Crypto Miners in Kazakhstan Face Bitter Winter of Power Cuts (ft.com) 135
Illegal miners and mass relocations after a ban on crypto mining in China have overloaded energy grid. From a report: Matthew Heard, a software engineer from San Jose, is worried about his 33 bitcoin mining machines in Kazakhstan. In the past week, they kept getting shut off in an attempt by the national grid to limit the power being used by crypto miners. "It has been days since my machines have been online," he said. "During the last week, even if my machines do come on, they barely stay on." Kazakhstan has been struggling to cope with the huge popularity of crypto mining, driven this year partly by the steep rise in value of cryptocurrencies and partly by a mass migration of miners to its borders after China made mining illegal in May.
After three major power plants in the north of the country went into emergency shutdown last month the state grid operator, Kegoc, warned that it would start rationing power to the 50 crypto miners that are registered with the government, and said they would be "isconnected first" if the grid suffers problems. Heard set up in Kazakhstan in August and his machines are managed by Enegix, a company that rents out space to run crypto mining machines. He said his income has dropped from an average of $1,200 worth of bitcoin per day to $800 in October, and in the past week his machines have only been on for 55 per cent of the time. Machine owners are not notified when shutdowns are going to happen or when they will go back online, he said.
After three major power plants in the north of the country went into emergency shutdown last month the state grid operator, Kegoc, warned that it would start rationing power to the 50 crypto miners that are registered with the government, and said they would be "isconnected first" if the grid suffers problems. Heard set up in Kazakhstan in August and his machines are managed by Enegix, a company that rents out space to run crypto mining machines. He said his income has dropped from an average of $1,200 worth of bitcoin per day to $800 in October, and in the past week his machines have only been on for 55 per cent of the time. Machine owners are not notified when shutdowns are going to happen or when they will go back online, he said.
Insert relevant (Score:1)
Borat reference here.
Re:Insert relevant (Score:4, Funny)
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If I had the mod point to give I'd add the Funny. Maybe you should start an emoji quest to help your humor evade Poe's Law? I missed most of the jokes on the first reading, but then I noticed the handle and looked more deeply.
What about regular people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about regular people? (Score:5, Informative)
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It doesn't have to be a waste, if the miners pay to build more power plants and other things by paying more per kilowatt (after someone consumes more than a certain number of kilowatts in a day they have to pay 3x) it can be a positive.
...until the value tanks (Score:1)
It doesn't have to be a waste, if the miners pay to build more power plants and other things by paying more per kilowatt (after someone consumes more than a certain number of kilowatts in a day they have to pay 3x) it can be a positive.
Until the value tanks - at which point the result would be half-built power plants being abandoned or requiring tax-payer funded "bailouts" - in other words, still a <drumroll....> waste!
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Oh yeah, thank you crypto people SO MUCH for your insistence on building more "newly built green ones" in Iceland, which means damming up our rivers and drowning our canyons [verkis.is] and waterfalls [optimole.com] so that you can all gamble on "digital gold". We're oh-so appreciative! (/snark)
Re: ...until the value tanks (Score:2)
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That's a lot of ifs. Let's deal with things how they are, not how we think they should be.
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That's a lot of ifs. Let's deal with things how they are, not how we think they should be.
I count one "if":
It doesn't have to be a waste, if the miners pay to build more power plants and other things by paying more per kilowatt (after someone consumes more than a certain number of kilowatts in a day they have to pay 3x) it can be a positive.
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So if they shutdown, problem solved .. right?
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Re: What about regular people? (Score:5, Informative)
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Just ban coal if that's what you want. Don't blame crypto for it.
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After the miners build the plants with their capital they can use all the power they built.
Power plants have to be fueled, fuel costs money, users pay that money, so... the miners can pay for new power plants to be built and then the fuel to generate the electricity to power their rigs, then use those rigs to mine currency, then use that currency to pay for that electricity, which pays for more fuel and plant maintenance, and ...
What's the time frame to build all that out and on their ROI to break even and start making a profit? Maybe if they're hydro, geothermal and/or solar power plants tha
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Who needs ROI ...
Well they need to at least make (some of) their money back on such a huge expense for it to make any sense. Otherwise, it would simply be cheaper to keep going as-is or move somewhere where power is less expensive.
Re: What about regular people? (Score:2)
And "winter without juice" means death. Not that the cryptoloons care about this.
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If and only if they are solar, geothermal, wind, or nuclear.
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If and only if they are solar, geothermal, wind, or nuclear.
