ConocoPhillips is selling extra gas to bitcoin miners in North Dakota:
Oil and gas major ConocoPhillips is in the bitcoin mining fuel business.
The company said in a statement to CNBC on Tuesday that it has one bitcoin pilot project currently operating in the Bakken, a region in North Dakota known as an important source of new oil production in the U.S.
A representative for ConocoPhillips said the company is not operating the crypto mine itself. Instead, it sells gas that would otherwise have been burned off to a bitcoin processor that is owned and managed by a third party.
[...] The push into bitcoin mining dovetails with an initiative by the oil and gas major to reduce routine flaring, or burning off extra gas, to zero by 2030.
The company has published reports about efforts to phase out the practice of routinely flaring natural gas in the "Lower 48" states, which represents the largest segment in ConocoPhillips today, based on production. It is comprised of two regions covering the Gulf Coast and Great Plains — an area that includes the Bakken.
Co-locating a bitcoin mine to an oil and gas field is a huge help toward that goal, though it won't affect the company's scope three carbon emissions, an industry term used to describe emissions that are a result of activities from assets not owned or controlled by the reporting organization.
For years, oil and gas companies have struggled with the problem of what to do when they accidentally hit a natural gas formation while drilling for oil. Whereas oil can easily be trucked out to a remote destination, gas delivery requires a pipeline. If a drilling site is right next to a pipeline, they chuck the gas in and take whatever cash the buyer on the other end is willing to pay that day. But if it's 20 miles from a pipeline, drillers often burn it off, or flare it. That is why you will typically see flames rising from oil fields.
Beyond the environmental implications of flare gas, drillers are also, in effect, burning cash.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @10:33AM (2 children)
Aristarchus gets no subsidies, in fact, Aristarchus is banenedl.Not able to post lljlj... He is ibn oNBe of the lesserHells of SoylentNews, where janrinocks pleck at yur fflesh, nand sfrirm your identiies as Runaway at Paul Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sidney, Arkansas. All drains lead to the ocean, unless they are in Arkansas. But actually, it is Paul, at . . .
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @11:39AM (1 child)
But dude, your obsession is just totally sad.
Ever though of taking a vocational class to meet girls? e.g. Salsa dancing or Thai cooking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @02:21PM
Better yet, a patisserie class.
I am reliably informed that girls like cake.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @10:57AM
in other news, they found a fireproof usb-stick with bitcoin markings of venutian origin ... on venus.
it is assumed that powering the device on venus and reformating it will yield a cascade phenomenon that returns venus to its former green and temperate glory -sans- the long gone sucidal venutians. however concerns have been raised that the collective wealth of the venutian high-culture would be lost and proposals are being made for a robot mission to retrieve the said alien-usb-stick and to display it in the new museum being constructed on earth named "how it's done!"
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday February 21 2022, @11:56AM (29 children)
So instead of wasting gas in flares, they waste gas in proofs of work. Color me impressed...
(Score: 4, Informative) by canopic jug on Monday February 21 2022, @12:42PM (1 child)
Or as some put it, proof of waste.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:28PM
Proof of heating an area that could use some extra heat during winter.
While Republicans can get over Trump's sexual assaults, affairs, and vulgarity; they cannot get over Obama being black.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 21 2022, @12:48PM (25 children)
One of the many things missed about cryptocurrencies is that they add value to any wasted energy anywhere in the world. Think about it. Before Bitcoin, a typical flare was a few hundred to thousand wasted watts of energy that nobody could figure out how to exploit, even for lighting bulbs in the neighborhood. To use that energy, you needed to move that energy somewhere useful - there was nothing that could use that energy right there. It just wasn't worth it.
Now, it's potentially doing something of modest value. All you need is some cheap power generator that can run on that gas, an onsite cryptomining setup, and a network connection. Still might fail (particularly since crypto market is chancy and power generation from a flare just isn't that great), but at least the infrastructure is cheap.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @01:23PM (23 children)
The thing is, it's not valuable. Nothing of value is produced by proof of waste.
If the software being run did something useful - protein folding or scientific simulation or something - then this would be good. But it's just turning one kind of waste into a different kind of waste.
At best, you could say that it saves energy from the main power grid, but that's not any real savings, since the computation was waste no matter where it happened.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @01:40PM (4 children)
Are slot machines a waste? Is pornography or prostitution a waste? People pay for these things because they derive some personal value from them, however temporary or illusory they may be.
