Crypto Currency Mining a Giant Pyramid Scheme?

[Short_Shot]

I made a typo in my maths. Anyways carrying on.

The R.E. Ginna plant in the US is 581MW.
Produces almost 5 million MWh annually, or 5B KWH.

So we'd need... in the US alone, to get 280B KWh, 56 of those.

HOLY CRAP im full of stupid typos today.

 

[Short_Shot]

Oh but the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant design is 13.7x (7,965 MW) the output of that example so you'd only need 4 of those to make up the difference.

And the 3 gorges dam is 39 GW. 67x the output.

So you'd only need 1 of those and you'd have tons of overhead.

Edit: another source puts 3 gorges at 22.5GW so that's like 1 and a half of those to cover the increase from residential cars.

 

[Short_Shot]

So 4 power plants for 280 million cars in the US.

So one plant is good for ~70 million EVs.

Take that out worldwide to 1.4 billion cars TOTAL and you're looking at 20 nuclear plants necessary globally.

If you want to use a smaller power plant design which is more common you can say 40 plants globally.

Certainly not hundreds or thousands.


That was fun.

 

[A.Justice]

Hard currency has a backer. If it's backed by a responsible country or not is another question.
No country backs Bitcoins although I think China use to. No country depends on Bitcoins to keep itself afloat.
If it nose dives it's only those owners spread across the globe that got stuck with it that will cry.

IMHO, that's only partially true. Bitcoin is backed in some ways by every fiat currency on the market. It can easily be bought and sold on exchanges for "real" money; which to me means that it does have some sort of "backing", even if it's not official.

Bitcoin, in my opinion, is just something to gamble with now-a-days. It USED to be for buying drugs, guns, and children, but like mentioned above, it can be easily traced now. You can make some serious money trading it against other currency's, but it's not exactly a useful thing in itself.

 

[Short_Shot]

IMHO, that's only partially true. Bitcoin is backed in some ways by every fiat currency on the market. It can easily be bought and sold on exchanges for "real" money; which to me means that it does have some sort of "backing", even if it's not official.

Bitcoin, in my opinion, is just something to gamble with now-a-days. It USED to be for buying drugs, guns, and children, but like mentioned above, it can be easily traced now. You can make some serious money trading it against other currency's, but it's not exactly a useful thing in itself.

It actually can't be easily traced unless you use common online wallets. That part has not changed.

 

[A.Justice]

It actually can't be easily traced unless you use common online wallets. That part has not changed.

You may not be able to trace the OWNER of the coin if it hasn't gone through an exchange, but you can definitely trace the coin itself very easily on the blockchain. Eventually you have to cash that money out for fiat currency, so somewhere along the line it's going to go through in exchange with somebody's name on it. It's definitely not as "anonymous" as people think.

Most of the underground economy started using Monero a few years ago, at this point the primary use of Bitcoin is for trading. There's other currencies that are designed for privacy, but Bitcoin did pave the way.

 

[Lt.Dan]

This has become a great little thread. I will admit I have started mining Ravencoin because I have so much excess PV in these colder months, to the point where I'm only using 6-9KWh per day, and wasting a potential 20KWh. That excess used to be used for AC in the summer. So I started putting my excess solar to work and its made some extra money. Am I going to be rich? Hell no. But I can take my wife out to dinner every once in a while.

 

[robby]

What is the energy cost of the stock market, credit card companies, banks, and all other financial work done for and around the US Dollar, for comparison?

Those are Entities that One hire people and create a whole sector of our economy and Two they are working with a Tangible item "Money" that at the end of the day finances everything! Not Quantum Pixie Dust which is kept in a server and is rarely used for any practical application.

 

[robby]

Well damn, shut down all those one arm bandits in Vegas!
Energy is generated and paid for. Its a business. I am sure they like folks using energy so they can bill them.
What energy companies dont like is people buliding solar farms to run bitcoin miners.

Casinos generate Jobs for lots of people. You can go down as far as Liquor companies that make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales or to the farmer that grows the flour that is used in the pastries they serve to you or just look at the thousands of people who work directly at the Casinos.

Energy companies probably love Bitcoin Miners. Most people are not running them on Solar, they are running them from the grid in areas where energy is cheap and typically powered by coal.

 

[Short_Shot]

Casinos generate Jobs for lots of people. You can go down as far as Liquor companies that make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales or to the farmer that grows the flour that is used in the pastries they serve to you or just look at the thousands of people who work directly at the Casinos.

