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Cryptocurrency Miners Are Using Old Tires to Power Their Rigs (vice.com)
Christopher Malmo, writing for Motherboard: An entrepreneurial cryptocurrency mining company has just announced an unusual deal: it has partnered with a tire-based waste-to-energy company in the United States to power its mining computers. Standard American Mining and PRTI, a tire "thermal demanufacturing" company based in North Carolina, are powering graphics cards-based mining equipment to earn a range of alternative cryptocurrencies like Ethereum. Basically, they take used tires and heat them to a precise temperature, resulting in components like steel (from belted tires), carbon black, and a burnable fuel. That fuel is the energy source driving turbines to make electricity, which powers an onsite cryptocurrency mining farm. Taking advantage of an underutilized electricity source to run computers isn't groundbreaking, but the unusual set-up shows that cryptocurrency mining is now profitable enough to justify finding quite unconventional sources of cheap or new energy generation.
Sounds like a splendid idea.
They should be wasting that heat, not using it to mine bitcoins! Bitcoins are harmful!
...Silk Road?
Yeah, I got nothing.
-- sigs cause cancer.
I was sexual assaulted by a female co-worker. She wore a short skirt to work and had a low cut top on to show a bit of cleavage. As a co-worker, I have to endure this sexual suggestive behavior in my work environment. My co-worker sexual assaulted me by her choice of clothing. It would be like a man wearing biker shorts in the office that are tight enough to show off my private parts. Nobody would tolerate that behavior, and in the name of equality, she needs to stop sexual assaulting the men in the office with her clothing.
In the Obama-era EPA this company would have been regulated out of existence.
In the Trump-era EPA it might be hailed as "MAGA" and allowed to pollute the environment.
I guess there can be no "happy medium" between those 2 extremes....
"Heaven is where the police are British, the cooks French, the mechanics German, the lovers Italian, and it is all organized by the Swiss.
Hell is where the chefs are British, the mechanics French, the lovers Swiss, the police German, and it is all organized by the Italians."
...is bad for the environment.
Have gnu, will travel.
We can blame this on hyperspeculation in the value of cryptocurrencies. When these currencies become insanely valuable, it becomes profitable to get energy to mine them from insane sources.
Recall hyperinflation of the German Mark in the 1920s. At one point its value was so low that it made more sense to burn the notes than to use them to buy firewood. How long before it becomes profitable to burn actual bank notes to make electricity to mine bitcoin?
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
This is starting to sound like... people in the final stages of addiction to heavy narcotics. We are so desprate to find a way to make money because so many of us are absolutely improverished because of the absolutely policies of the US that have created absolutely Medieval divisions in wealth, and Canada seems to be in the same position on a ten year lag.
Racism, Religion (Particularly Christianity, but also Islam) and Corporatism are literally leading us to the extinction of the Human species.
I see literally no way out of this beyond a Social Democratic revolution in the US, the prosecutions of polluters, money launderers, and banks that do not conform to the Glass-Stegal Regulations, In addition, heavy taxation on Billionaires, and the re-nationaization of National parks, and Wildlife reserves. The banning of Fracking and the prohibition of Oil Exploration in the Arctic North.
Surely if they need to resort to these kinds of tricks to save money that shows that mining is NOT profitable. This isn't a surprise, we've known for some time the only way to profit from mining is if you can somehow externalize your power bill.
All hail the Springfield Tire Fire!
Cryptocurrency embiggens us all! They're the most cromulent currency!
...is a #cryptocurrency called #AwesomCoin which would be powered by labor of small children harvested from impoverished villages.
Preferably working in a combination of coal and uranium mines - and oil rigs. Oil is needed cause uranium won't burn as easily on its own.
Also, where possible, whale and dolphin fat would be added to the mix - for flavoring.
From time to time, in order to increase the value of #AwesomCoin through magic, some of the children would be offered as human sacrifices to Kali, Quetzalcoatl, Beelzebub, Donald Trump and Santa.
Not necessarily in that order.
#AwesomCoin mining facilities would be built on a large swat of land presently used as rain forests, in cooperation with Russian and South American criminal cartels and oligarchies.
#AwesomCoin would be combined with an app where one could purchase and kill real life kittens through a variety of means - from sitting on them until they are crushed to throwing them against an oncoming train (other methods to be added).