Is Bitcoin a collosal waste of energy? Yes. Is it feeding some human wants, even if not needs? The evidence says yes.
There are actual nuggets of value (beyond feeding vices) in cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is a 1.0 protocol, the valuable things don't require proof of work, unless you are invested in the proof of work ecosystem, then of course you need that to continue.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @04:13PM (3 children)
I mean... Yes? We'd be better off without both prostitution and slot machines (and I used to build slot machines!) But at least they provide entertainment.
Just because people do something doesn't mean that doing it provides value. People join cults and ponzi schemes. Bitcoin isn't so different. The "want" it satisfies is the hope of getting rich without doing anything to earn it. The original goal of decentralized, inflation-proof money has failed. The best that can be said at this point is that maybe the creators were too idealistic and not just greedy.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @06:38PM (2 children)
That is a personal values call. For the majority of the population / cases, I think you are right, but are we really going to force the minority to give up their vices / vice provisioning careers when they really do give them better / happier lives? If Black Lives Matter, so do the rights of that minority of people who really do prefer to live a life of vice - and it's certainly an entertaining thing for the rest of us to visit on occasion / watch in the movies etc.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the vast majority of Bitcoin miners / traders are tremendously entertained by the endeavor, if they weren't they'd act on the less-than-zero-sum most-players-are-losers worse-than-state-lottery-odds aspects of the bigger picture.
Does Bitcoin need regulation? Absolutely. The energy wasting aspects alone warrant a swift chop to Bitcoin's Achilles' tendons, whatever they may be. The appeal to gambling addiction, etc. also needs transparency and harm mitigations in place, people have proven time and again they are all too willing to self-destruct on the chance of hitting "the big one." Personally, I think UBI is a strong medicine for all these problems, but that's another topic.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @07:43AM (1 child)
I'm not saying they should be illegal - just that we'd be better off without them. Slot machines are hardly the worst problem facing society, and just because I don't approve of something doesn't mean it should be illegal. Like I said, I used to build them, I wouldn't have done that if I thought they were all that bad. I just don't play them, and I don't think anyone else should either, but that doesn't mean I want to force that on you. Prostitution is worse, but the effects of trying to prevent it are probably worse than the effects of having it. If legalization were on the ballot, I'd vote for it (as I did with marijuana, which is also bad). http://www.npr.org/assets/news/2013/onion-drugs.pdf [npr.org]
Bitcoin is a little different, because while it's not a great precedent to outlaw software, it's also a financial instrument, and those are easy to regulate. What that should be (and for all its flaws I'm still willing to entertain the idea that the answer is "nothing"), I'm not sure yet.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 22 2022, @12:39PM
One of the biggest interesting things about cryptocurrency as financial instruments is that they are hard (some say impossible, they are high or lying) to regulate.
You can regulate the conversion of cryptocurrency to/from regulated currencies, but inasmuch as cryptocurrency has "intrinsic value" regulating the exchange of that - numbers proving ownership and offer/acceptance of transactions - as long as we allow the exchange of cat videos it will be impossible to stop the exchange of those numbers amongst groups who choose to exchange them privately.
Imagine if everyone had their own cryptocurrency, and all it represented was their personal, non legally binding, promise to redeem coins for some kind of value they can provide. http://mangocats.com/ao/Multitudinous.html [mangocats.com]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @02:37PM (12 children)
Bitcoin is at least as valuable as any fiat currency.
A dollar bill is just a rectangular piece of paper. A hundred dollar bill is roughly the same, why is it worth one hundred times as much? Because everyone agrees it is.
Unless you want to go back on the gold standard every currency is just an agreement that we all pretend it has intrinsic value. Dollars, pesos, pounds, francs, yuans, and satoshis, it's all the same.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mhajicek on Monday February 21 2022, @03:29PM (6 children)
No, it isn't. The cost of transactions is far too high. What would it cost to buy a loaf of bread with Bitcoin?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @04:04PM
looks like btc would be closet to $2
but the "bitcoin cash" it would be half a penny.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactionfees-bch.html#3y [bitinfocharts.com]
anyway, still a waste
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @04:06PM (3 children)
You're just arguing scale. I wouldn't use a check to buy a loaf of bread either. The 1% charge on paying by visa makes bitcoin a cheaper option if you are buying a new car. Carrying fifty thousand dollars in cash carries a pretty high risk of making some cop's day.
