Tesla, Block and Blockstream Team Up To Mine Bitcoin Off Solar Power in Texas (cnbc.com) 92
Blockstream and Jack Dorsey's Block, formerly Square, are breaking ground on a solar- and battery-powered bitcoin mine in Texas that uses solar and storage technology from Tesla. Tesla's 3.8 megawatt solar PV array and 12 megawatt-hour Megapack will power the facility. From a report: Blockstream co-founder and CEO Adam Back, a British cryptographer and a member of the "cypherpunk" crew, told CNBC on the sidelines of the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami that the mining facility is designed to be a proof of concept for 100% renewable energy bitcoin mining at scale.
[...] Miners provide demand to these semi-stranded assets and make renewables in Texas economically viable, according to Castle Island Venture's Nic Carter. The constraint is that West Texas has roughly 34 gigawatts of power, five gigawatts of demand, and only 12 gigawatts of transmission. You can think of bitcoin miners as temporary buyers who keep the energy assets operational until the grid is able to fully absorb them. Back said the off-grid mine, expected to be completed later this year, highlights another key tenet of the bitcoin network: Miners are location agnostic and can "do it from anywhere without local infrastructure."
[...] Miners provide demand to these semi-stranded assets and make renewables in Texas economically viable, according to Castle Island Venture's Nic Carter. The constraint is that West Texas has roughly 34 gigawatts of power, five gigawatts of demand, and only 12 gigawatts of transmission. You can think of bitcoin miners as temporary buyers who keep the energy assets operational until the grid is able to fully absorb them. Back said the off-grid mine, expected to be completed later this year, highlights another key tenet of the bitcoin network: Miners are location agnostic and can "do it from anywhere without local infrastructure."
Texans must be conflicted (Score:3)
On one hand these folks aren't using oil to power their mining which means they're killing oil field jobs.
On the other hand, they're using liberal policies of solar energy to power things.
Cheap energy (Score:2)
I'm completely in favor of this type of installation. Having access to lots of cheap power allows us (ie - civilization) to solve many of our pressing problems including, but not limited to, climate change.
The way bitcoin is structured, mining becomes more expensive over time. Furthermore, there will come a time when all the "needed" bitcoins have been found and no more will be added except to promote a healthy level of inflation. There's also the possibility that some tremendous change will happen, such as
Re: (Score:3)
I'm completely in favor of this type of installation. Having access to lots of cheap power allows us (ie - civilization) to solve many of our pressing problems including, but not limited to, climate change.
The way bitcoin is structured, mining becomes more expensive over time. Furthermore, there will come a time when all the "needed" bitcoins have been found and no more will be added except to promote a healthy level of inflation. There's also the possibility that some tremendous change will happen, such as regulation or switch to a non-mining style of coin, that would summarily make mining moot. When that happens, all bitcoin mining installations will become obsolete, and the energy will then be available for other uses.
Build lots and lots of these installations, please.
A solar farm "square" 20 miles on a side would supply all the energy needs for the US, and that's on top of all the energy we already produce (plus-or-minus, depending on your assumptions).
Access to cheap energy (in whatever form) and spare time is what builds civilizations.
Sure, and if we set aside another square of 20 miles side we could dump all our garbage there and not bother with recycling.
Re: (Score:2)
It's harder to move garbage around than it is to move electricity around.
Re: (Score:3)
Are you sure about that? Moving around electricity is actually pretty hard. My experience is that you can spend tens of thousands of dollars to get electricity just a few hundred yards from your property. You can move a lot of trash a long way with that kind of money. As an example, even with shipping prices way up it still probably costs less to ship a 20 foot container to China than it does to install power on unimproved land (in my neck of the woods).
That's actually part of the reason that this ins
Re: (Score:2)
Moving electricity a few hundred yards, say 100 amps on a 240v loop, cost about a hundred bucks.
How cheap are you getting a pole or two installed as well as a transformer to step down to 240v from the line on the road?
