Iceland’s bitcoin miners may leave the country without enough energy

[Zippyjuan]

https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/...-enough-energy

Bitcoin mining in Iceland is sucking up so much energy that officials are worried they soon won't have enough power to run the country.

In the last six months, miners have been flocking to the island nation, where abundant and cheap renewable energy and arctic air (to keep servers from overheating) make it a bitcoin miner’s paradise. But the energy-intensive process of mining cryptocurrency threatens to overwhelm the country’s energy infrastructure. If it continues apace, it’ll eat more energy than all of Iceland’s residents would consume before the end of the year.

“Four months ago, I could not have predicted this trend,” Johann Snorri Sigurbergsson, a business development manager at the energy company HS Orka, told the Associated Press. Now he expects the energy demands from cryptocurrency miners will double the country’s energy consumption estimates, and end up using more energy than all Icelandic households.

Sigurbergsson told the Washington Post that almost every day for the past six months, he’s received a call from a foreign company looking to set up mining operations in the country. And if they were to accept all the requests, they would run out of energy.

“If all these projects are realized, we won’t have enough energy for it,” Sigurbergsson told the BBC.

The way bitcoin works, miners, as they’re called, task themselves with verifying bitcoin transactions on a global ledger, where all bitcoin transactions are recorded. In exchange, they’re rewarded in bitcoin. The way the currency is structured, there will eventually be a cap at 21 million bitcoin in circulation, which means there are about 4 million left to mine. The more bitcoins are in circulation, the more computing power it takes to verify the transactions.

As a result, miners are constantly seeking out cheap and reliable energy sources to power their computers. And Iceland has plenty of that. The country’s grid is powered entirely through its abundant sources of renewable energy, a combination of hydroelectric and geothermal power.

But Icelandic politicians aren’t entirely thrilled with the cryptocurrency boom hitting their shores. Smári McCarthy‏, of Iceland’s Pirate Party, wants to see cryptocurrencies flourish in Iceland but hopes that they’ll be regulated by a similar set of rules that govern the trading of stocks and bonds.

more at link.

[kpitcher]

The more bitcoins are in circulation, the more computing power it takes to verify the transactions.

No, that's not how it works. Difficulty is entirely based on how much network hash power there is, not on how many coins are in circulation.

[timosman]

No, that's not how it works. Difficulty is entirely based on how much network hash power there is, not on how many coins are in circulation.

More miners -> more hash power -> more coins

[VIDEODROME]

Do people who have enough money sitting around to be able to relocate to another country and spend so much on huge Servers and GPUs really need to be mining? They can't just purchase the Bitcoins as an investment to sell later?

At some point, this seems like a big waste of resources.

[dannno]

More miners -> more hash power -> more coins

LOL... no...

More miners -> greater difficulty -> less coins mined per hash rate -> find cheaper energy source

[dannno]

Do people who have enough money sitting around to be able to relocate to another country and spend so much on huge Servers and GPUs really need to be mining? They can't just purchase the Bitcoins as an investment to sell later?

At some point, this seems like a big waste of resources.

The central banks are a much bigger waste of resources.

[kpitcher]

Do people who have enough money sitting around to be able to relocate to another country and spend so much on huge Servers and GPUs really need to be mining? They can't just purchase the Bitcoins as an investment to sell later?

At some point, this seems like a big waste of resources.

Bitmain, chinese company, makes their own chips to make their own miners. They reportedly profited something around 4 billion last year.

https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-har...ion-last-year/

It's like the gold rush.. the people who made the real money were those building the infrastructure for the miners.

[VIDEODROME]

I dunno it seemed weird to me. I wonder if Bitcoin will have stable long-term or be a passing fad.

[dannno]

I dunno it seemed weird to me. I wonder if Bitcoin will have stable long-term or be a passing fad.

Cryptocurrency is an inevitable future. Currently bitcoin is the best. It is not static so it can incorporate new technologies, like lightning network. So it doesn't necessarily need to become obsolete to some other coin.

[timosman]

LOL... no...

More miners -> greater difficulty -> less coins mined per hash rate -> find cheaper energy source

This looks more and more like something created by SJWs and central planners:

It was determined you are mining too much dough hence ..... you will be mining less as the effort required is going to increase

[dannno]

This looks more and more like something created by SJWs and central planners:

It was determined you are mining too much dough hence ..... you will be mining less as the effort required is going to increase

That is ridiculous. SJWs want to force people to do $#@!. Nobody is forcing people to use bitcoin.

What is shows is that after all this time, you still have no clue wtf you are talking about when it comes to crypto...

Resources, business environments, prices, all those things in the market regulate market activity, and that is fine..same with crypto mining difficulty algorithms. It helps regulate how much mining is occurring. Government regulating market activity is bad.