A Coal Power Plant is Being Reopened For Blockchain Mining (cnet.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Sure, you could mine bitcoin on that old PC in your garage, or you could use a whole power station to do it. That's the idea behind the Blockchain Application Centre -- an Aussie tech initiative that will see one of the country's now-shuttered coal-fired power plants reopened to provide cheap power for blockchain applications. It's the work of Australian tech company IOT Group, which has partnered with local power company Hunter Energy on the project. According to The Age, Hunter Energy will recommission the Redbank power station in the Hunter Valley, two hours drive north of Sydney. Once the power plant is reopened (expected to be completed within 12 months), it will offer wholesale or "pre-grid" power prices to blockchain companies, allowing them to do things like mining cryptocurrencies, without having to pay retail power prices.

Comments

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Freeing yourself from the financial shackles of a central economic authority that devalues your currency to nothing and riddle's your economy with debt is hardly "for nothing". Go back to Jerome and ask for a raise.

INFINTE FACEPALM

[Rick Schumann]

This has got to be the most pants-on-head retarded nonsense I've heard yet. Is Australia vying for the title of 'most fucked up' with Florida or something?

Re:God damn it

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Are not coal plants heavily regulated for filters? It may release more CO2, but that isn't "polluting the hell" out of anything.

Re:Oh right, the power question

[danbert8]

I'm not a huge fan of coal and reactivating this plant for digital jerking off is about the stupidest thing humanity can do. But you can only get to "millions" of innocent people if you make some serious extrapolations and assumptions of lung afflictions and global warming causing mass deaths. Meanwhile on the other side of the equation is the "save a buck" which has a very measurable impact on saving lives in 3rd world countries. More people in the world die due to lack of access to electricity than due to any pollution side effects of electricity production.

In fact, people in poor countries are so desperate for cheap fossil fuels that there are tragic mass deaths as people try to scavenge spilled gasoline from tanker trucks where they go in risking their lives for a cooking pot worth of fuel.