Well, the news is out. Short-seller hedge-fund I never even heard about, talks up their book and gets Yahoo Finance video-time for their efforts. I wonder if this will turn into the same 5-year bet Buffett made regarding Bitcoin going to zero? That was over 5 years ago... luckily he couldn't find those PUTs to buy he stated he was looking for. Note: Young guy in cheap suit broadcasting from what looks like home attic, thinks he'll do better than Chanos. Note: Chanos' last bet was on COIN, and look what happened. He's in retirement now after previously surviving four decades in this dangerous field. Let's see how well THIS talking guy does in comparison.
One thing you will notice Bitcoiners always do is they never have a logical argument for their fallacies, except for "THE RPICE WENT UP!!!!" Do you know that RIOT actually turns off the bitcoin miners and makes money from state subsidies? There is an energy crisis and these miners are getting paid to not mine and waste energy. The guy is obviously correct. Ponzi bitcoiners will of course start screaming BEST PERFORIMNG ASSET BITCOIN NEW ATH $1M BY EOY!!!!
If you actually did your research and understood the issue properly, you would see that this is a huge benefit to the Texas grid and so many other power companies are looking to copy this as a way to balance their grid. Bitcoin mining operations help make electricity more reliable and cheaper for people like you.
This is not true. https://theweek.com/in-depth/1022698/how-voracious-bitcoin-mining-is-messing-with-texans https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/s...ning/287-a053e258-9006-45dc-b99e-79ab51a6a94e
Skimming the links you provide, especially the second one, makes it sound like people are just mad they don't get paid to not use power. That isn't the fault of a bitcoin miner. Think of them like the Fed, the buyer of last resort. Imagine if nobody would buy toxic US debt... what would have that done to the entire financial system? We all hate the Fed of course, but knowing that they will buy whatever debt needs to be issued is a huge safety mechanism. Back to Bitcoin, if you don't have a major electricity buyer, you can't grow your grid or increase production. If you find a huge buyer of electricity, but want to be able to tell them when to turn off, you have to pay for that privilege, which seems fair to me. They are providing an important balancing service. Imagine you run a hospital ER. You have to staff your department and be able to provide healthcare for whoever walks through the door. You don't want nurses and doctors sitting around doing nothing. Imagine on a slow day, you are likely happy for the junkies coming through, since you can bill for these services and keep your employees working. Now imagine a major car accident and 10 people are coming. Imagine if those junkies said no problem, we can leave, just give us some money to go get high. The junkies get a nice tip, and free up hospital beds for the incoming accident victims. Any business would kill to have a base load of steady work, and be able to take on high paid work if business spikes, and pay a small fee for pushing the other work it had promised out to a later date. No business wants to increase staffing for one big project, and then have to lay people off when there isn't enough work the next day.
Yes, bitcoin mining is helped by electricity producers in Texas, but it hurts retail electricity consumers because prices are higher for them than they would be without bitcoin mining.
I disagree with this. It is likely they would have no electricity at peak times. At least at peak times its available, although expensive. In some countries, bitcoin mining is what brings electricity to the city. Without a large buyer, there is no point in opening up a plant. But when bitcoin mining comes, the city benefits because they have a large scale buyer, and this makes the numbers work for the startup costs, and now the entire city can get electrified. I realize Texas is different, but these principles apply as well. Without a large scare buyer, there would be no grid expansion. Electricity is very difficult to do because of the huge variance in peak load. A power plant can't be sitting idle or at only 20% use. So they aren't gonna build out 200MW of peak power if most of the time only 50MW are needed. So you build 50MW, and if it goes over, customers suffer from rotating blackouts. But if you build for 200MW, knowing a buyer will take 150MW at all times, but if you need to borrow 50 of this because the city needs 100 for a few hours, you pay that miner. Its so simple and effective.
Aside from these bitcoin miners sucking up vast electricity, Let's not forget about the thousands of data centers being built for Ai ....they are saying electricity usage is going to be going absolutely gangbusters...
I might not be an expert on power plants, but I know how to use electricity to easily find out they can be built to not be running at full capacity all the time (load following power plants) or not be running at all sometimes (peaking power plants). The problem with "you pay that miner" is you is me and all the other victims who pay more for electricity because of bitcoin mining. It would be "so simple and effective" to not pay bitcoin miners for not mining at the expense of others or better yet have them pay extra for the greater good of society.
It will self-correct after the AI bust... And if you ever visit Ontario, you should see the landscape now where all those WEED stocks sprang up years ago. They were saying how pot was going to go absolutely gangbusters too... Those investors absolutely don't want to talk about it any more whenever you ask how are their pot-stocks doing lately...