You think cryptocurrency miners will be able to afford to build, fuel and maintain a nuclear power plant? :-)
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It's a waste because what they mine is worthless.
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"Bitcoin has a monetary value associated with it. That's rather the opposite of worthless."
How many NFTs do you own & how much did you pay for them?
People will associate a monetary value with just about anything.
Yet most of that is still worthless.
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How many NFTs do you own & how much did you pay for them?
I don't own any, and see no reason to.
Yet most of that is still worthless.
It's not my place, or yours, to decide for others what matters to them.
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"It's not my place, or yours, to decide for others what matters to them"
If it has deleterious impact on others, then they have a say wrt its worth.
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If it has deleterious impact on others, then they have a say wrt its worth.
Yes, and no. You don't have the right to decide for them what it's worth to them. You do have the right to take actions to curtail it in general, but that is not the same thing.
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Yeah but isnt it interesting that you have never called for the ending of art galleries
Leaving aside your ignorant presumption, I assure you I would if they were a potential harm to public infrastructure.
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"You're not the center of the world"
Nor are freeloading miners producing nothing of value while harming public infrastructure.
"And even so, if you had credentials for wallet with 10 BTC I doubt you'd just dump them into trash"
Hard to say but I've had several opportunities to get into crypto mining, long before it needed specialized ASICs and that despite knowing several who'd made over $100k each.
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And what is "monetary value"?
Money is an IOU to be exchanged for goods and services rather than something desirable in and of itself. If it's something desirable in and of itself, but lacking functionality, then it's a collectible.
You can decide amongst yourselves which you think cryptocurrencies are. But to reiterate re: money, it is not itself the goods and services being desired. There is no inherent need for the production of money to involve any significant resources at all. Yet cryptocurrencies tend
Re: What about regular people? (Score:2)
"Bitcoin has a monetary value associated with it. That's rather the opposite of worthless. "
The worth only exists in people minds. A poopy piece of toilet paper is worth billions of dollars if you can get enough people to believe it is.
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Re: What about regular people? (Score:2)
In the end, mother nature does not care about silly pieces of paper, or numbers inside machines and people's head.
When there is a huge disaster, the only things of true value are medical supplies, food, water, and shelter. The only value money has at that point is as kindling to start a life saving campfire.
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Re: What about regular people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, he's pissing and moaning because his cut-rate operation is being throttled so that some poor bastard who makes less in a year than this clown "mines" in 2 days can keep the heat on.
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Instead, he's pissing and moaning because his cut-rate operation is being throttled so that some poor bastard who makes less in a year than this clown "mines" in 2 days can keep the heat on.
He's probably pissing and moaning because he is paying the same price for electricity as everyone else in the area, but the government decided that he "does not need the electricity as much as others". He probably was not even told that ahead of time, probably when he was setting up the government was "you want to give us money? Awesome, here is your permit, we hope you use a lot of electricity and pay us a lot of money".
If I had enough miners to warrant hosting them in another place, I would be looking for
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Iceland. Unless they've halted starts on BTC mining operations.
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Their currency value is irrelevant. They have an excellent environment for datacenters, BTC mining operations, etc. There are already BTC miners there. Just not sure how many more that they'll allow.
Re: What about regular people? (Score:3)
"but the government decided that he "does not need the electricity as much as others""
It shows the government has a bit of common sense.
Cryptobro, or a family who wants to survive through the winter?
This is not entirely from the kindness of their hearts; more like self preservation. No government wants to face down an angry populace ready to cut off their heads.
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This is a normal decision by the government (though an even better decision would be to build enough power plants so that there would be enough electricity, but that cannot be done right now).
However, that could have been communicated better. "You want to set up bitcoin mining? Cool. Normally businesses pay X for electricity, but we will sell it to you cheaper (Y), on the condition that if there is a problem, we will shut off your power for up to Z days per month)."
Mining is very sensitive to electricity pr
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There was a story here, on /. about a bunch of Canadian Crypto Miners that were privately funding a solar farm on Indian Reservation land - the article was written from the "woe are the Indians who struggle without reliable electricity on the reservation" perspective.
See: https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
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So won't supply and demand kick in (Score:2)
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They can pay for them with bitcoin -- oh, wait...
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Only if the power plants use renewable energy, otherwise they are just mortgaging our future for their immediate gain. Fuck'em.
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It's worse than that. It's not just the miners.
The Bitcoin Bros, even the non-miners, have convinced themselves that proof of stake is "centralizing", and proof of work isn't. It's part of their religion; you can't reason them out of it.
