Delete comment from: DSHR's Blog
A few reasons why mining facilities can be environmentally better than typical cloud data centers:
They tend to be significantly more mobile, as they do not require high levels of data security or internet infrastructure and can be brought online extremely quick. Bandwidth requirements are minimal so there is no need to run obscene amounts of fiber to a typical crypto mine. It is possible to containerize and bring the miners to the source of the energy, as often seen with flare mitigation. It is also possible to run a crypto mine in a highly remote area, with satellite internet bandwidth being more than sufficient. We saw a mass migration of miners out of china to other areas post the china mining ban, and that hashrate was restored within weeks/months. This would have been a dramatically more difficult transition for a typical data center. It is also far easier for a miner to turn on and off at will to capture excess energy from renewable sources that would otherwise be wasted.
It is far far easier for crypto miners to capture stranded or idle capacity than a data center. The extent to which this is actually happening right now is open to debate, but a mining operation is a very different beast from a datacenter and is not subject to many of the same constraints.
Feb 15, 2022, 12:15:02 PM
Posted to EE380 Talk