It is true that it has to be done to code, for good reason, namely experience of people cheeping out, causing fires or screwing up the neighbours power, not to mention the risk of electrocution.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You are espousing a false dilemma, which is a logical fallacy.
That these people are installing solar for their own use does not stop you, or anyone else, from installing solar for other uses.
If they canceled their project, it would not cause solar power for public use to magically appear. It would make no difference.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That these people are installing solar for their own use does not stop you, or anyone else, from installing solar for other uses.
Right. Just like people buying up all the toilet paper to stash in their basement doesn't prevent you from affordably wiping your rear end. Supply and demand doesn't exist in your fantasy.
Re: (Score:2)
Furthermore, there will come a time when all the "needed" bitcoins have been found and no more will be added except to promote a healthy level of inflation.
This isn't how Bitcoin works. There are a fixed number of Bitcoins that will ever be created (mined), and there is a mathematical formula that sets the schedule for when the last coin will be created. Once this happens, there will be no more coins mined for "inflation" or for any other reason. The "mining" process isn't about trying to "find" coins, it's about finding mathematical solutions enabling a block of data (list of transactions) to be added to the global shared ledger (the blockchain). There is a r
Re: (Score:2)
A solar farm "square" 20 miles on a side would supply all the energy needs for the US
A square 20 miles on a side is 1.03 billion square meters. A square meter of solar panels in Arizona generates about 400 kwh per year. So that is 400 billion kwh annually.
America consumes about 4 trillion kwh per year.
Your solar panels would provide only 10% of that.
Re: (Score:2)
It does not really need much "common sense" to grasp that 20miles x 20miles is nonsense.
Did you typo?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm completely in favor of this type of installation. Having access to lots of cheap power allows us (ie - civilization) to solve many of our pressing problems including, but not limited to, climate change.
It's inevitable that small fluctuating trenewables will be applied to loads that can tolerate fluctuations. Crypto mining is one os these uses.
BUT...there are other, more vital fluctuation-tolerant applications that mining pushes out. Desalination for coastal cities and manufacturing artificial jet fuel come to mind.
Re: (Score:1)
On one hand these folks aren't using oil to power their mining which means they're killing oil field jobs.
On the other hand, they're using liberal policies of solar energy to power things.
LOL. No, Texans aren't left-winger fascists like you, who always have better ideas on how other people should spend their own money. It's his money to piss away, in whatever way he feels like, and no right-winger is going to care.
Re: (Score:1)
No, Texans aren't left-winger fascists like you, ...
Quite right, they're right-wing fascists -- which is probably worse.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Texans must be conflicted (Score:5, Informative)
LOL. No, Texans aren't left-winger fascists like you, who always have better ideas on how other people should spend their own money.
Texas receives (and spends) more federal dollars than they pay in federal taxes, so somehow they do seem to have no problems coming up with ideas on how to spend other peoples' money. $36.2 billion dollars worth, according to this [businessinsider.com] accounting.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Mostly financing social and other programs forced on them from federal level by leftists from California. Your point, again?
So what you're saying is if they weren't "forced" to, Texas would let its people die through starvation just like they let their people freeze to death.
Re: (Score:2)
I apologize, but I actually did RTFA earlier today... /shame
The reason why this is viable is that western Texas already has 34 GW of solar capacity, 5 GW of demand, and only 12 GW of transmission -they have no way of selling the electricity on to the rest of the USA.
These type of mining activities are literally using waste electricity... but it is only waste because Texas is not building out lines to transmit it to where it is needed.
Re: (Score:2)
The oil gravy train has been over for nearly 40 years. Here is why Texas did not sink like so many other states. Oil money was used to fund museums, universities, art, culture. Oil exploration is highly technical, which funded TI and the first integrated circuits
In terms of profits, plastics are the monihtazation of oil. I
Re: (Score:2)
Why would be they be conflicted? Ted Cruz proposed this back in October and people here on slashdot [slashdot.org] attacked him for it, calling it and him stupid. If anything it's the liberals who originally mocked this idea who are conflicted.
