endlessvoid

I understand the appeal of bitcoin as an alternative financial system, and I think there is a legitimate case to be made for crypto mining with power plants.

For example, we’ve lost almost all of our nuclear power plant fleet in NY because renewables made it uneconomical to keep them running, using crypto as a flexible load to keep those plants online would have been a great synergy. Similarly, pairing crypto with renewables would be fine.

But keeping fossil fuel plants running purely to mine crypto is suicidal as a species.

You joke, but that’s exactly what’s starting to happen. The infrastructure that was being built for more crypto mining is in many cases being repurposed to run AI farms.