I learned at an engineering conference recently that one crypto mine in TX, 100s of MW, makes more money off ERCOT demand response markets than it does off crypto
repeat: TX ratepayers pay them more to sometimes stop mining than they make by actual mining
just bananas misuse of power markets
🔌💡
Don't they have issues getting power to the people? Do they know that all of this is going to drain resources.
If there is a god there would be floods and fire and ice to destroy this unholy place.
And just never mind the fact that cryptocurrency has become the primary transactional tool for drug cartels, autocrats, malicious hackers, and online scammers.
Definitely gotta prop that sh1t up the best we can! /s
Pretty sure this just drops the amount of money these companies pay for electricity. Still bad policy, but if your resistors don't have the ability to siphon money from rubes you'll still face a net loss even if you pull them out on every demand response event.
You have to wonder what local media is telling Texans about what's going on. You also have to wonder what vote suppression mechanisms are in place, that the state gov't never seems to be punished for these decisions.
And when they are on the grid they take as much power as a 250k city. It’s completely insane. The power company asks us to turn the a/c hotter in a 100 degree summer to help the grid but they pay the scammers to not scam?
And these same people were very much okay with taking the life savings away from people during the outage in 2021. Those people were on a variable rate plan and the electric companies jacked up the KWh rate into the thousands for those who had power.
And don't forget the health crisis that goes with it when the mining rigs run: hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks...
time.com/6982015/bitc...
Jackie Sawicky and the Texas Coalition Against Cryptomining
amycastor.com/2023/10/23/t...
Well, their bizmodel is really bad, but in the meantime they create so many problems - ask @davidgerard.co.uk
BTW, they're expanding to Africa with a dubious approach ("free electricity for the poor Africans). See Kenya, Ethiopia, etc.
All power markets (as opposed to grid load adjustment plans) are insane. They are an instantiation of neoliberal ideology into the real world and have been used for nothing but scams since Enron.
Definition of a moral hazard, no?
Could be an urban legend, but reminds me a story about India where there was a bounty to collect cobras. People started breeding the cobras to collect more reward. They ended up with more cobras than when they started.
Should I go to Texas and start a bc farm?
This is like paying people to stop masturbating outside an elementary school.
It benefits no one, makes things worse for everyone, and they're obsessed with it.
Watch, it'll come out in like 5 years that they were collaborating to artificially cause situations that would cause the miners to get paid to shut down due to power demand.
So, less mining = good
Less power usage = good
Texas wasting tax dollars = good
People made fun of Keynesians for saying was worth paying people to dig and empty holes filled with dirt.
These guys have taken it to the next level. Get paid to not do something that wasn't making money to start with!
Mmmm. In Spain that doesn't work that way. I think we have a system which makes energy cheaper for some factories and in exchange the energy admin can tell them to stop working when it's needed.
I said this 👆🏻 and it seems that changed now, in Spain. Now it's not cheap energy. They pay regular price, but they are paid by the gov so when the gov says so they stop consuming energy in less than 30 minutes. They auction their capacity to stop using energy when told to.
