저자: PatrickBoyle본인분석—출연자아님 · 외국인
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결론: 비트코인 채굴의 '친환경' 주장(캐시 우드·ARK, 잭 도시 스퀘어 보고서)은 모델의 가정과 내부 모순이 커서 설득력이 낮다. 비트코인 가격 배경: 작년 약 7천 달러에서 현재 약 5만 달러로 1년 새 7배 상승해 관심이 커졌다. 환경 논쟁: 비트코인 채굴은 현재 스웨덴 한 나라 연간 전력 소비와 맞먹고, 거래 1건은 미국 가구 한 달치 전력 소비 수준으로 비자 거래보다 약 100만 배 많다고 설명한다. 보고서 주장: 채굴업자는 전력을 유연하게 쓰는 '최후의 에너지 구매자'이며, 태양광·풍력과 배터리를 결합하면 간헐적 발전 문제를 해결하고 재생에너지 투자를 촉진한다고 주장한다. 보고서 문제점 1: 채굴업자가 처음엔 이동형 수요자였다가 갑자기 대규모 발전소를 짓는 주체로 전환되는 등 논리가 일관되지 않다. 보고서 문제점 2: 스퀘어 측과 ARK 측 섹션이 서로를 충분히 참고하지 않은 듯 상충하는 내용이 있다. 모델 오류: 테슬라 주가 목표 3,000달러 모델은 희석 주식 수를 약 1억 2,500만 주 잘못 계산해 시가총액을 약 2,280억 달러 과소평가했고, 보험업 경험이 없는데도 4년 내 세계 최고 수익 보험사가 된다는 가정을 넣었다. 에너지 규모 문제: 모델상 전 세계 전력 수요의 6배를 생산해 그중 5/6를 채굴에 쓰는 구조로, 사실상 채굴 중심 사업이며 태양광·풍력 확대가 환경에 무해하다는 가정도 비현실적이다. 현실 채굴: 채굴 전력의 약 70%가 중국에서 이뤄지며 중국 전력의 약 80%는 석탄 발전이다. 러시아·이란도 저렴한 전력을 찾아 채굴한다. 사례: 뉴욕주 업스테이트의 Greenidge 등은 구형 발전소를 인수해 채굴 출력을 두 배로 늘리며 지역 반발을 샀다. 결론 재확인: 채굴의 친환경성은 '재생에너지로 전부 돌린다'는 가정에 기대는데, 현실의 채굴 입지는 석탄·저가 전력 쪽이라 주장과 괴리가 크다. 보고서의 가정 다수는 현재 작동 방식과 맞지 않는다.
다듬은 글
i probably don't need to tell anyone in my audience what bitcoin is or explain much about blockchain technology. i recently posted an investing survey and more of my audience than i expected are cryptocurrency investors. not surprising perhaps as bitcoin is rallied from around seven thousand dollars last year to around fifty thousand dollars today a seven fold increase in one year a move like that does tend to draw some attention even if you have no interest in bitcoin you may have heard that bitcoin mining is energy intensive and therefore not good for the environment you might even have heard that bitcoin mining currently uses more energy than the entire nation of sweden at a time when we're told that we desperately need to cut back carbon emissions many are asking if it makes sense to devote a sweden's worth of energy to a new form of currency i should be clear though that not everyone agrees that bitcoin mining and blockchain technology are bad for the environment some of the people reaching for a new green future including elon musk kathy wood and jack dorsey are also cryptocurrency enthusiasts and this has confused some of their environmentalist followers a month ago when elon musk tweeted that you can now buy tesla's using bitcoin people replied to his tweet with why not cut out the middleman and install a petrol engine in the thing well a few days ago the people at square jack dorsey's fintech company and arc invest kathy woods techfin company released a paper entitled bitcoin is key to an abundant clean energy future attempting to make the green case for cryptocurrencies i'll put a link to their paper in the description so that you can read the whole thing along with the paper archinvest published their open source model or excel spreadsheet showing how their green case for crypto works the paper has two clearly defined sections with the two separate firms square and arc invests branding attached to each section it's pretty clear when you read it that not only was it written by two different groups but that the two different groups didn't necessarily read each other's sections given the extent to which the two sections conflict with each other as a bit of a spoiler the arc open source model or spreadsheet is almost as good as the one that they published a month ago explaining their three thousand dollar tesla stock price target which was a great model other than that they got the fully diluted shares outstanding number wrong by around 125 million shares which at their price estimate is only around 228 billion dollars which i get the impression they feel is just a rounding error that model also included that tesla would become the most profitable insurance company in the world in four years time despite not being in the insurance business today or setting aside the capital required to enter the insurance business but we shouldn't fuss over details so what is kathy and jack's green argument for bitcoin mining and should they actually get carbon credits for their green investments well they argue in the paper that bitcoin miners are a unique energy buyer that can choose to draw from the grid in a highly flexible manner the crypto miners are location agnostic and require only an internet connection they go on to describe how solar wind and other green energy production can be intermittent meaning that the energy they supply is oft not aligned to grid demand they argue that bitcoin mining combined with solar and wind production and battery storage could be configured into a business model to deal with this inconsistent energy production they project significant further declines in solar and wind prices based on prior 20 to 40 percent cost declines for every doubling in capacity and they projected lithium-ion battery costs which have already fallen quite a lot will fall an additional 80 in the next few years i'm not sure that these are reasonable assumptions but equally it's not my area of expertise the authors at this point quickly flip bitcoin miners from being flexible and mobile users of power to setting them up in the solar and wind power generation businesses the miners no longer move quickly to where power is cheap they now build massive green power stations their argument is that bitcoin mining could eventually transition to being completely run on renewable energy in the near future while simultaneously producing the entire energy grids electricity needs through wind and solar power production and at this point things become more confusing the paper is packed with assumptions and projections that don't really reflect the way things work at all today they initially pitch combining green energy generation with battery storage and bitcoin mining rigs such that more green energy will be generated some of which will be stored in batteries to better match supply with demand the rest will go to the grid and that only excess power will be used to mine doggy coins don't correct me on my pronunciation the mind doggy coins will improve the investment returns for green energy project investors it's then explained that the new solar power stations might be used mostly to mine cryptocurrencies but if the price of power surges like it did in texas a few months ago they can sell power back to the grid when it's more profitable to sell electricity than to use it for crypto mining so we've left from them using the excess for crypto mining to only selling the