The Stock Market Thread

Can you point me to a reference or example of escaping methane from a gas well being captured solely for bitcoin generation? Because capturing energy for something useful would be great, but capturing energy for generating digital currency is not great since it only further feeds the demand for energy to generate digital currency... And speaking hypothetically about doing this when it isn't happening is just putting your fingers in your ears. The demand for money is infinite, but energy is not. No matter the scheme or geography, this direct connection between electricity and money with no product, labor, or meaningful service occurring is a threat to global civilization on par with building endless moai and chopping down every last tree to do so on Easter Island.

 

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rethinking-easter-islands-historic-collapse/

 

“The downturn of the islanders, DiNapoli and his colleagues claim, began only after Europeans ushered in a period characterized by disease, murder, slave raiding, and other conflicts.”

 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bu...-crusoe-energy-coinbase-winklevoss-2021-6?amp

Here’s one example

 

That's inventive. But a less computationally intensive currency would still benefit more. I like what one of the ones out in the wild is doing where it is doing it on low power devices like raspberry pi, rather than on voltage sucking GPUs.

 

Their rethinking does not match historical accounts or the paleoenvironmental record. Where did Paschalococos disperta go? We can start a separate thread on this, but I reject discounting physical evidence primary historical records in favor of bayesian analyses sites based on radiocarbon dates, which is code for soft as hell evidence and a lack of actual radiocarbon dates to support their hypothesis. The proof is in the pudding, or rather, the sediment. Where the hell did the trees go, PRIOR to European contact?

 

This is insane. What a dystopia.

 

Bolt on energy. Next we'll have small wind turbines on exhausts to charge batteries...

 

yes and yes

Yet, for some people, paying oil companies for their byproducts is simply propping up the fossil fuels industry. Others argue that bitcoin is socially useless and there are much better uses for energy.

 

Charlie Spears started a company co erring stranded gas in the Permian basin to Bitcoin. Much of that would have likely otherwise been flared.

 

Ya, 53 shared a good link. So why not use it for something useful instead of bitcoin? And if it is feasible to be captured for bitcoin, why do we allow it to just be flared?

 

because these are remote areas were the economics don’t work out to pipe line or make lines to transfer the energy out, but something like bitcoins let’s you capture the value and just takes internet to transport it.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57199405

Here’s one on using methane from dairy cows from their manure lagoon to power the computers

 

I think 53 answered it but whatever product you make has to be carried out. Pipe, rail, truck. That costs money so there has to be value in whatever you make enough to cover it. You could make ammonia and truck it. But you’d have to modulation your ammonia manufacturing because when that well stops flaring, you’d need to move. Well that is tricky and more expensive. Now it is less economical.

Bitcoin works because you can put the computers and generators on a trailer and move them around and it’s free to ship.

That isn’t to say other things couldn’t work. But the arb was there for Bitcoin to work.

 

You could convert it to hydrogen and it would be something actually useful.

 

Probably not continuously due to flammability, and storage and transport safety.

 

You could do this with server farms to house cold storage, as well.

Bitcoin is dumb because... well, imagine that you have a problem to solve, and one person could solve... but instead, you make it a competition to see who can solve it first. And millions of people, all day long, just solve the same problem, and one person gets a reward.

Who would think: that's a well designed system.

 

If you can extract and flare methane from oil and gas wells, you can handle hydrogen. If you can truck around a trailer of computers, you can truck around a storage unit for hydrogen. It's less explosive.

 

You park the trailer at one spot for a few months most likely. Then the well might be taken off flare. Then you move. Hydrogen would require constant shipment. It would be cheaper to collect the natural gas and ship it in a container - and that’s not cheap.

If it can make money, people will do it. Charlie and his colleagues found an arb and could make money in Bitcoin through this approach. Bitcoin might be dumb but making money is their goal. They might not be successful in the long run because Bitcoin crashes before they can recover their capital. But it’s a business - for now, at least.

 

Well I think the Europeans settled areas close to the remote island like Chile and Ecuador before official contact with the native humans. This enabled a fly to drift far enough to sea on flotsam or jetsam to be picked up by seabirds which introduced pathogens into the fragile ecology of Easter which set the stage for plausible deniability on the part of the white folk.

Or their ships attracted birds which grew dependent on humans. By the time the vessels reached the shore their regular flights had sown the seeds of collapse.

Certainly this is nothing approaching a theory, just a wild-ass hypothesis. But I feel as if you’ve failed to fully recognize all the variables in play.