But that wasn't my point. All fiat currencies are only backed by the belief of the users that they have value. Bitcoin is no different.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @07:31PM (1 child)
I thought fiat currencieds were backed by a monopoly on the use of force.
Fuck, this ECON101 class (taught by Musk) sure is hard.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @04:38AM
That's an argument that some people make, but it doesn't hold up. American dollars are used around the world, often preferred to the local currency in many places, even if the local monopoly on force promotes some other value token.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday February 21 2022, @09:24PM
The value of a fiat currency is maintained by the government issuing it requiring that it be used for the payment of taxes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by crafoo on Monday February 21 2022, @06:08PM
that's a subjective value judgement. There is nothing objective about what you wrote.
work is required to ensure the validity of a distributed ledger. A distributed ledger, a distributed monetary system has value to some people, clearly.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday February 21 2022, @08:16PM (4 children)
Sure, all money is a social fiction. It always has been, since the days when we decided to use shiny metal as a medium of exchange rather than keeping clay tablet records about how one guy owed another guy 17 goats in exchange for 15 gallons of beer.
However, here are some things you can do with US dollars that you can't do with Bitcoins without first selling them for a fiat currency:
- You can pay US taxes.
- You can use them to settle all debts, public and private, in US jurisdiction, e.g. a restaurant has to treat them as a valid attempt to pay your tab. It says so right on the bill, and if need be people with guns can come by to explain differences of opinion about that.
- You can put them into an FDIC/CRUA-insured account, which means you get to keep at least $250,000 of what's in the account even if the company managing the account goes belly-up.
- You can take advantage of all of the payment infrastructure that is based on those FDIC/CRUA-insured accounts: debit cards, electronic checks, wire transfers, etc.
- As others have pointed out, you can complete your transactions in a reasonable amount of time, where the value of the currency hasn't changed so dramatically that what was a good deal at the start of the transaction is a bad deal at the end of it.
- You can use cash dollars as paper, such as writing on them or burning them for warmth. I don't recommend doing this, but it's still more useful than a Bitcoin wallet if everything goes to hell in a handbasket and the entire fiat currency system goes kaput.
An important difference between fiat currency and Bitcoin is that fiat currency is backed by the full faith and credit of the government that issues it, while Bitcoin is backed by nothing but the Tom Sawyer Principle that if something's hard to get it must be valuable.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 22 2022, @01:42PM (3 children)
And that incurs a lot of overhead, starting with your first point: paying US taxes.
FDIC is just an insurance, one backed by the US government, but even the US government isn't likely to be an immortal 100% reliable institution in the long run.
The payment infrastructure built up over time - it sure is handy, but it's just a natural manifestation of payment processing services. The same type of systems form over basically all legal forms of value exchange, you might say: grow at first like a slime, then solidify like a coral reef, but even coral reefs are not 100% impervious to natural storms, or climate change.
Reasonable time - an artifact of a developed system. 3-5 business days for a personal check to clear used to be a reasonable time.
The interesting thing to me about the whole Bitcoin/Ether/etc. phenomenon is that it has been functioning, globally, for over a decade now, with zero legal standing. No people with guns or lawyers explaining how the contracts should be interpreted. To me, that's huge, revolutionary. It gives me a vision of a "decentralized" system wherein everybody has their own cryptocurrency, with zero legal standing, but value based in the promise that there is value. Some will, of course, be worthless. But those who demonstrate the value of the cryptocurrency they control (closely held, proof of stake currencies) should be able to issue their own "coins" or "NFTs" like people use credit or debit cards today, but with the twist: the promise they make isn't legally binding, it's just a promise which they back up through their history of fair dealing - much like credit ratings work today - but again, without the legal overhead.
http://assignonward.com/Multitudinous.html [assignonward.com]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 22 2022, @03:10PM (2 children)
You've just re-invented the banking system from approximately 150 years ago. During that period, it was pretty standard practice for banks to issue paper notes backed by the gold in their vaults, no government action needed and fairly convenient. Well, except for some significant problems, like:
1. It's hard to prevent counterfeiting when there's nothing standardized and the banks are trying to produce this stuff cheaply.
