, which manages its own municipal utility, also has a monthly quota for electricity use. If the city exceeds that quota, it has to go looking elsewhere for electricity, forcing everyone’s utility bills up. In the winter of 2018, residents who heated their homes with electricity saw costs rise 30 to 40 percent, according to Read.
EDIT
Neither energy consumption nor water nor Bitcoin’s volatility have deterred the elected leaders of Texas, who have welcomed the industry with effervescent enthusiasm. “Blockchain is a booming business Texas needs to be involved in,” Governor Greg Abbott tweeted last summer after signing into law a bill recognizing cryptocurrency in the state’s commercial code. (Texas was the second state to do so, after Wyoming.) And the miners have come, reveling in the state’s wide-open spaces, where the rattling fans that cool their hard-working rigs can operate without disturbing the neighbors, and abundant cheap energy keeps overhead low. Whereas once China hosted 75 percent of the crypto-mining business, now the United States is home to 40 percent of the activity, and one-quarter of it happens in Texas.
EDIT
Harris has insisted in news stories that mining only uses excess power when demand is light; when the grid is overloaded, ERCOT issues them credits for shutting down, which miners can do within minutes. In that way, he says, Riot’s participation in “demand response” can actually stabilize ERCOT’s unsettled and isolated grid. That’s at least partially true, says de Vries, the Dutch researcher. But the company’s participation in demand response isn’t exactly altruistic. Riot Blockchain’s filings with the Securities Exchange Commission, he points out, state plainly that the company will pay a mere 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour for its electricity, a full 10 to 11 cents less than the going residential rate. That figure “represents our contractual cost of power,” confirms Trystine Payfer, spokesperson for Riot Blockchain, minus the credits the company earns for participating in the utility’s “demand-response” program. That program is a sweet deal: It means that, when electricity supply is tight and Riot voluntarily shuts down, the company earns credits for power. If electricity prices shoot up to $9 per kilowatt hour, as they did during 2021’s winter storm, it might be more profitable to unplug from the grid than to keep mining Bitcoin.
EDIT
https://e360.yale.edu/features/bitcoins-intensive-energy-demands-spark-a-crypto-backlash