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Bitcoin is infamous for wasting enough electricity to add 40 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere a year—but now, a growing cadre of U.S. miners are developing green, and lucrative, new strategies worth a fortune all their own.Bill Spence and Greg Beard on a Russellton, Pennsylvania, coal waste pile left by a mine that powered 20th-century Pittsburgh steelmakers. They’re burning this polluting “gob” to mine bitcoin.
The Belly of the Beast: At Riot Blockchain’s bitcoin mining facility in Rockdale, Texas, exhaust from some of the stacks of 120,000 energy-sucking computers pushes the temperature up to 130 degrees.For all bitcoin’s purported benefits, it’s also clear that the currency is an environmental disaster. Depending on bitcoin’s cost , its global network sucks up between 8 and 15 gigawatts of continuous power, according to Cambridge. New York City runs on just 6 gigawatts, the nation of Belgium on 10.
Of course, the system could have been designed differently. There are serious cryptocurrencies, including ethereum, cardano, stellar, Ripple’s XRP and algorand, which use vastly less energy than bitcoin or are being modified to do so. Ethereum, for instance, is transitioning next year from “proof of work” to a system called “proof of stake,” which cuts energy use by 99.95%. There’s even a new currency, candela, whose protocolBut bitcoin isn’t going anywhere.
Here’s the key: These miners have entered into so-called demand response contracts with the Texas grid, whereby they agree, in exchange for rebates, to shut down their computers at a moment’s notice during times of peak power demand. This brings average power costs at HODL Ranch down below 2 cents per kwh, for a mining cost close to $2,000 per bitcoin.
Les, 35, studied computer science at UC Irvine but first learned about bitcoin while playing professional poker in the mid-2010s—and seeing other players use it to hold and move their winnings without banks. He’s not bothered by bitcoin’s volatility, because he’s all in: “When massive price swings come, they don’t affect me whatsoever. In poker, if you’re good, you’re still losing 45% of the time. I’m very comfortable with losing.
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