There is this excerpt we found very profound:
>**Bitcoin mining is the only profitable use of energy in human history that does not need to be located near human settlement to operate**.
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>The long-term implications of this are world changing and hiding in plain sight.
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>Before Bitcoin, the problem of energy has never been its scarcity, but only our ability to channel it geographically where it is needed most. Before Bitcoin, that was exclusively where humans lived.
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>In contrast, Bitcoin’s mining energy is solving a different problem. Because of satellites and wireless internet connections, Bitcoin mining can be located anywhere.
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>For example, remote, destitute areas blessed with moving water can monetize their natural resource good fortune by creating clean, hydro energy and using it to mine Bitcoin. Thus, **Bitcoin can make monetizable isolated energy sources all over the world** – like waterfalls, running rivers, or creatable dams – now entirely untapped because they would be cost-prohibitive to connect to electric grids close enough to residential or industrial areas.
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>In doing so, Bitcoin can fundamentally change the economics of energy by introducing a highly profitable use of electricity that’s **location independent**.
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>The world **has never** had a profitable use of energy that’s location independent. Now it does.
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>And since fossil fuels are already too expensive to be a profitable source of Bitcoin mining energy, the only long-term, profitable Bitcoin mining will be powered by hydro.
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>Imagine a future with Bitcoin mining firms, unsubsidized, in extraordinarily isolated locations – visualize a waterfall in a largely population-free part of an African country suffering from abject poverty – easily connected to the Bitcoin network, building serious energy infrastructure to monetize the local clean energy source for mining. However, once the industrial-strength, profitable infrastructure is in place, let’s extend it. Let’s build roads. And housing. And schools. And hospitals. Ultimately leading to human settlement. The net result can be people locating around new, Bitcoin-driven hydroelectric energy infrastructure, with more and more of humanity clustering around cheap, clean energy sources.
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>Historically, our energy challenge has been to move the power to the people.
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>With Bitcoin, we can move the people to the power
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>Consider that the world’s major population centers – think New York, London, Paris, Tokyo – each developed where they are geographically because of natural seaports, waterways, and trade routes. Energy was a nonfactor because placement of these cities was all pre-energy (i.e., pre-fossil fuels). As Bitcoin finances the for-profit development of cheap, clean energy infrastructure on a massive scale, it can lead to a future in which more and more of the world’s population lives near abundant energy with an extraordinarily low marginal cost of production. This matters because cheap energy equals human flourishing. That’s an equation. Cheap energy = human flourishing. Beyond the revolution in monetary policy that Bitcoin already represents, Bitcoin may also represent the biggest catalyst the world has ever known for developing abundant, clean, cheap energy. And, therefore, one of biggest catalysts in the world for human flourishing.
— an excerpt from the Stone Ridge 2020 Shareholder Letter, its 2-minute version can be found here [https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/stone-ridge-2020-shareholder-letter](https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/stone-ridge-2020-shareholder-letter)
Careful with profitability assumptions. Not only will someone have to buy a stack of ASICs for real world money, they will also have to build a hydro plant of some sort in a remote location. Presumably one without readily available materials and difficult to get to. Helicoptering in steel and concrete is not cheap. Waterfall by itself obviously doesn’t produce a clean current. Who is paying for materials, transportation, and labor? Who is paying for looking over and maintaining this stuff? Do any people want to live near this or take long arduous trips to get to it from time to time? Who’s going to defend it from stolen hashrate, stolen KWhs, or stolen ASICs?
Let’s say this thing is huge running 0.01% of all hashrate and will earn a whopping 0.09 BTC per day or $0.75 million per year (which will drop with halvings, rise if btc price goes up, etc). How much money is needed to set this up? How many S19j pros @ $2400 each. How many square feet of covered and ventilated space? How many megawatts will this need and how much will it cost to set up a power plant that can supply that. Reducing scale cuts outlay costs, but also drops any potential mining revenue. Rising btc price will increase revenue but competition will put pressure on it since other miners will pop up elsewhere. Seems neat in theory, but in practical terms show me the back of napkin math. If one is to assume that BTC will go up in price to make it all worthwhile why don’t I just pick up xx dollars worth of BTC on open markets and sit back, vs spend that money on a risky remote project?