Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on Today at 12:33:06 PM

Quote from: LoyceV on September 30, 2022, 03:25:55 PM

That brings me back to my previous point: like virtually any other industry, Bitcoin's energy consumption depends on it's profitability. Gold mining is comparable: if there's more money to be made, gold miners will burn more diesel to get the gold. If excavators become more energy efficient, they'll buy more excavators.

Yes, however: Bitcoin mining incentivizes for energy efficiency more than gold mining does. Besides technological efficiency, mining bitcoins incentivizes transition to 100% renewable energy.

True! Every watt you can save without reducing your hashrate, is directly correlated to more money in your pockets. That's also the reason GPU miners draw less power from their cards than gamers. They aim treading a very fine line between as low current settings as possible, while keeping the chip stable and running at reasonable frequency / hashrate.

Also, never forget that for reducing greenhouse gases, we need to (1) transition machines to run on electricity and then (2) generate that electricity cleanly. In Bitcoin mining (opposed to gold mining) this first step is already given, which is great.

Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on Today at 12:33:06 PM

For instance, excess in use of wind power can be used instead of being wasted

This reminds me of a video a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZEaYjo4ZJU
They acknowledge that solar energy has a storage problem and that batteries are needed. However, it's a known fact that the Lithium supply is not endless and getting it out of the earth is not great, either.
That's why overbuilding renewables (e.g. to have enough sun even in winter) and using the excess for Bitcoin mining is a better / alternative solution.

Quote from: BlackHatCoiner on Today at 12:33:06 PM

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There is no correlation between Bitcoin price and its energy use

That sounds a little absolute. Little fluctuations might not have a direct affectation to the energy required, but if the price skyrocketed I'm sure we'd observe something similar to the difficulty as well.

To be honest, I think NotATether is right. As far as I know, there are no 'reserves' of ASICs ready to turn on as soon as the Bitcoin price skyrockets. They may relocate if it gets too expensive to mine somewhere (either by moving own operations or selling the devices and closing a facility), but they essentially keep running at all times.

Quote from: https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_network_hash_rate

Quote from: https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_price