Alexander C. Kaufman on Farcaster

Alexander C. Kaufman pfp

Alexander C. Kaufman

Kuwait is cracking down on crypto mining due to the strain it's causing to the grid, which is roughly split between oil- and gas-fired generators. What do you guys think of this? https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/kuwait-cracks-down-cryptocurrency-mining-amid-power-crisis-2025-05-01/

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HH pfp

Miners can easily set up their own generators as Gas is stupid cheap there.

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Cahokian pfp

Mining can make grids more resilient because they are price sensitive and interruptible. @nic has written about this https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4634256

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shazow pfp

IMO categorically, bitcoin mining (and honestly many other industries too) should not be subsidized and externalities should be accounted in pricing/taxes. If industries are compromising the electrical grid, the industrial electricity price should be higher! If industries are producing negative byproducts in their process (eg. pollution/climate impact of oil/gas generators), they should be made to pay for those (e.g. carbon taxes). In a vacuum, I think bitcoin mining is fine when there is excess of electricity and no immediate better alternatives to use it for (hopefully an increasing trend). Otherwise, I generally believe that Ethereum-style non-delegated PoS has better consensus mechanism properties for blockchains.

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Leeward Bound pfp

bitcoin is basically the only major crypto that still uses POW mining energy waste (others include DOGE, BCH, and LTC, all dead ends now), as BTC culture carries a philosophical belief that energy waste is good-actually and helps "balance grid demand", and that upgrading their network is bad-actually and "defies the whitepaper" i'm ok with this practice being outlawed by jurisdictions, and also, i think these philosophical beliefs of BTC-maxis are deranged as hell and indicative of having rocks for brains. i've never met someone who held these beliefs who didn't also openly espouse fringe conspiracies and extremist libertarian "GOVT SHOULDNT EVEN BUILD ROADS" rhetoric. i assume this kuwait law will have no effect on ethereum or L2s, or other POS projects like solana, which do not intentionally waste power as a part of the block creation process, using "staking" instead of "mining". if such staking activities are outlawed in kuwait, moving your rasberry pi validator is easier than moving a mining operation.

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Señor Doggo pfp

We need to accelerate the "miners as efficient winter heaters" arc

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Thomas pfp

@aviationdoctor.eth

PoW is obsolete and needlessly wasteful in the age of PoS

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𒂭_𒂭 pfp

in general, I don't think erring on the side of authoritarianism works. there's a lot of strain on rivalrous water sources due to datacenter boom. the practical "bleeder valve" for this is subsidizing the sprawl, meaning that the system should incentivize bad actors to rationally complement the grid by whatever policy/subsidy forces them to continue off-grid. some might argue NYC congestion pricing would work, but only if it's cycled into grid capacity. iirc there are TWh generated without capacity on other grids.

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