Bitcoin is ossified, obsolete first-generation technology, and the whole Bitcoin community fights to keep it that way. They don't give a fuck about applications, anyway. Beyond lip service, they gave up on being a currency years ago. All they care about is speculation on the
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It took them around four years to get Schnorr signatures approved for the main net.
Four years!
BTC is old hat. Time to move on. Were it not for clueless investors, BTC would already be dead.
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It doesn't have to be a waste, if the miners pay to build more power plants
That's still a waste for the environment.
And the original statement was made as if it were just that simple. What's the time frame to build a new power plant, what's the cost to keep it fueled (assuming it's not 100% renewable) and maintained? What's the time frame to recoup those expenses and make a profit or just break even? Can they mine enough coin for all that and have enough left over to make any difference? Building more power plants is a HUGE, long-term commitment, with lots of money going out for a long time before any ROI and, quite
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Kazakstan should have a sliding scale for electricity consumption per individual, with exemptions for manufacturing companies. That way, they can pay to build more infrastructure, housing, and power plants (hopefully green,) and everyone will benefit from that. They'll need those power plants to power future electric cars and things like that.
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It's very difficult, and takes infrastructure and time, to enable a sliding scale. We should also not underestimate the willingness of crypto-currency miners to steal electricity by lying about its use. The amount of theft, by hosting the mining on other people's systems without permission or simply defrauding power companies is astonishing. It's happening in China and Inda, where low-cost subsidized power is being "re-invested" by cryptocurrency miners for personal profit. I'm afraid it will continue to gr
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The subsidy wouldn't be needed for so long if some foreign bitcoin abusers weren't tapping the system for 30% of its capacities and taking the generated wealth right out of the local economy. The complete electricity demand for Kazakhstan grew by roughly 8% this last year, rather then expected one or two percent. That means power outages and cold homes in this year's sub-zero Fahrenheit winter.
Telliing an entire nation, which has taxed local people to build utilities for local residents and businesses, to j
Re:What about regular people? (Score:5, Insightful)
Matthew Heard, a software engineer from San Jose, is worried about his 33 bitcoin mining machines in Kazakhstan. In the past week, they kept getting shut off in an attempt by the national grid to limit the power being used by crypto miners. "It has been days since my machines have been online," he said. "During the last week, even if my machines do come on, they barely stay on."
Boo-F'ng-Hoo - your hobby crypto-mining machines half-way around the world - aren't running 24x7? Suck it up, butter cup.
Why don't you run them in California?
Re: What about regular people? (Score:2)
.. and the reply you get from this clown are chuckles, and "go fuck yourself".
What else would you expect from a narcassist douchebag who couldn't give a fuck if whole families die because they have no heat in the winter? Especially that those families are halfway around the world.
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Vegas brownouts, the casinos are the first to go.
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The sad thing is that by shutting off crypto miners who registered with the government, you can be pretty sure that most new miners will not bother registering with the government. They'll be telling people that they have a "greenhouse" or something, with the Bitcoin miners hid in a shed somewhere.
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They'll be telling people that they have a "greenhouse" or something, with the Bitcoin miners hid in a shed somewhere.
That would make them subject to penalties and having a "Hard Cut Off" of their electricity any time of the year once discovered the equipment connected is not a Green House.
also possible the different purposes result in a higher cost for the connection that could dissuade miner owners operating there - It only makes sense to mine if the demand is low so the cost of electricity is less than
Re: What about regular people? (Score:2)
He can do that. At worst, he will lose his mining operation, and the poor saps working on site will be thrown into a dirty rat and disease infested Kazak dungeon.
Meanwhile the head boss will be fawning about how he lost his profitable mining operation before cooking up his next exploitive scheme.
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Bitcoin needs to be banned world wide for the bad idea it always was. They could have chosen literally anything as the "proof of value" and they chose dumping electricity down the drain. Literally. Chosen only because it requires no actual effort to administer. How about something useful, like proof of donating power a third world nation? Or proof of construction of a school. Or, how about this, rather than consumption of electricity, how about renewable generation of it? Put up a solar collector or
Re: What about regular people? (Score:2)
Re: What about regular people? (Score:2)
Mexico exploiting Texas: "Grrr!"
Texas exploiting Mexico: "YEE HAW!"
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Fuck the miners. What about the poor people of Kazahkstan who are getting brown outs because of this? Absolute wankers
yeah. if he'd said, "i'm getting my bitcoin service cut.... oh and therefore i can't donate 20% of the money i earn to the poorest people of Kazahkstan like i have been doing every day since moving my $1200-a-day-money-making machines there" i would have some sympathy.