excess to the grid when the greater can pay more than producers could earn through their mining activities like i said though i'm not sure that the two teams of writers read each other's work which might explain some of this arc invest argues that renewables can right now only satisfy 40 of grid requirements but with crypto miners running all of the grids power production they could provide 99 of today's total power needs while mining very flexibly and only in off-peak times the excel model upon examination shows crypto miners becoming absolutely massive energy producers miners which the authors refer to at one point as having an unlimited appetite for energy can supply just under today's energy needs by generating nearly six times the grid's full demand level of power they showed that a system like this can meet 90 percent grid demand with only one third of the capex being spent on crypto mining so based on capex you're mostly in the power generation business but in order to generate enough power to supply the grid you have to generate six times the energy that's being generated today with five sixths of that being used on mining based on use of power you're mostly in the crypto mining business if it is profitable to produce six times the population's current power needs and to use five six of that or 83 percent of the power to mine bitcoins why stop at that you have to wonder how much of the planet does arc invest propose to cover with solar cells there's a built-in assumption that these greener forms of energy have zero impact on the environment that you could produce six times as much power as we're using today using green technology and that there would somehow be less environmental impact than producing one-sixth the power under the current approach while these methods of generation might be more environmentally friendly than the traditional approaches they're not that much more environmentally friendly the model seems to advocate a dystopian future where more and more green infrastructure is put in place with the majority of the power generated being used just for crypto mining until we reach a crescendo where if you crawl out from underneath the solar panel you risk being hit by the blade of a wind turbine this is their green cave as we dig deeper into the model i'm confused by the author's assumptions around the profitability of the two businesses being run under this one umbrella if crypto mining is such a profit center you have to wonder why the miners would supply any of the electricity generated to the grid the public would have to rely on the miners altruism to slow down mining when the public needs power only resuming when the sun is shining and people aren't yet running their dishwashers or charging their teslas kathy wood and square's paper argues for huge increases in crypto mining they envision energy companies who deploy software that decides in real time the best use for each newly created electron whether to use it store it or mine it they explain that new chip foundries will be needed to meet the surge in demand for mining hardware huge amounts of lithium extraction would be needed which requires half a million gallons of water per metric ton of lithium extracted to build batteries huge numbers of solar cells and wind farms would cover the planet and rivers would need to be damped to generate hydroelectric power after reading the paper more than once and looking at the model it's not really clear to me how the environment would benefit from all of this production i'd love to hear your thoughts on how this might work in the comments section as i imagine that many of you do know a lot more about crypto mining and green energy than i do i guess the core idea that they have is that money made from crypto mining will make more green energy projects viable speeding up the transition to a greener power grid but of course the problem is that so much of this energy will then be used for mining crypto with only the leftovers being available for charging teslas there's a wonderful circularity in their forecast for an abundant clean energy future well you might ask if that's what the future is going to look like what does crypto mining look like today well as mentioned earlier bitcoin mining operations worldwide are reported to consume energy at around the annual domestic electricity consumption level of the entire nation of sweden a single bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of power that the average american household consumes in a month which is around a million times more energy than a single visa transaction consumes kathy and jack are correct though in their description of crypto miners of being quite flexible and that they are an energy buyer of last resort bitcoin mining operations do tend to search for the cheapest electricity that they can find and for this reason around 70 of the bitcoin mining happening today takes place in china where electrical power is cheapest russia is also a major bitcoin mining center as is iran where electricity is subsidized by the government are these countries at the cutting edge of green power generation not exactly around 80 percent of china's electricity comes from coal burning power plants as you can imagine the power grids in russia and iran are not a whole lot greener despite iran's notable efforts to begin nuclear power generation some mining operations have as mentioned in the paper moved to mining behind the meter which means generating their own power rather than plugging into the grid and paying retail power prices green ridge holdings is a good example a bitcoin mining company in upstate new york who bought up an old power plant they plan to double the output of the station this year and double it again next year drawing anger from locals and environmental protesters andrew yang the former presidential candidate now running for mayor of new york said that he plans to turn the city into a cryptocurrency mining hub on the other hand my favorite candidate for the mayor of london count binface has said nothing on this topic his much more sensible political platform is largely based on moving the location of the hand dryer in the men's room at his favorite pub in uxbridge to a more sensible location and additionally he's campaigning that no shop in london should be allowed to sell a croissant for more than one pound vote bin face see you later bye
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