2. There's an important question of verifying that the bank in question even exists.
3. Even if the bank exists, there's nothing preventing the bank from issuing more paper than their gold would justify.
4. Because of the previous two problems, there was a significant variance in how much value a note saying "1 dollar" would be worth depending on the reputation of the bank. So you couldn't simply exchange a 1 dollar note for 1 dollar worth of stuff, you had to bargain and negotiate with whoever you were buying things from, which created significant overhead for both you and the seller for every transaction.
5. It was prone to boom-bust cycles due to the fluctuations of gold supplies, problems with worthless paper, and the usual business cycle problems of investment.
Those problems were a big part of why the Federal Reserve system was created in the first place. It solved or significantly reduced a lot of those problems.
So your only real difference in your proposal is replacing banks with individuals, and gold with crypto. I'm not impressed.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 23 2022, @02:18PM
Thank you for the analogy, and the wonderful strawmen lined up ready for obliteration with the flamethrowers of modern technology:
The past 10 years of cryptocurrency activity have fairly conclusively demonstrated: Yes, Virginia, private-public key cryptography works and effectively prevents issues like counterfeiting, double spend, etc.
Yes, a significant problem in 1872 when the pinnacle of communication technology was the human operated wired telegraph - itself a quantum leap beyond the pony express literally horseback courier system, but still not quite the same as today's global pocket-to-pocket broadband connections.
Couple that instant communication with an automated credit rating tracking network, also accessible globally within a matter of seconds for a cost of fractions of a penny per credit check, and the question of "who/what am I dealing with" becomes clear enough to do business, at least on a limited basis.
Well, if you want to issue a gold-backed currency, that's your choice. Today's tech already supports automatic, unforgeable, escrow of crypto assets including national currencies such as the Bahamian Sand Dollar - yes, not quite a U.S. greenback, but more stable than DOGE or BTC. Assuming the U.S. gets onboard eventually, you could also back your crypto assets with cryptographically proven U.S. dollars in escrow. Until such time, periodic manual audits might suffice, or... like the rest of the developed world did in the 1970s, you could float your credit without needing a backing store of precious metals or even national currencies - as billions of people do every month through MasterCard, Visa, etc. today.
Yes, that's expected. Luckily, we have pocket computers more than capable of doing currency translations for us today, even assigning values beyond raw exchange rates such as volatility, depth of assets, etc. Tell your exchange software how long you intend to hold an asset and it can tell you roughly how risky that transaction will be. For many types of exchanges, especially in a world where there are literally billions of currencies, you might be trading in a six degrees of Kevin Bacon fashion to get from the assets you are holding to the ones you want to purchase - those middle assets facilitating the exchange would only be held for milliseconds each, and in the end all you need to worry about is: A) how much of MyBux do I have to exchange to get enough TheirBux to buy this round of beers, and B) how risky is this exchange? http://assignonward.com/Multitudinous.html [assignonward.com]
Thus, and always, in currencies. Would be interesting to see how much personal currencies can insulate a population from the whims of governments in terms of their stored value.
Back in your 1872 timeframe, Karl Marx would have creamed his pants at the thought of individuals holding the power of banks - he would be more than impressed at the potential of technology to make this happen today.
Gold isn't replaced with crypto, paper is replaced with crypto. Gold is replaced with personal credit, or if you like you can have gold as your basis of value behind your credit issue - all that remains is to reliably demonstrate the ability to redeem your cryptocoins for said gold.
Yes, some holders of personal credit will trash that credit, just as they do today. Automated credit rating algorithms (a diverse variety, chosen by the issuers of credit, aka individuals, as to which best suit their needs) would sort the trustworthy from the junk. A reasonable assumption would be that 80%+ of people would maintain decent to excellent credit because they understand the value it provides them in the future. 80% of the remaining (16% of the total) would struggle, but maybe figure it out after a few outright failures - basically starting over from zero credit and building up, or just not issuing their own credit and trading in the issues of others. In that remaining 4%, there would be some who never get it at all and stay cash based, and there would be a fraction of habitual scammers who spam the markets with bogus issues with the intent to scam. The thing is, crypto, unlike paper or even legally backed corporations, cannot represent itself as something it is not. Scam issues would appear no better than brand new zero credit issues. They might trade for a short time "building credit" so they can pull a bigger scam later, but again, that time spent building credit should circumscribe the limit of their current credit, costing them more to create the appearance of value than they can obtain by a scam and intentional wipeout / default of that identity.