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and the miners that are averaging $1,800 per day are whining about only being able to operate every other day! I wish I could make $1,800 every other day!!
Re: What about regular people? (Score:1)
Leftists do not care about regular people. The following is a list of Rightards that care about you... Feel free to append your own list.
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Leftists do not care about regular people. The following is a list of Rightards that care about you... Feel free to append your own list.
And that's exactly how I like it to be. The few worst words one can ever hear are: "Good morning, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help"
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Right up until the point a hurricane hits Houston or the Texas power grid collapses, at which point goppers are howling for Uncle Sam to help them out.
Re: What about regular people? (Score:2)
The government is supposed to be "for the people by the people". The whole reason for a government is to keep the country from descending into total anarchy.
That said, it's when people and groups within a goverment get a god complex, and feel they can do whatever they want to the people they are supposed to serve. This is why "We're the government and we're hear to help" takes on such a sinister tone.
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Right up until the point a hurricane hits Houston or the Texas power grid collapses, at which point goppers are howling for Uncle Sam to help them out.
Sure, during hurricane, probably. Which should give you a hint, seeing how it takes a disaster of hurricane scale to get us to where things are bad enough that government intervention *probably* won't make them even worse.
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It is precisely the same, both in the conversion of electricity into heat and in the amount of other useful things that are done in the process.
The grand master plan of crypto (Score:4, Interesting)
The plan for all cryptocurrencies isn't what you think it is. It's more sinister than the egalitarian image the crypto boys portray for it.
After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.
But the crypto boys watched closely the result of that meltdown, and formulated their plan: create a new form of currency, and for it a new financial system detached from traditional ones (those burdened by "gorvernments and regulations") - they called it "DeFi" for "Decentralized Finance", but its dirty little secret is that it's really "Deregulated Finance".
Their plan is to make this new money be adopted by the masses, so they start it off with a low price, then gradually increase it, by virtue of them just pulling numbers out of thin air for its value, until it catches the attention of the masses - then it gets more and more "valuable" from the collective faith of its given value ("network effect"), until traditional institutions start to notice and, greedy as they are, want in on the action too.
So now those at the bottom have gained all this "value" out of thin air, and once they're ready, they'll pull out all pretty much at once - that it'll create a sell-off panic, and a new meltdown is born! And because of their "De[regulated]Fi" system, the bros have already shifted all the risks away from themselves onto others, so they'll make out like bandits, leaving everyone else to "hodl" the bag.
But the bros were really observant about that last meltdown - and noticed all the "bailouts" the big banks got - so as they were shifting the risks to others, they increased their investments into what would get the next bailouts - so in the end they'll make out like bandits twice: the first time from suckering everyone else into their pump-and-dump scam, and again once they benefit from the bailouts that'll get handed out.
And there you have it folks, the real master plan of crypto.
--
Those who fail to accept it will mod the truth down to -1. - Prof. Feynman
Re:The grand master plan of crypto (Score:5, Insightful)
A.K.A. a Ponzi scheme.
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Sure, because it's such a hard concept to grasp. Like, I never knew what to do with a dollar until someone traded me good and services for it. Before then I was using it to wipe my ass.
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After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.
Just don't forget to write down your crypto wallet password... [nytimes.com]
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And someday when things go tits up, you will pay again with tax funded bailouts. Not to mention all the little bits of sanity you lose every time you have to listen to people talk about all of it.
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It's not that easy. I have some retirement money in an index fund and many of those companies are invested in crypto - some of them rather heavily. If you buy things from companies that are investing in crypto you are paying for that investment. And someday when things go tits up, you will pay again with tax funded bailouts. Not to mention all the little bits of sanity you lose every time you have to listen to people talk about all of it.
Fine then. Let me present an easy trick to make tons of money off the "inevitable" crypto crash, and to skim those crypto "morons". Seven ways to short bitcoin by Investopedia [investopedia.com]. Whaaa? Not really all that certain about the "inevitable" crypto crash all of a sudden? Now that the opportunity to put your money where your mouth is appears? Or let me guess, I know, you're too "morally superior" to do that. Suuure.
One meme (Score:2)
says it all [imgur.com].
I don't understand the point of the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Are we, somehow, supposed to feel sorry for these guys? The annual household income in Kazakhstan is $3200 a year.
I mean, seriously - why was this article written? There has be be a reason.
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Laws about technology matter to us. They affect the availability of GPU's, of video cards, and of the exciting and whimsical schemes some of us encounter for generating wealth with our technical knowledge.
