Resuming this thread, I think first we’ll first see how Bitcoin is doing.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Yes, much better than last time I looked in on them, when it was around $30K/coin in June of last year. I’ll repeat myself:
… which I don’t take to mean anything in particular, except volatility is not a desirable characteristic of a currency.
But its future? Seeing as Bitcoin remains a voracious consumer of energy, unlike some of its more sane competition, this report from WaPo should be causing concern:
A major factor behind the skyrocketing demand is the rapid innovation in artificial intelligence, which is driving the construction of large warehouses of computing infrastructure that require exponentially more power than traditional data centers. AI is also part of a huge scale-up of cloud computing. Tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft are scouring the nation for sites for new data centers, and many lesser-known firms are also on the hunt.
The proliferation of crypto-mining, in which currencies like bitcoin are transacted and minted, is also driving data center growth. It is all putting new pressures on an overtaxed grid — the network of transmission lines and power stations that move electricity around the country. Bottlenecks are mounting, leaving both new generators of energy, particularly clean energy, and large consumers facing growing wait times for hookups.
Bitcoin could face being cutoff from energy completely, which should be of deep concern to anyone with serious scratch in the cryptocurrency. Or, if energy prices soar as they would in a marketplace, miners will go out of business rather than lose money, again leaving Bitcoin out of luck.
Of course, miners could try their hand at generating energy. Libertarian theory holds that someone will find that revolutionary technology which will solve the problem and, coincidentally, save everyone else’s bacon as well.
Maybe it’ll happen.
But this comes along:
Companies are increasingly turning to such off-the-grid experiments as their frustration with the logjam in the nation’s traditional electricity network mounts. Microsoft and Google are among the firms hoping that energy-intensive industrial operations can ultimately be powered by small nuclear plants on-site, with Microsoft even putting AI to work trying to streamline the burdensome process of getting plants approved. Microsoft has also inked a deal to buy power from a company trying to develop zero-emissions fusion power. But going off the grid brings its own big regulatory and land acquisition challenges. The type of nuclear plants envisioned, for example, are not yet even operational in the United States. Fusion power does not yet exist.
Which left me wondering: How long before Microsoft, in association with data miners, propose building a Dyson Sphere? In case my reader is unaware, here’s the definition of a Dyson Sphere:
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet’s resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star’s energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy. [Wikipedia]
Yesterday’s mad fantasy thought experiment is tomorrow’s reality? It’s happened before.
