• @darthfabulous42069@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    349 months ago

    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?

    • Phoenixz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      49 months ago

      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

      • @zergtoshi@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        69 months ago

        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.

    • @long_chicken_boat@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      49 months ago

      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.

    • @Huschke@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      39 months ago

      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.

      • @darthfabulous42069@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        29 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.

    • @this_1_is_mine@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      29 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

    • @Snekeyes@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      -69 months ago

      Vs. Banks. That have offices, branches, atms, data centers… banking does use more energy yearly. So why not both invest in renewables

      • @stoy@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        49 months ago

        Sure, but how much of the global financial market does crypto represent?

        I susptect that the energy consomption per transaction is considerably higher for crypto than for a normal financial transaction.

          • @stoy@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            English
            19 months ago

            I did find some information about this, and have posted about it in the thread, and you are absolutely right about this in regards to Bitcoin, I did not find a lot of information about other crypto apart from Etherium, which claimed that the energy use of one Etherium transaction would not consume any power at all, which I doubt.

            • @makeasnek@lemmy.ml
              link
              fedilink
              English
              19 months ago

              Ethereum uses proof-of-stake, there is no “mining” in a traditional sense, so its power consumption is more akin to e-mail than mining crypto. But proof-of-stake leads to centralization over time, which is antithetical to what Bitcoin people want.