Re: (Score:2)
That isn't the alternative. This energy doesn't exist without the additional demand that justifies and pays for the resources used to create it and that bitcoin is what creates that demand.
Why people can wrap their head around the idea that currency, banking, and reserve stores of value aren't useful I have no idea. Bitcoin has an environmental footprint that is a fraction of that of either traditional banking or gold mining and doesn't
Re: (Score:2)
I really have a hard time attributing actual value to bitcoins. They are really, and in many separate ways, worse than paper money. (Paper money only has value because governments will accept it as payment for your taxes.)
It's still a net loss to society (Score:3, Insightful)
Hopefully common sense securities and money laundering regulations will start to be enforced on Crypto and it'll die on the vine. I honestly don't think crypto can survive even the very limited scrutiny that Wall Street gets.
Then again Musk will be campaigning against that scrutiny being applied, and he did just commit a flagrant SEC violation with his purchase of Twitter and get away with it. So what the hell, laws don't matter anymore. At least not when you're a centi-billionaire.
Of course if any of us did that we'd be behind bars. Hooray for 2 tiered justice!
Re:It's still a net loss to society (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I hope that some environmental constraints will be applied to crypto. The EU is working on this at the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because of the effects of burning natural gas on climate. The idea is to make a cleaner fuel/battery as a mitigation now and forestall further effects of our pollution on climate/weather patterns.
Re: (Score:2)
It's Texas (Score:2)
Worse, when the grid is stressed they're still going to want power, and they will use their money and connections to make sure they get it before lower income people do.
And the argument is sound. The people who get power are the ones who pay for it. So if you're not able to out co
Main cost is electricity [Re:It's Texas] (Score:2)
there's no such thing as "excess power". Not in a way that makes crypto profitable. Crypto miners need to run 24/7 to make a profit. The few hours a day off peak when there's excess capacity in the grid isn't nearly enough.
Not quite. From a 2021 analysis, the cost to mine one bitcoin was $13,000, of which $9200 was electricity cost, and only $3800 the cost of the computational hardware (amortized over the expected lifetime).
So, if they run the mining operation only half the time, but during that time they run the equipment at half the electricity cost, they come out ahead.
So, it's not true that they "need" to run 24/7, if they can get electricity significantly cheaper by running only part of the time.
Source: https://minerdail [minerdaily.com]
Re: (Score:2)
In this particular case... there is.
They are in west Texas, where there is already 34 GW of solar production capacity, with only 5 GW of demand, and only 12 GW of interconnect to send the power to where it can be used.
They (Blockstream) are also purchasing their own solar panels and batteries (from Tesla) -not connecting to the power grid. Their plan is to operate self sufficiently.
If it fails, there will be another ghost town in the western Texas plains.
Re: (Score:2)
34 GW is a hell of a lot of capacity, the 2 local dams here have almost 200 MW between them, looking quickly, Mica, a big dam has 2.8 GW, the new Site C is going to have 1.1 GW and the whole Province of 5.1 million people has 18.2 GW capacity, enough to be worthwhile selling it to California etc at times. With 34 GW of solar capacity, we could shut down all the dams during the day and still have excess. Handy at certain times of the year.
Why the hell isn't someone building a power line to ship that power to
Re: (Score:2)
The numbers are directly from the article... so, may be real, may be journalistic BS.
As for why not build out the transmission lines to send the power where it is wanted... "It's Texas"
Texas is big -it would take a lot of build out to make it happen.
Texas grid does not mesh with the rest of the USA -they stand alone as a means of avoiding federal regulation.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a very easy answer to that. If that were a better use for the power then you'd already be seeing plants popping up all over the place doing just that.
Bitcoin is a money killer app. I think building on renewable infrastructure such as this is a great idea, bitcoin is actually innately carbon neutral just like Tesla's cars. As the bitcoin displaces gold for demonstrating reserves/security/backing it will
Re: (Score:2)
There is a very easy answer to that. If that were a better use for the power then you'd already be seeing plants popping up all over the place doing just that.