The Federal Reserve system is the U.S. government providing a limited insurance to small deposits in exchange for banks complying with their regulations. It significantly eases the minds of the majority of the banking population, or a small minority of the funds on deposit overall - whichever way you want to look at it. If you wish to continue to do business with this system, and the overhead it incurs, by all means: go for it - I see no reason to dismantle the existing system, it has significant merits. However, the rise of an alternative system with the potential for direct exchange of value from person to person is impressive, much more impressive than a few 20-something speculators with new Lambos.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday February 24 2022, @09:47PM
Bump.
> You've just re-invented the banking system from approximately 150 years ago
Thank you for the analogy, and the wonderful strawmen lined up ready for obliteration with the flamethrowers of modern technology:
> 1. It's hard to prevent counterfeiting when there's nothing standardized and the banks are trying to produce this stuff cheaply.
The past 10 years of cryptocurrency activity have fairly conclusively demonstrated: Yes, Virginia, private-public key cryptography works and effectively prevents issues like counterfeiting, double spend, etc.
> 2. There's an important question of verifying that the bank in question even exists.
Yes, a significant problem in 1872 when the pinnacle of communication technology was the human operated wired telegraph - itself a quantum leap beyond the pony express literally horseback courier system, but still not quite the same as today's global pocket-to-pocket broadband connections.
Couple that instant communication with an automated credit rating tracking network, also accessible globally within a matter of seconds for a cost of fractions of a penny per credit check, and the question of "who/what am I dealing with" becomes clear enough to do business, at least on a limited basis.
> 3. Even if the bank exists, there's nothing preventing the bank from issuing more paper than their gold would justify.
Well, if you want to issue a gold-backed currency, that's your choice. Today's tech already supports automatic, unforgeable, escrow of crypto assets including national currencies such as the Bahamian Sand Dollar - yes, not quite a U.S. greenback, but more stable than DOGE or BTC. Assuming the U.S. gets onboard eventually, you could also back your crypto assets with cryptographically proven U.S. dollars in escrow. Until such time, periodic manual audits might suffice, or... like the rest of the developed world did in the 1970s, you could float your credit without needing a backing store of precious metals or even national currencies - as billions of people do every month through MasterCard, Visa, etc. today.
> 4. Because of the previous two problems, there was a significant variance in how much value a note saying "1 dollar" would be worth depending on the reputation of the bank. So you couldn't simply exchange a 1 dollar note for 1 dollar worth of stuff, you had to bargain and negotiate with whoever you were buying things from, which created significant overhead for both you and the seller for every transaction.
Yes, that's expected. Luckily, we have pocket computers more than capable of doing currency translations for us today, even assigning values beyond raw exchange rates such as volatility, depth of assets, etc. Tell your exchange software how long you intend to hold an asset and it can tell you roughly how risky that transaction will be. For many types of exchanges, especially in a world where there are literally billions of currencies, you might be trading in a six degrees of Kevin Bacon fashion to get from the assets you are holding to the ones you want to purchase - those middle assets facilitating the exchange would only be held for milliseconds each, and in the end all you need to worry about is: A) how much of MyBux do I have to exchange to get enough TheirBux to buy this round of beers, and B) how risky is this exchange? http://assignonward.com/Multitudinous.html [assignonward.com] [assignonward.com]
> 5. It was prone to boom-bust cycles due to the fluctuations of gold supplies, problems with worthless paper, and the usual business cycle problems of investment.
Thus, and always, in currencies. Would be interesting to see how much personal currencies can insulate a population from the whims of governments in terms of their stored value.
> So your only real difference in your proposal is replacing banks with individuals, and gold with crypto. I'm not impressed.
Back in your 1872 timeframe, Karl Marx would have creamed his pants at the thought of individuals holding the power of banks - he would be more than impressed at the potential of technology to make this happen today.
Gold isn't replaced with crypto, paper is replaced with crypto. Gold is replaced with personal credit, or if you like you can have gold as your basis of value behind your credit issue - all that remains is to reliably demonstrate the ability to redeem your cryptocoins for said gold.