I've had several recruiters reach out to me this last month about cryptocurrency related startups, and quite a few cold calls about cryptocurrency investments. They apparently are seeking keywords about fundamental technologies used by various cryptocurrencies, and not realizing that I am notably older and
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obviously the point is: Mine bitcoin Kazakhstans! ...and BTW ... where can I sign up for some of these mining rigs?
What a cunt (Score:2)
Let the people who live there have power.
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Even if what this guy was doing was harmless, which is not, I'd have no sympathy for him. He put his money into a business that turns electricity into profit, and because so many other people did the same thing and a same place he didn't make as much profit as he hoped. That's how capitalism is supposed to work; the herd mentality of investors is *supposed* to drive down profits. It it's not doing that, then the basic excuse for all of capitalism's shortcomings, which is that this is the most efficient w
Like it or not ... (Score:3)
We should all get on board 'cause -- I'm not making this up -- the 23 y/o Instagram star Alexis Ren says the dollar-based economy is 'collapsing' so she's going into crypto [businessinsider.com]
"I think the economic structure we have been living on is a lie and it's delusional and it's just an agreement and so we need to find something better, and I think bitcoin and cryptocurrency is that."
"I'm in fear but the way that we are utilizing the US dollar is really scary and it's going to hurt a lot of people," she said. "Our economy is going to fail."
Inflationary devaluation of the US dollar is a real problem, she said as her golden doodle barked in the background.
"They keep printing more of it, so that it has no value," Ren told Insider.
"It used to be backed by gold and it's not anymore. And so we don't have any value except their belief and faith in it and that's even scarier. Because now they're just utilizing our faith in the dollar. And then there's no set amount. And so there needs to be a new thing."
I'm not sure she see the irony of swapping "our faith in the dollar" (backed by the U.S. Government) in favor of faith in crypto-currencies (backed by ???).
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I think the key statement there is indeed the one about how she is being driven by emotion, not understanding.
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I think the key statement there is indeed the one about how she is being driven by emotion, not understanding.
Well, some of the things she said in the interview aren't actually stupid so either she's just parroting things she doesn't really understand or she understands more than someone of her age and occupation would be expected to know / understand. On the other hand, some things she says are very stupid. Either way, it's a curiosity.
I'm trying to find the sympathy (Score:4, Insightful)
Dropped income (Score:3)
I think I speak for many when I say I hope he was highly dependent on $1200 a day in order to pay off underground loan sharks. I hope his income dropping to $800 costs him his actual fingers.
Fuck bitcoin miners.
Cryptocurrency buble (Score:2)
Fiat currency oversupply leads to inflation and economy inefficiencies. Cryptoassets is a poster child of economy inefficiency now. We could have a much more energy efficient digital currency but we are missing trust in it and we have too much spare money. We can risk it or lose it through inflation.
Overvaluation of cryptocurrencies is a consequence of high inflation and loose monetary policies. People have available money so they spend them for stuff they do not need (e.g. bitcoin or NFTs). These are the o
This is a mind-boggling story (Score:4, Insightful)
This is good; ban crypto minng (Score:2)
Let's move to proof-of-stake rather than proof-of-work, shall we ?
Here's a suggestion (Score:2)
"Matthew Heard, a Matthew Heard, a software engineer from San Jose, is worried about his 33 bitcoin mining machines in Kazakhstan"
This clown needs to move to Kazakhstan so he reaps everything he sows.
Environmental catastrophe (Score:2)
> "Matthew Heard, a software engineer from San Jose"
If he's in California, instead of going through the trouble of burning all those fossil fuels, he can cut out the middle man and just start a forest fire himself.
Re:Just 50? (Score:5, Interesting)
Number of miners isn't a very useful metric here. The amount of power they draw is more interesting. I suspect the 50 mining ops registered with the government are a lot larger on average than the '33 machines' from the summary.
Some of these farms draw on the order of 100 MW. If 10 of those set up shop in your country, you're going to have problems no matter what.
Re:Just 50? (Score:5, Informative)
such a small number of miners
What small number of miners? Don't confuse the story about one guy as meaning there are a small number of miners. Kazakhstan presently has the second largest number of crypto miners in the world behind the USA.
The use an estimated 2GW of power and that influx came entirely without any additional infrastructure being provided. And before you say 2GW is nothing, just remember that this is Kazakhstan we're talking about, not the USA. It's 20% of their grid supply. It would be like adding over 100GW load to the USA grid. Good luck with that.
Their problems are entirely to do with miners, considering their grid was not designed with bitcoin miners in mind.
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