I think by "better", the poster didn't mean "more profitable", but instead better for the environment, to mitigate climate change, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
But aren’t there better uses for that excess power? Generating hydrogen, for instance.
This is still my favorite use for excess renewable power.
1. Have excess solar
2. Use excess solar to power electrolyzer, separating H2 from O
3. Feed H2 into fuel cell at night to produce electricity or to fuel vehicles at anytime
Re: (Score:2)
Producing hydrogen makes sense if you can use it for something useful ... seems not the case in this scenario.
Re: (Score:1)
So, you're saying the government should be able to tell you what/how you are able to use the electricity the you purchase as a private individual or company?
Re: (Score:2)
This is Texas, try growing some pot plants with that electricity or using it to power a dildo and the government will be down on you so quick for what you are doing with that electricity that you purchased as a private individual from a private company, and they'll call it freedom.
Re: (Score:2)
It looks like you don't understand how money laundering works...
Re:It's still a net loss to society (Score:4, Insightful)
Really realistically though, this is orders of magnitude too small to affect anything.
Oh goody, it's trickle down economics (Score:2)
You'll find the breakthroughs are being done on the public dime mostly in public universities. Then the businesses move in and monetize them. Putting more money into Elon's pockets doesn't change that.
Worse, clean energy is still a very limited resource. What this does is discourage any shifts to it by driving up the price in that short term.
Computer tech "trickled down" because advancements were too fast to keep prices high. The same is not happ
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Computer tech "trickled down" because advancements were too fast to keep prices high. The same is not happening with Solar.
But it is happening with solar. https://www.researchgate.net/p... [researchgate.net]
Yes, it's leaps and bounds, but computer tech was less "leap and bound" and more like a jump to lightspeed. I literally have a super computer that fits in my pocket after about 30 years. If Solar matched those rates we'd have 1 panel in the middle of each city powering every home.
Well, that's a little unfair. Computers did not get less expensive. A laptop cost about $2000 then, and it's not all that much cheaper now. Accounting for inflation, maybe a factor of two drop, no more. Over that time, the price of solar arrays dropped by about a factor of eight.
Yes, computers are more "powerful", but I'm not sure how valuable that is to the person using them. (And computing power mainly increased because the components on t
I can buy a laptop for $200 (Score:2)
And that's a laptop. My phone has a 1.8gz quad core, 6 gigs of ram and cost $300 unlocked. It's GPU is capable of fairly sophisticated games too.
Again, solar has gotten cheap, but it's nowhere's ne
Re: (Score:2)
You must be a leftist, with such simplistic grasp of economics.
Noting that most bat-shit economic theories originate on the Right ...
Re: (Score:2)
Only recently. There have been periods when most bat-shit crazy economic theories originated on the left. I will agree that recently most of the ones I hear about originated on the right.
Re: (Score:2)
Well good thing Texas already has a robust power grid that they can waste time and money on stuff like bitcoin mining.
Re: (Score:2)
Well good thing Texas already has a robust power grid that they can waste time and money on stuff like bitcoin mining.
Ooh, such a clever burn. Because, as we know, huge, record setting blackouts, 10x bigger than the Texas one, never ever happen in blue/purple areas [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
If only one of those was caused by systemic deregulation issues and one was caused by environmental
Re: (Score:1)
Unless you're dealing with a product where the manufacturers don't want to invest in increased production to meet the randomly fluctuating needs of crypto-miners. Like what we're seeing with the video card shortage.
Re: (Score:2)
If Bitcoin miners are buying up solar panels that will raise the price for everyone else
I guess if there were enough bitcoin-mining demand to increase scale of production, then that scale would come with lower prices for everyone. I don't know what the numbers are but I suspect that bitcoin-mining is an infinitessimal fraction of what's needed to do that.