Yes, some holders of personal credit will trash that credit, just as they do today. Automated credit rating algorithms (a diverse variety, chosen by the issuers of credit, aka individuals, as to which best suit their needs) would sort the trustworthy from the junk. A reasonable assumption would be that 80%+ of people would maintain decent to excellent credit because they understand the value it provides them in the future. 80% of the remaining (16% of the total) would struggle, but maybe figure it out after a few outright failures - basically starting over from zero credit and building up, or just not issuing their own credit and trading in the issues of others. In that remaining 4%, there would be some who never get it at all and stay cash based, and there would be a fraction of habitual scammers who spam the markets with bogus issues with the intent to scam. The thing is, crypto, unlike paper or even legally backed corporations, cannot represent itself as something it is not. Scam issues would appear no better than brand new zero credit issues. They might trade for a short time "building credit" so they can pull a bigger scam later, but again, that time spent building credit should circumscribe the limit of their current credit, costing them more to create the appearance of value than they can obtain by a scam and intentional wipeout / default of that identity.
The Federal Reserve system is the U.S. government providing a limited insurance to small deposits in exchange for banks complying with their regulations. It significantly eases the minds of the majority of the banking population, or a small minority of the funds on deposit overall - whichever way you want to look at it. If you wish to continue to do business with this system, and the overhead it incurs, by all means: go for it - I see no reason to dismantle the existing system, it has significant merits. However, the rise of an alternative system with the potential for direct exchange of value from person to person is impressive, much more impressive than a few 20-something speculators with new Lambos.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Monday February 21 2022, @06:10PM (4 children)
To you.
That isn't considered waste to the party going through the exercise. So many complaints about economics boil down to merely the activity isn't considered valuable to the complainer.
At best, you can say that it's generating interesting economic activity and using some resources that would otherwise be wasted anyway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @07:50AM (3 children)
To anyone. Literally the only purpose of it is to hope that someone will pay more for it than it cost you to get it. That's not value, it's speculation. Gambling. The difference between speculation and actual value is that with a valuable product, it has a purpose other than to be resold. Maybe that purpose isn't important to the person making it, but there IS one.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 22 2022, @01:13PM (2 children)
So what? I'll note that the argument is broken in two ways. First, because that's irrelevant to whether something has value. For example, most farmers, grocers, and restaurateurs have the same hope. Will you then argue that food has no value?
Second, what is supposed to be bad about speculation? It's just thinking about the future and acting on that? Is that supposed to be bad somehow?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:02PM (1 child)
Go back and actually read my post. Then write something that makes sense.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:28PM
It's money, of course it's purpose is to be resold over and over again. That's what makes it a valuable product. And going back to my example, food in the developed world gets resold a lot before it ends up in someone's stomach (a simple path would be farmer -> food shipper -> restaurant/grocer -> end destination, but it can get more complicated than that particularly when one includes insurance and commodity options).
This demonstrates not only an ignorance of the purpose of money/cryptocurrencies, but economics in general.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @01:30PM
Yep, Bitcoin is like a globally distributed Las Vegas and Bernie Madoff rolled into one.
Get your greed, envy, and gambling addictions exploited on the internet, it's the way of the future.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 22 2022, @03:32AM
But it would displace the electrical use of such mining (that is, electricity taken from more conventional sources) as the added competition would reduce the profitability of mining with (such) electricity.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21 2022, @12:40PM (1 child)
The bitcoin miner was identified as Thunberg Investments Inc.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @02:58PM
Thunberg would have to build a carbon recapture unit to go with the miner, would eat the profits of the miner for the next 200 years.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Insightful) by GlennC on Monday February 21 2022, @02:00PM (13 children)
Why don't they use the excess gas to fire up an electrical generator?
If the plant couldn't use it, surely someone would buy the electricity.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by owl on Monday February 21 2022, @02:31PM (10 children)
Probably because there is no electrical grid nearby to feed the power into.
This is probably one of those newer bitcoin startups that will ship and drop a shipping-container with a methane powered generator and bit-coin mining ASIC's to the location of the excess gas. So the total "need" for connection is a few hundred feet of hose/pipe to go from the well to the 'miner'.
And, the shipping-container pair generator/miner is likely using satellite internet for it's networking needs. So the only connection needed is that few hundred feet of pipe/hose.