Energy companies probably love Bitcoin Miners. Most people are not running them on Solar, they are running them from the grid in areas where energy is cheap and typically powered by coal.

Power companies employ people too last I checked.

And indirectly all the manufacturing and support staff for every industry involved in building the equipment.

So is that really your debate point lol

Yay utility jobs for everyone!

 

[robby]

Power companies employ people too last I checked.

And indirectly all the manufacturing and support staff for every industry involved in building the equipment.

So is that really your debate point lol

Yay utility jobs for everyone!

It's not about power companies it's about the fact that Bitcoin creation uses as much power per year as Ireland or Hong Kong uses in a year and it produces virtually nothing in return. I guess the companies that make the mining machines hire some people.

 

[Short_Shot]

It's not about power companies it's about the fact that Bitcoin creation uses as much power per year as Ireland or Hong Kong uses in a year and it produces virtually nothing in return. I guess the companies that make the mining machines hire some people.

I'm sure they hire a lot of people. That's a complex industry.

And all the other hardware companies.

 

[robby]

Replace every gas station in the world with an EV charging station. Then do the math.

Your doing a modeling assessment based on poor info. I wont bother go into the math as that has already been done by @Short_Shot. For the most part Gas stations will not be as plentiful as they are today. I suspect most companies will install several Level 2 & 3 chargers in their employees parking lots. Shopping malls will also be another place charging will happen, but the vast majority will be from peoples homes.

 

[Short_Shot]

Your doing a modeling assessment based on poor info. I wont bother go into the math as that has already been done by @Short_Shot. For the most part Gas stations will not be as plentiful as they are today. I suspect most companies will install several Level 2 & 3 chargers in their employees parking lots. Shopping malls will also be another place charging will happen, but the vast majority will be from peoples homes.

Even still. Even if everyone had a level 3 supercharger the average driver puts on 25 ish miles per day. Not much by way of kwh.

 

[robby]

I'm sure they hire a lot of people. That's a complex industry.

And all the other hardware companies.

Not really, the Graphics cards had a market already and the mining machines are really very simple devices that are made up of over priced parts. It's less difficult than making a PC in terms of labor and they are not sold in huge numbers like PC's use to be.

 

[robby]

IMHO, that's only partially true. Bitcoin is backed in some ways by every fiat currency on the market. It can easily be bought and sold on exchanges for "real" money; which to me means that it does have some sort of "backing", even if it's not official.

Bitcoin, in my opinion, is just something to gamble with now-a-days. It USED to be for buying drugs, guns, and children, but like mentioned above, it can be easily traced now. You can make some serious money trading it against other currency's, but it's not exactly a useful thing in itself.

The interesting thing about that is I that I had that same argument with a guy on another forum and I looked very hard on the Internet for companies willing to buy Bitcoins. What I found is that everyone is willing to sell but I could only find a few buyers and they all had limits of $20K per customer in purchases. I am sure there must be places that will buy more than that but it does not seem easy to find them.

 

[Short_Shot]

Not really, the Graphics cards had a market already and the mining machines are really very simple devices that are made up of over priced parts. It's less difficult than making a PC in terms of labor and they are not sold in huge numbers like PC's use to be.

And yet, chip makers are hiring and expanding at record pace right now lol

 

[A.Justice]

The interesting thing about that is I that I had that same argument with a guy on another forum and I looked very hard on the Internet for companies willing to buy Bitcoins. What I found is that everyone is willing to sell but I could only find a few buyers and they all had limits of $20K per customer in purchases. I am sure there must be places that will buy more than that but it does not seem easy to find them.

I use Kraken. You send Bitcoin to your wallet address and can cash it out to a bank. My limits are something like 500k a day.

Edit: But that is of course traceable to my name.

 

[Sanwizard]

Your doing a modeling assessment based on poor info. I wont bother go into the math as that has already been done by @Short_Shot. For the most part Gas stations will not be as plentiful as they are today. I suspect most companies will install several Level 2 & 3 chargers in their employees parking lots. Shopping malls will also be another place charging will happen, but the vast majority will be from peoples homes.

Ahhh, I see. You want free energy subsidized by big companies and shopping malls.

Yup, 3.5 Trillion is free!

 

[Lt.Dan]

Ahhh, I see. You want free energy subsidized by big companies and shopping malls.

Yup, 3.5 Trillion is free!

Why would it be free? Just like paid parking, you pay to charge?