Essay by Eric Worrall
Will Cryptomining energy use be the wedge issue the Biden Administration uses to introduce energy regulation and carbon taxes?
Texas judge turns out the lights on federal survey of cryptominers’ energy consumption
Washington sees potential emergency as miners power up to chase new BTC high
Thomas Claburn
Wed 28 Feb 2024 // 00:31 UTCA Texas judge has granted a temporary restraining order that prevents the US federal government surveying domestic cryptocurrency miners about their energy consumption.
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EIA aimed to provide the US government with reliable data about the energy usage of cryptomining operations, given that energy availability is a national concern. The agency sought to survey 82 cryptocurrency mining facilities in the United States.
According to DeCarolis, the survey “will take each respondent 0.5 hours to complete the survey every month …” The financial incentive to fill in the form prior to the specified deadline was significant. Firms selected for the survey faced a civil penalty of up to $12,937 for failing to comply.
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Judge Alan Albright, US district judge for the Western District of Texas, found the plaintiffs’ arguments compelling enough to grant their TRO request, which requires the EIA to suspend its data collection until a preliminary injunction hearing, scheduled for Wednesday, February 28, can be held.
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“Upon inspection of the Survey itself, the Court finds the 30-minute estimated time of completion is extremely inaccurate, if not grossly misleading,” the judge wrote.
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Read more: https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/28/us_survey_cryptocurrency_power/?td=rt-3a
I’m deeply suspicious of this attempt to survey cryptomining energy use.
Even if you don’t like cryptomining, and frankly I personally believe cryptomining is a joke, nevertheless cryptomining is a legal use of energy which pays its way. As a large scale user of energy which can scale back on demand, cryptominers may even be doing some good, by helping power utilities maintain financial liquidity and cash flow – like having a large Alumina smelter on their grid.
But the Biden administration appears to be suggesting cryptomining’s use of energy is a problem.
From the EIA;
Tracking electricity consumption from U.S. cryptocurrency mining operations
Summary
Electricity demand associated with U.S. cryptocurrency mining operations in the United States has grown very rapidly over the last several years. Our preliminary estimates suggest that annual electricity use from cryptocurrency mining probably represents from 0.6% to 2.3% of U.S. electricity consumption.
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The increased demand associated with cryptocurrency mining can present challenges to the operation of electricity grids. After some early problems where electricity prices spiked due to a sudden surge in cryptocurrency mining, wholesale and retail markets have been able to make adjustments to handle the new load. Some grid operators have instituted programs that provide incentives for large electricity consumers to curtail their use during periods of peak demand. Cryptocurrency miners have become regular participants in these programs, known as demand-response, resulting in operations being cut back or shut down temporarily. In addition, cryptocurrency miners in areas with fluctuating power prices have reduced their electricity use in response to periods of high prices in wholesale power markets, given the sensitivity of their operational profitability to electricity prices.
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Read more: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61364
The reasonable course of action if there is demand for more energy is to build more generators. But the Biden Administration doesn’t want more fossil fuel generators, they want the American People to embrace energy efficiency – doing more with less. The Biden Administration appears to see reducing energy use as a key pillar of their Net Zero agenda.
Cryptomining is an obvious target for such an agenda. They use a lot of electricity, the EIA estimates up to 2.3% of US electricity production. Forcing Cryptominers to shut down would in theory increase energy availability, without having to burn any additional coal or gas – which could allow the Biden administration to claim a significant emission reduction, without obvious large scale negative economic impacts.
China would also love it if Biden shut down US cryptomining. The Chinese Government is furious at rich Chinese using cryptomining to circumvent government restrictions by smuggling their money out of China. Smuggling cryptocurrency out of China utterly depends on cryptominers in the USA. Without a vibrant and highly liquid US cryptocurrency ecosystem, there would be no means available for rich Chinese cryptosmugglers to convert their crypto back into ordinary cash. But I’m sure helping Communists enforce their tyranny in Mainland China is not a priority for the Biden administration.
Of course, laws passed to regulate cryptomining energy use could potentially be applied to other industries, once they are on the statute books. We’ve all seen how regulatory overreach can be applied in ways lawmakers likely never intended, like the EPA’s attempts to abuse clean air laws to regulate CO2.
If we don’t defend cryptominers against unjust political overreach and harsh energy use regulation, I don’t think you have to be Einstein to figure out who the Biden Administration’s next target would be.
And how much power to EVs consume? Is that a problem for Biden?
Also all the AI applications will be sucking power
The IEA say electricity consumption from data centres, AI and cryptocurrency could double by 2026. They estimate that electricity from data centres alone could reach more than 1000 TWh by then, roughly equivalent to the electricity consumption of Japan.
IEA ‘Electricity 2024 Analysis and forecast to 2026’
A recent ‘long read’ in the Grauniad (15 Feb) said if all the prospective data centres in Ireland came into being the sector would be using 70% of the country’s electricity by 2030.
I have yet to see any tail-pipe emissions from a crypto mining operation.
They should all brand themselves as ZEM (Zero Emission Miners).
That should be enough to fool ignorant Leftists that think a car with no tail pipe is also zero emissions.