To 'generate' and distribute the power into the grid would require one of piping the excess gas a much longer distance to a methane powered generator facility, or bringing the power grid in a long distance where it is not otherwise present. Both are more expensive costs vs. dropping a shipping container adjacent to the well head.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stretch611 on Monday February 21 2022, @04:08PM (6 children)
Why not have a small generator (same as used above) create electricity and store it in some industrial size batteries. (The kind of batteries that the grid uses to store solar/wind power for night/calm winds)
You can the transport them to the grid.
While transport may cost a little more It is less wasteful than crypto-mining.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @04:21PM (4 children)
Run your business model for battery charge and transport to the grid. Go ahead and be green about it: charge up an electric semi hauling batteries of your choice, then run that semi to the grid to sell the electricity to the most profitable location you can reach from the flarestacks. I smell $1M+ for three trucks+ batteries and transfer equipment, not to mention whatever road improvements / maintenance might be necessary to support regular runs. Let's be optimistic and say you're netting 100KW of energy transfer sold wholesale at $0.05/KWh, so your gross income is $5/hr. Oops, those better be self driving, self maintaining trucks because you can't afford drivers, mechanics, liability or loss insurance, etc.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Monday February 21 2022, @04:41PM (3 children)
You are correct of course about shipping generators and batteries around. What I never understood was why they didn't just pump it into tanks. There are already tanker trucks full of gas running around. You could even divert some into a gas powered compressor to just fill the tanks with, and then drive the tanks to somewhere that uses gas.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @04:59PM (2 children)
The economics work out about the same for transporting gas... still gotta have drivers, roads, and buyers. Maybe if the locals used natural gas for heating you might make a go of it, but if it's not a reliable supply you're not going to be popular when they have to switch to other more expensive sources. Also, storage during the non-heating months would get quite large / expensive to build and maintain.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday February 22 2022, @04:46AM (1 child)
Economics is always about the margins and invested capital. A tanker trailer and a small compressor are going to be much cheaper and lighter than an equivalent energy storage in lithium batteries. A tanker of gas is already shown to be a viable product, otherwise there wouldn't be tankers of gas driving around on the roads.
My suspicion is that despite the dramatic flames you get from flaring off, the rate of gas production is low enough that it would take too long to fill a tanker to be worthwhile.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 22 2022, @12:48PM
Well, obviously if you could fill a tanker truck every 15 minutes that might warrant building a pipeline. The equipment involved in compressing natural gas for transport isn't small or cheap. More than the trucks I think it's the compression equipment that has too long of an ROI. Generators to charge lithium batteries are a lot cheaper, but then the transport vehicle initial cost + maintenance is much higher.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday February 22 2022, @05:38PM
That merely increases those transportation costs. Batteries have lower energy density than LNG even if one assumes lossless charging of the batteries.
Not buying that. If there was any gain to not flaring that gas, they would already be doing it. Meanwhile crypto miners are willing to pay for cheap electricity from anywhere.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by captain normal on Monday February 21 2022, @05:24PM (2 children)
I'm scratching my head over how bitcoin mining could work without a high speed internet connection? Or is all just subsidizing Space-X?
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 22 2022, @02:21PM (1 child)
It is a satellite internet link. The bandwidth costs aren't all that high, you just need to get the blocks to hash and publish a "winning" hash ASAP after finding it. With the block interval at 10 minutes, the differential disadvantage of 100ms of sat-link delay shouldn't hurt too much. I'm pretty sure they'll have a "well connected" node do the negotiation with the rest of the miners, just push the heavy lift work out through the sat-link.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday February 22 2022, @02:24PM
Oh, also forgot, you don't send the whole block through the sat-link, just its Merkle Tree root or whatever they call the hash that gets signed - it's very small.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 21 2022, @04:14PM
This is exactly what they are doing... mining rigs don't direct convert methane. Thing is: mining rigs are about the only thing that produces enough income to justify the effort of generating electricity in that location. Now, what the excuses are for the flarestacks all over Houston? I think that's more a matter of people swimming in deep rivers of money with currents running so fast that they can't be bothered by the little details like 1MW of methane flares in the middle of town. It's like they say about the smell of chicken factory farms: "Son, that's the smell of money." Seeing those flares burn in Houston is just a sign that they're making so much money in other things that the distraction of energy capture from natural gas flares would potentially cause them more losses in the big picture than they could possibly gain.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday February 21 2022, @06:15PM
Like say a bitcoin miner? They've gone through this exercise before. This is the first time they found a buyer.