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> The price of the asset being mined determines the costs of the energy put in to mine it.

No, you have it backwards. A BTC that is already mined has as much value as a BTC that is yet to be mined, whether now or twenty years in the future.

Again, the fact that we spend energy to get more BTC is just accidental. There is no absolute law that postulates that the cost of energy and price of the asset need to be correlated.

> Decentralization of hashing power will continue to increase as the renewable energy costs continue to lower.

You are talking about spherical cows, I am talking about actual implementation of the system. Renewable energy costs mean jack shit when you have big central entities subsidizing dirty energy and if no one pays for the externalities. Also, it doesn't matter how "clean" a source of energy is. Unless you find a way to break the law of thermodynamics, the best way to be sustainable is to not consume the energy in the first place.

There are already plenty of market incentives for us to be more efficient and produce energy, we don't need to have an artificial component added to this system for it to work.


My one and hopefully only experience with anything like this was as part of a delivery crew going from San Francisco to Santa Barbara. Racers, we left in a gale but we were going downwind and it was easy living. The skipper had bought a $100 genoa which eventually fully delaminated and shredded.

It was blowing 30+ which didn't seem that bad since, again, we were going downwind. But we needed to gybe to stay on course. Gybing was not going to be fun but I suggested that we just chicken gybe, a dinghy school maneuver, to make life just a little safer. We did and got it over with.

Still 30-40 knots had us racing down the coast and Point Conception was in our future. Translate Point Conception from Spanish to English and you get the idea. So we decided to radio in to Morro Bay. Channel 16 had been broadcasting Morro Bay is closed. Do not approach Morro Bay. That includes you.

In fact, Morro Bay did not even pick up but eventually Long Beach did. They said Morro Bay would radio back which they did.

Morro Bay was very professional. How many souls on board? Are you wearing life jackets? What is your sailing experience? Have you been in to Morro Bay before? ...

A note about Morro Bay. In normal conditions, it's easy peasy. But in a blow, the waves are rolling south directly into the breakwater, the rocks. You cannot go in normally.

They sent two cutters out. One was put in front of us and one behind us. We surfed down the waves. They timed it and said that when the boat in front turns left, you turn left. We did.

After that, motored up the channel, tied up at the YC and went to sleep. Pancakes the next day in Morro Bay and then Point Conception (I've been turned back by Point Conception going north several times) was easy + beautiful.

The Coasties? They do this every day.


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