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If you want mine your own cryptocurrency, you need a motherboard with 19 PCIe 1X slots to plug in 19 GPUs and a couple of 1200W PSUs.
While as the source article says in more detail this company does have a novel new process for this, but what they're doing here is hardly new. It's just thermal plasma gasification with another name. I'm not against such a thing myself, assuming they are property filter the waste gases that these systems release. But at the end of the day here this is just a novel way for make a big of money on disposing of old tires. It usually cost money to dispose of these tires in a landfill.
I'm not a tree hugger by any stretch, but for you city slickers who've never seen in it person, burning tires is a nasty, nasty thing. They go for hours, produce a *massive* amount of thick, black and highly toxic smoke, and stink to high hell.
I see the summary conveniently avoids using the term "burning" ("thermal demanufacturing"? PLEASE!) but that's what this is. This is a terrible idea, especially when it's done in the name of "mining cryptocurrency".
Let me know when it hits 20,000 stories per day, then I’ll invest.
Want to swipe some Bitcoin?Just follow the tower of oily black smoke and go in with guns blazing..
Here in Arizona, we use old tires to make an asphalt replacement that is longer lasting and quieter to drive on than the traditional material.
Can't we just use Proof of Space, Proof of Stake, or any of the other alternatives that do not require the unnecessary burning of Tires,Trees,Coal,
when they can turn tires into Magic the Gathering cards.
They are both on fire and deflating
It was Mr. Reinhardts invention. As a kid in the 80’s, got a tour of his operation after the great “Tar’ Far’” in Virginia. https://www.google.com/amp/amp...
Cryptocurrency will propel humans into space exploration. We can built solar plants on the moon and transmit back only calculations :-) Stupid idea yea?
Or is it too dirty for even that resource barren place.
You DO realize that the secular humanist nations have been the most toxic on Earth, don't you?
There's a reason the Chernobyl (nukes with no containment) plant was in the officially atheist Soviet Union, along with all the old nuke subs that were just abandoned to rust and rot and leak in the arctic. Look at ANY of the old geopolitical entites that used to be east of the "iron curtain" and you find horrendous environmental messes. In the (culturally, somewhat) Christian west, the environmental movement took off and many were already being as environmentally clean as they could reasonably be to "protect God's creation". Sure, there were some environmental problems in the west, but most were by reckless cost-cutting secular businessmen, NOT the Amish, or a bunch of fundamentalist Baptists, or a pack of Lutherans operating family farms. It's not the Catholic church or a pack of Episcopals or Presbyterians who are out trashing the planet on the path to wildly obscene profits... it's usually a bunch of secular investors and executives, often based in big liberal secular cities calling those shots.
Now you just proved you know nothing of substance about Christianity. Your view of religion generally, and Christianity in particular, appears to be a cartoon version you got at the comic book store.
At the very core of Christian beliefs is that our actions absolutely have consequences, and that the saviour you refer to will not only save but also judge (and according to very high fixed standards, NOT on a curve), that racism is wrong and hurting people is wrong.
It's as though somebody announced authoratatively that the purpose of science and the internet was to enable people to do better astrology charts and molest children....
wow. don't even know how to properly illustrate how crazy far off the map you've gone.
igniorance on a billboard
just, wow.
" the unusual set-up shows that cryptocurrency mining is now profitable enough to justify finding quite unconventional sources of cheap or new energy generation."
It doesn't show anything of the sort. It shows that (a) cryptocurrency uses a huge amount of power and (b) that it's only marginally profitable. If it was hugely profitable you could use any old energy source. That a marginally cheaper energy source is worth pursuing shows that profitability is not that great to begin with.
ha, more sunlight falls on the ground than a thousand earth civilizations could use. it might propel the destruction of deserts, though after this current bubble pops bitcoin and "cryptocurrency" (really just virtual game tokens) might be unpopular for quite a while.
"the unusual set-up shows that cryptocurrency mining is now profitable enough to justify finding quite unconventional sources of cheap or new energy generation"
No, in fact it shows that it is now *unprofitable* enough that it's not worth plugging in your miners in the mains, and have to find cheaper ways.
Isn't it quite the opposite. The profit margin of mining is so low that they have to search out any insane source of cheap energy. Because if they had to pay full electricity prices they would go bancrupt.