Iran To Cut Power Supply To Licensed Crypto Miners: State TV (bloomberglaw.com) 44
An anonymous reader shares a report: Electricity to all 118 legal crypto mining centers in Iran to cease from June 22 ahead of seasonal spike in power demand, Mostafa Rajabi Mashhadi, spokesman for country's power industry says in interview with state TV.
Will Texas follow? (Score:2, Insightful)
The question on every body's lips is, will Texas follow suit?
Re: (Score:2)
ERCOT would rather let people boil alive in their homes and die from heat stroke before even indirectly admitting that something other than Biden is responsible.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
This is only the beginning and we already know how it ends [wikipedia.org], the only difference is the name it will be given.
Re: (Score:2)
Are they leaving on their own or are they being kicked out? Because I have a hunch that this would be something that could make a lot of people happy, inside and outside of Texas.
Re: (Score:2)
Many, many equally improbable things are possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Y'know, a few other states tried that some time back, and it didn't fly.
This time, hmmmm, wonder how the troops and ground and air support at Fort Hood would respond when the CiC ordered them to take and hold the capital?
Re: (Score:2)
Y'know, a few other states tried that some time back, and it didn't fly.
Texas would be on strike two if it tries it again. They will need to update their Declaration of Causes, as the 1861 [texas.gov] version is hardly a dog whistle. The phrase "the imbecility of the Federal Government" can probably stay.
Re: (Score:2)
Texas will be seceding from the United States [newsweek.com] very soon.
Does that mean they'll have to paint all their cars and buildings a different color?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It does not have to benefit the economy or the US government as a whole. It need only benefit bureaucrats or lawmakers with enough authority to prevent effective enforcement of restrictions. It's useful for illegal government activities to have an easily concealed payment channel: cryptocurrency in the time of Ronald Reagan would have helped conceal the illegal weapons, drugs, and prisoner exchanges of the Iran Contra affair. It's also useful, though illegal, to bribe customs agents in nations around the wo
Re: (Score:2)
So it's the same spiel as back in 1929? Big investors pumping some money into the stock market to get people to "buy the dip" so they can get out without losing too much?
Re: (Score:2)
"The question on every body's lips is, will Texas follow suit?"
Nobody licenses anything in Texas.
controversial how? (Score:4, Interesting)
legality regret (Score:1)
That's what you get for registering and thereby telling the government what you're up to: The government'll flip a switch, and you're SOL.
Don't tell the government, and it's only bad should they find out. Which is a big if, in a big country with little (and largely corrupt) governmental oversight.
Re: (Score:2)
I would much rather take the risk that law enforcement in the US finds my illegal mining operation than say the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp finding it. Yeah I might be able to bride my way out of either situation but the consequences if I can't for one are a lot worse than the other.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: legality regret (Score:2)
Re: legality regret (Score:2)
To be honest I don't really know, but knowledge of other nations that lack real strong institutions and are authoritarian in nature tend to have higher corruption and thusly more corrupt law enforcement.
Doesn't matter what the law or religion says money always talks. We have plenty of evidence in the US that cops are on the take, I imagine in Iran it's similar except their forces would have a lot more leeway in how they want to handle it.
I could be shown evidence to the contrary and I would change my opin
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It can be difficult to get the electrical power without the local power companies knowing expected consumption. Regulating power for business and residential uses is commonplace around the world, especially tying it to the cost of electrical power.
The way the world's going (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Unless the collapse of fiat currency which is well on its way by the non-stop inflation, greed and corruption, means that crypto will still be more valuable than the cost of mining it.
We need fusion power ASAP to get out of this problem. With basically free energy, crypto-mining becomes a non-issue, a huge percentage of environmental issues become trivial to stop, others become easier to slow down and the cost of growing food in energy-hungry controlled environments and cleaning/purifying drinking water als
Re: (Score:2)
If you want fusion, you'll be waiting 'til 2030/2031 at the earliest.
Re: (Score:2)
Fusion is _always_ 30 years away. There is no sign, anywhere, of any fusion design successfully reaching the "break-even" point, much less of successfully extracting more power than the Gigawatt required so far to charge the smallest system and trigger any fusion at all.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's not 30 years away. It's about 8-9 years away now. It's not clear if it'll be Lockheed, General Fusion, Commonwealth Fusion, some goofy startup trying to launch micro fusion cells into space in 2027/2028, or even a wildcard like Focus Fusion to cross the finish line first. But it seems to be happening, finally.
Re: (Score:2)
After so many decades of abject failure, it's not a wise way to bet or to invest money. Even achieving "break-even" doesn't mean it's remotely effective enough to serve as an efficient power source, though there will be some prize money and some academic accolades. And there is no infrastructure for manufacturing, or harvesting, enough deuterium and tritium to serve as a fuel source for its commercial use. I could go on with the problems.
Re: The way the world's going (Score:2)
Fission was also supposed to be free energy and see how that worked out.
By the time it works and reactors are built and profits generated fusion will no longer be cheap.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The dichotomy of a world that has both unlimited fusion energy AND crypto currency.
The world where fusion has been developed and is normalized enough that is powering the devices plugged into my wall is one so far beyond the purported problems that crypto supposedly solves. Nevermind the fact that free energy both makes mining free but by that metric makes crypto essentially worthless. The world where both these things exist is pretty dystopic honestly. Probably more one where the haves get free energy a
Re: (Score:2)
A world where fusion power is so common and available that free power is available to everyone is a world where the need for crypto currency as a concept no longer applies. It barely has a valid reason to exist today, much less in that world which is likely grappling with the concept of money existing at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Arthur C. Clarke proposed in his novel Imperial Earth that currency be based on energy. It makes sense for a technological civilization.
Re: (Score:2)
It definitely makes the most sense if you are having a currency, we kinda have that already, the USD and oil are somewhat intrinsically linked today. Was Clarks world a universe with free energy though? I am thinking more Star Trek where everything is post scarcity.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it was not free. It was plentiful by contemporary standards: High velocity interplanetary flight relied on using a quantum black hole to destroy matter and generate quite efficient heating of the reaction mass, so large energy sources were available.
Part of the key to Star Trek's abundance is the bountiful energy: Voyager had interesting plots concerning "replicator rations" and the need to feed the crew more efficiently with a real kitchen.
Re: (Score:2)
Fusion power supplies are still limited by the need for tritium in the standard deuterium-tritium reaction. The half-life of tritium is only 12 years, it's harvested from the limited supply of radioacive material like uranium which generate it. It will never be unlimited, unless we start harvesting it from sources such as solar wind. If we're doing _thaT_, why would we bother with the tritium? Just harvest the solar energy directly.
Orbital solar energy is plentiful, 2 watts/squae centimeter. There is simply
I hope that it will change in the future (Score:1)