This is what a corrupt bloated government does. Exercising control and wanting a piece of the pie. The introduction of the CBDC will likely put an end to competing digital currencies. We had a crypto-miner put on the system I control recently. They had to comply with our load control program, so that if they didn’t shut down when we were controlling load, they would have to pay peak pricing for that time. They did like to ride the line for loading on their transformer.
I had to look this up, since a mandatory survey of crypto energy use did not seem part of the EIA charter I was familiar with. They are more into misstating the LCOE of wind versus CCGT.
The answer is found in 10CFR§300, where the EIA got “voluntary greenhouse gas emission reporting guidelines”.
The judge simply ruled that the EIA proposal didn’t look voluntary, hence the TRO.
Another example of Biden administration green overreach. WV v EPA, SEC (ESG reporting) and now EIA on crypto emissions.
If the Biden administration was concerned about the operation of electric grids, the Inflation Reduction Act, AKA Green New Deal Light, would never have been proposed or passed.
Clearly los Federales have a control issue with crypto. As an aside, if and when the grid goes down, accessing your crypto is going to be every bit as difficult as accessing your money down at the local bank.
Yes, but the grid going down affects everyone.
They want a system where you can’t access your money if you do not have the “correct” social virtue score! Crypto is a means of possibly skirting that creeping totalitarianism.
Fire up all fossil fuel and nuclear generators, build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators and remove all wind and solar from the grid.
The Internet is rife with all kinds of energy consuming endeavors that I consider frivolous. And yet it would ever occur to me to outlaw them. What’s the carbon footprint of TikTok, for example?
This is just a prime example of how “climate change” is really an excuse for Progressives to attack activities they either disapprove of or are not profiting from but would like to.
Joke Biden eats ice cream while millions invade across the border – he is a traitor – prosecute him.
How energy intensive is CBDC ???
How much energy do the climate models use? I understand they need super computers to run these models, so I’m betting it’s quite a bit, as well as dumping loads of CO2 in to the atmosphere. Perhaps the climate crazies could stop wasting the use of that energy and quit dirtying the planet running models that are of no use whatsoever to society.
At least crypto miners provide a valuable service people are willing to pay their hard earn cash for (ill gotten or otherwise). The climate models produce nothing of value & are subsidized with Billion$ of taxpayer funds.
I’m still waiting for someone to explain how cryptocurrency mining is beneficial beyond enriching the cryptocurrency speculators and miners. It has so far proven to be all hype and essentially zero benefit to anyone except speculators. Cryptocurrency is impractical for the billions of electronic monetary transactions that happen every day. So what is it good for? If the Biden Administration wants to shut it down, fine. It’s an incredibly wasteful form of speculation, sucking up massive CPU, GPU, and power resources that benefits no one, except, as I said, the speculators and the miners. There are lots of other things you can speculate on if you’re so inclined, from stocks, to commodities, to horse racing, sports, and the immutable statistical averages of lotteries; just about anything you can think of. And they suck up way less electrical power. Sure, it’s a free country, and people should be allowed to use the power they’re willing to pay for, but I won’t be heartbroken if cryptocurrency goes the way of pyramid marketing schemes.
As far as I can tell, what saved Crypto from utter uselessness was Chinese entrepreneurs and others realising they could use it for money smuggling. Bitcoin became a digital version of the ancient Hawala system.
https://voxeurop.eu/en/hawala-centuries-banking-system-beloved-migrants-smugglers/
In the Hawala system, if you want to transport money to a dangerous place, you could carry physical cash, but there is a huge risk of being robbed. So you go to a Hawala agent and give them your money, and in return they give you a token, like a torn dollar bill.
They send a courier to your destination with the other half of the torn dollar bill, you present the torn dollar to another Hawala agent, and after checking against the other half of the torn dollar which arrived separately, they pay you your money, minus a substantial handlers fee.
So long as the money travelling one way more or less matches the money travelling the other way, very little cash has to be transported between the two destinations.
If you think of bitcoin as a digital version of that Hawala torn dollar bill, then it makes sense why bitcoin is valuable. It is not the bitcoin which is valuable, any more than a torn dollar bill is valuable, it is the real cash which is being transported using bitcoin as proof of ownership which makes bitcoin valuable.
Can you define “real cash”? I suspect not. Currency, paper or electronic, is in fact only an IOU that can NEVER be paid. There is no positive official money in circulation anymore.
Many people like to proclaim something like “it doesn’t matter as long as I can spend it” but most fail to understand, or like climate faithful, refuse to believe anything they don’t like. The debt system replaced the money system because it allows those in charge of it to “tax” the general population at will without the population, or their elected representatives, having anything to say about it or, for most people, any awareness of how what is happening to them comes about.
The hope of Bitcoin was to create a positive money system that is beyond government control. Bitcoin and its rivals are positive energy based money. Unfortunately propaganda, applied fear, intense surveillance, undercover agents, etc. available to governments can often overcome the security of block chain mathematics.
Sure, there are more complications to it, but the general concept is there.
I hear you, ultimately even gold is only worth the value we assign to it. If you believe in Crypto go for it, but unlike gold Bitcoin could collapse to nothing next year if Ethereum or Dogecoin or whatever wins favour as the currency smugglers’ token of choice.