The other question is price. If bitcoin mining is a less profitable use of energy than selling to industry/consumers, but more profitable use than just wasting surplus generated power that has nowhere to be stored, then more bitcoin miners wil
Decreasing cost to scale (Score:2)
People forget supply and demand exists. If Bitcoin miners are buying up solar panels that will raise the price for everyone else,
No. That's only true for supplies that have decreasing returns to scale.
Solar power is still moving down the production curve. It has decreasing cost to scale, as well as decreasing cost with cumulative production. The more solar panels are produced, the lower the cost is for everybody.
See, for example, https://digitaltonto.com/wp-co... [digitaltonto.com]
Demand creates supply (Score:2)
People forget supply and demand exists. If Bitcoin miners are buying up solar panels that will raise the price for everyone else, reducing the number of solar installations for other, actually productive uses, and in turn raising all our power bills and making us breath more smog.
By that logic, Americans shouldn't buy solar panels, so that people in more polluting countries can afford them.
But in the past 20 years, demand for solar panels has soared, while the price has plummeted 90%.
The reason increasing demand does not always equal increasing prices is because supply increases in the face of elevated demand. We want people to buy more solar panels, because as production scales, prices drop.
Re: (Score:2)
Remember in the 90's and 00's when claiming this elite global bank cabal and government agents were running and manipulating the free market economy
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, most of that happened. But it wasn't a conspiracy, it was done open to everyone to see, and anyone who wanted to participate. I didn't and still don't. I think bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. And deFi means both decentralized and deregulated (and defy), and always did. But the decentralized is either a fraudulent selling point or a mistake, because it isn't really decentralized. It's just a bit more difficult to exert centralized control.
But, yeah, bitcoin is a plan hatched by right-wing anarchis
Total waste of energy. (Score:2)
I think this is a total waste of energy. Other algorithms/crypto has been invented that Are far more climate friendly. This energy could have been used to replace fossil fuels in cars and heating/Cooling/manufacturing. Instead it is being used shortsighted to create wealth for a small number of people.
Re: (Score:2)
False. No other viable algorithm has been proposed, only ponzi schemes like proof of stake. Competition and resource cost are not a side effect of how this works they are an essential design element, at the end of the day these things are what prevents one party from screwing the others.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't believe it (Score:2)
3.8 MW of peak generating capacity, only 12 MWh of storage, off grid? Nah that leaves too much money on the table.
My prediction, this is on grid and will make most of its money off storage arbitrage (you don't need a lot of $5,000 per megawatt-hour hours to earn back your battery costs, lots of battery building gamblers are gambling on more grid instability in Texas).
Fuck (Score:2)
Put that energy into the network, replacing some fossil fuels, ultimately reducing the money that the Western world still keeps paying to Russia and other dictatorsips and terrorist states. Bitcoin mining = terrorist financing
Re: (Score:2)
From the article. They have 34 gigawatts of power, 5 gigawatts of need, and 17 gigawatts of available transfer. In short, some genius built a solar energy installation out in the middle of West Texas without thought for how that electricity would get transferred to somewhere where it was useful. Building the infrastructure to transfer that power would cost ridiculous money, far more than anyone is willing to pay for 17 gigawatts of power that is only available during the daytime.
This is just another ca
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you, I should've read TFA first. Though such a scheme (1. someone creates a power plant that can't be profitably used for electricity distribution; 2. another party installs bitcoin mining) can be totally abused, as the two parties can collaborate behind the scenes.
It's still legal for anyone to install a bunch of solar and mine bitcoin with it, so there's no need for separating the two steps, but it would still be the case that the solar panels or whatever would've had better use for society had they
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That web search should have warned you that if you ever want you library to be of use, you need to give it a different name. Perhaps "Cryptog".
Re: (Score:2)
Priorities are just plain wrong. (Score:2)
Jack Dorsey (Score:1)
Haven't you fucked up the world enough?
What happens when it's all mined? (Score:2)
Serious question from someone who has zero interest in bitcoins. What's the end game once the last coins have been mined? The energy use should stop (I imagine) and then it's just a bunch of people holding something they want to pawn off on others?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)