Readit NewsIn terms of profiting from surplus electricity, Bitcoin (or cryptocurrency mining in general) is a great option as it's exceptionally simple to scale up and down in accordance with available cheap surplus. One major benefit that miners are taking advantage of is locating in close proximity to energy stations, reducing the inefficiency of transporting electrical energy over distance. This turns effectively "wasted" energy in to a solidly efficient energy store for infinite amount of time— for example: 1 BTC will always be equal to 1/21000000 of the total supply.
It seems you misunderstand. Illicit fiat and extortion can be used to access energy to mine Bitcoin, effectively laundering that illicit fiat.
As a citizen of Earth, I'm of mixed feelings. On the one hand heavy crude from the tar sands, which is some of the most polluting oil on the planet, because it requires so much energy to extract, will keep shipping by rail to the United States. That involves more spills than a pipeline and burning yet more fuel. That's bad.
On the other hand that makes the prices higher and both constrains the volume of output and the price at which it's profitable to extract. Both things that mean more of that tar sands oil will stay in the ground. That's good.
On the other, other hand - more tar sands oil staying in the ground means more oil from elsewhere in the world, often from politically unstable or unfriendly regimes will replace the oil the US otherwise would have imported from Canada. That's potentially bad.
I'm not sure which outcome is better for Canada, the USA, or the world. I'm pretty sure neither Obama, Trump, not Biden had any accurate idea either.
Edit: and the downvotes are because you disagree with my economic analysis? Or because you think any of those politicians actually have a solid, fundamental analysis including unintentional consequences? Get real, they did it for political reasons, that's why they came out on different sides of the issue based on party lines. Actually judging by the downvotes, I think it was a smart political move. I really wish HN would require a comment with a downvote, even if it's only visible to the OP.
Killing the pipeline will help but not in a vacuum. Continued policy/pressure needs to be applied to move away from oil, which is probably best for the sake of the world.
How does Microsoft come to own all of open-source? That's the plan, right?
Pay-per-search would be cheap enough for municipalities to negotiate subscriptions for their entire broadband network as a part of broadband service.
How can something on the internet be a common carrier when the internet itself is not a common carrier?
Because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen.
Maybe Google is the last straw that leads to proper governance of utilities in the public's interest.
That's exactly how they work. As long as you keep making interest payments, and the value of the asset you took the loan against remains above a pre-defined threshold, you never need pay back the principal. The idea being that you invest the money you borrowed and earn a profit on the difference between the interest payment and your investment return. And the interest payment itself is tax-deductible because you borrowed to invest. Neat trick, right?
Btw, this is a power also available to ordinary people, in the form of a HELOC.
I mean, I'm glad I didn't HELOC my way to a few Bitcoin last month, so maybe it's best we leave these tricks to the rich folk anyway.
The underlying problem actually lies in the fiat system, not the Bitcoin one.
How so?