this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago (6 children)

You'd think with all of the money they're pulling in, they'd invest in solar panels or something to lower their overhead.

Or am I making the mistake of approaching the situation with common sense?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's Bitcoin, of course common sense isn't involved.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

I mean, fair, but still. People should push them to go green.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Solar panels give about 100 watts per square meters best case, practically you'll be on half of that.. With the amounts of electricity they use, they'll need to cover entire nature reserves with solar panels to feed their miners. It's simply not practical

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Solar panels can have more than 200 watts peak per square meter and provide around 200 kWh per year and square meter, although these values vary a lot depending on where the panels are installed.
Given these numbers, generating 200 TWh annually (which is more than the current electric energy consumption of Bitcoin mining devices) would require 10^9 square meters; that's slightly more than 31 square kilometers.
Don't misunderstand this as defending the electric energy consumption of Bitcoin mining! I'd rather see this electric energy being used elsewhere.
I merely wanted to show how much electric energy can be harvested using solar panels.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

They'd still need some type of battery to make solar work though. They want to mine 24/7.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Wind turbines? Solar thermal? Nuclear in exchange for all of those Bitcoins, perhaps?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

they should be doing that, otherwise I don't get how they are making any profit with those huge electricity bills. Last time I checked it, with electricity prices it wasn't worth it to mine cryptocurrency.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

no, that's the magic of speculative market financing

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Maybe pay off would be so far into the future that they don't want to risk it? Who knows how long crypto will be a thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

You can get solar panels for like $100-$200 on Amazon right now. Nice ones. The price of them dropped like a fucking rock since China got involved.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

With how volatile the value of Bitcoin is I don't know whether or not they feel safe trying to take that money and reinvest it you're walking by one of the coin ATMs that's at one of my local stores I've watched the value of Bitcoin halve its value than double it overnight basically every single day for the last 3 weeks