
Bitcoin energy use in Iceland set to overtake homes, says local firm - fredley
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43030677
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bittcto
This is an example of bitcoin mining seeking the most renewable, inexpensive
energy sources... including geothermal in iceland and hydroelectric in
Washington State and China. 

As solar or wind get closer to viability, it may soon come that bitcoin starts
paying for massive solar investment (due to the "greedy" interests of miners
buying up lots of solar capacity) and that further lowers costs of solar...
and maybe wind, though I'm less confident on wind. 

~~~
danmaz74
On the contrary, bitcoin using up a lot of solar installation would only
displace using the same solar panels for other uses. 

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nk1tz
Implying it won't accelerate the development of more/better solar. 

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danmaz74
There is already a huge demand for electrical power in the world, especially
clean one.  Bitcoin won't add anything specific for solar. 

~~~
kfriede
There is huge demand for electrical power, but there is only huge _desire_ for
clean electrical power.  I'm sure Bitcoin miners want to use clean power, but
if it means they have tighter margins as a result, then non-clean will be what
they stick with. ( Bitcoin used only as placeholder here). 

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otoburb
>> _Smari McCarthy, a member of the Icelandic parliament for the Pirate Party,
tweeted: "Cryptocurrency mining requires almost no staff, very little in
capital investments, and mostly leaves no taxes either._ 

Replace "cryptocurrency" with any other technology service and you'll probably
be left with the same net result.  The datacenter is presumably charging for
the co-location services, so there's certainly tax revenue and the operational
jobs (as few as they are) to run the facilities that benefits Iceland. 

~~~
gruez
also, >very little in capital investments

what?  it doesn't require huge upfront capital compared to say, building a
factory, but risk in buying mining equipment is insane given how volatile the
price/difficulty is. 

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otoburb
You're correct, but I believe the MP was referring to the fact that any such
capital assets (e.g. miners/servers) are being purchased outside of Iceland,
so no tax revenue accrues to Iceland (except maybe indirectly in the form of
import duties or shipping costs). 

~~~
gruez
>are being purchased outside of Iceland

...as opposed to any other business?  if you're setting up any kind of
business[1], chances are most of the capital investments won't be goods from
iceland. 

[1] other than ones centered around processing raw resources
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Iceland_...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Iceland_Export_Treemap.jpg)

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bmcusick
Bitcoin is a great export product for Iceland.  Their biggest disadvantage is
being so remote from the rest of the world, so the ability to produce
something locally that has zero shipping costs isn't one to be missed.  It's
effectively a way of turning local geothermal power into money, providing tax
revenues to all sorts of services. 

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xutopia
This is why there is a huge gold rush in Quebec.  We have cheap electricity
year long and cheap cooling 9 months of the year. 

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supbitcoin
True, I have a friend who is building a mining operation of 112 MW in the
North

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njarboe
While it does sound impressive, as stated in the article, Iceland has only
340,000 people.  And almost all heating is done with geothermally heated water
further reducing residential electricity costs.  Compared to the electricity of
aluminum smelting business in Iceland, bitcoin very small (so far). 

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martin1975
In other words, proof-of-stake is the future.  Legacy PoW coins will stick
around, but they will not be dominant. 

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moocowtruck
so much for all that environmental friendly iceland! 

~~~
otoburb
The article states " _[Iceland] has seen a marked increase in the number of
new data centres, often built by firms wishing to tout green credentials. 
Nearly 100% of energy in Iceland comes from renewable sources. "_ 

Unless that's false, Iceland looks like it is still about as environmentally
friendly as it was before agreeing to build Moonlite.  Perhaps the more
interesting question is what Iceland will do to meet the increase in domestic
energy demand.  Presumably a crude first-order response will be to increase
input costs across the board by jacking up commercial electricity rates
(assuming they can differentiate between retail vs. commercial facilities).