Ethereum especially may have a good chance of supplanting Bitcoin, stronger crypto features.
gold value, outside of current law which prevent it from being money is a matter of supply and demand, just like any commodity. Most of the time the supply did not and could not change rapidly so, being it was universally money, its value was stable over long periods. No one could “assign” a value to it outside of a tyrannical government trying to replace it as money with a fiat currency so the central power could take (rob) at will. Calling a certain amount in a coin 20 ‘dollars’ does not assign the purchasing power of the coin.
Viewing crypto currency only as a means to illegal affairs is to view the actions of government as the word of god, a rather capricious god as should be evident to most people.
“positive money system that is beyond government control.”
So funny over this ‘positive’ money scam
The bitchain ledger is a fully public system, anyone can view it . the FBI certainly does and they have recovered bitcoins used in ransom IT attacks
Being able to view the transactions doesn’t mean being able to know what is going on or who made the transactions for what purpose. Governments have to have some special information to do more than just see that something has occurred. Generally this comes from some kind of undercover work getting ahold of the access credentials, as I described in the earlier post.
I can imagine also being able to eventually track transactions to some person or group if one knew the beginning transaction, such as having paid, or engineered, the ransom into the system. I’m not trying to pretend to be an expert who knows all the ins and outs, but I’m fairly certain from readily available information that the block chain by itself (without inside information to particular transactions) is secure.
Secure encryption is secure without some kind of devious work to obtain the keys. Such things are not broken by dint of excessive computer power nor successful guesses. Planting secret monitoring software on your computer is rather easily done to most people these days. Accessing supposedly secure data streams remotely, and other trickery to recover passwords, is the way it is done.
Apparently because of the computing power required to ‘create’ a bitcoin, it turns out less computing power can crack the encryption ( with the right tools)
The Crypto exchanges are major targets and only as secure from their owners/employees as some banana republic currency
Theres been many very tricky work arounds exploiting how the nodes are connected and even recognising that the most successful miners are quite few in number while thousands grind along in hope as they have a fraction of the computing power
Cryptocurrency is neither a currency — because it’s far too volatile — and it’s not an investment because it has no inherent value – it doesn’t generate any dividends or represent ownership in an enterprise. One might as well invest in tulips.
I think hawala uses passwords these days as its international.
Bitcoin type chains can and are tracked. Who it is isnt known but they can follow the money
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/technology/bitcoin-untraceable-pipeline-ransomware.html
I thought Anthony was doing a research study on earths temperature history to prove climate change was a hoax. Does anyone know what happened to the study?
Did it prove to difficult for Anthony?
He demonstrated that the “official” temperature is not reality based. This has nothing to do with how, or how much/how fast climates change.
in what scientific journal was his paper published?
Whats your publications ?
Its obvious an ‘ average global temperature’ is a fake.
Its like saying theres an ‘average person’ for exactly the same reasons
so Anthony didn’t y try to publish his paper on a major scientific issue in a scientific journal?? No wonder no one ever heard of Anthony’s paper. What a shame. He could have won a Nobel Prize and world acclaim!
Being right doesn’t count in today’s world.
Surface station issues have been confirmed by NOAA.
You have nothing but whinging to back up your puerile and pathetic attempt to DENY factual information.
It is now up to you to disprove the fact that a large proportion of surface sites are totally unfit for “climate” purposes.
Whinging and whimpering are NOT scientific proof. !
Neither is Anthony’s obscure paper
I know of a country where the surface station record was homogenised- for scientific reasons they said.
They wrote a paper on the process and said that it would be published in a peer review journal
Many years later after that claim, it appeared the ‘journal’ was their in house publication and instead of anonymous reviewers they choose another countrys metrological organisation to give an OK
Pal review and vanity published ! And yet it wasnt a complicated homogenisation/manipulation that they did.
I remember looking at some of the original data and it seems for a few stations the 25 year average temp around 1910 was greater than the average around 2010. Not a large amount I think that was the wrong answer !
A weatherman overturning 50 years of research by thousands of PhD scientists, of an entire branch of science. And yet no one knows!
Mr. Beeton: I hope our host is doing something other than reading the posts of the lamest gaslighter to visit the site since Mr. Greene.
It was published here. Where does not change what it is.
Also, major aspects of the work have been verified numerous times.
Right. I think I saw a verification in Mad Magazine.
I agree. We know what it is
It’s not a priority for Sleepy Joe, but talk to Hunter.
That was exposed as a fake Ukraine tipoff by the dude now in jail
Just as Trump is exposed as ‘not rich enough’ by unable to raise a bond for the NY state court judgement while he appeals
A bond backed by collateral costs a small fraction of the amount covered..
Big Donny is broke !
These numbskulls should reconsider this thrust. Because this sword is double edged. There are 8.5 million internet data centers globally, and this report from 2017 shows that is 416 TerraWatts just for the internet servers, let alone say Google, Bing, and so on.
https://cc-techgroup.com/data-center-energy-consumption/
So going after the crypto nuts could backlash to the very essence of how big brother is manipulating the madness of crowds!