How should we be thinking about #bitcoin mining in emerging economies, from a reality-based/engineering perspective as we head into hyper-electrification?

A thread 👇🏼🧵

1/ G7 nations like the UK will need to 4-5x their electrical generation by 2050 to support electrification.

Emerging economies need to electrify A LOT more, and will likely need to 50-100x electrical generation in that same time period 🤯

This is unprecedented.

3/ Even with perfect policies and perfect engineering (both of which do not exist) any buildout of grids at this scale is going to create MASSIVE amounts of surplus, stranded, locationally disadvantaged electricity.

Especially if much of the generation is solar/wind.

4/ This energy can either be wasted or monetised. Wasting the energy is wasting the valuable natural resources of a country, plus wasting the infrastructure which generates/transports that electricity through under-utilisation.

This means higher costs for everyone.

5/ What can monetise this stranded electricity? Not much. Why?

The waste/surplus energy is temporal and highly geography-specific. No one is going to build a car factory in the middle of nowhere (with poor logistics) which only gets electricity from 12-4pm on sunny days.

6/ Bitcoin miners are location agnostic and fully price responsive - they run only when there is surplus energy (low prices) and can go to source of the power no matter how remote (co-location). They are modular and can scale from 2kW to >100MW.

7/ Bitcoin offer grids/nations the opportunity to monetise 100% of their electrical generation, ensuring none of it goes to waste.

If nations/utilities run mining, they can use the income to subsidise infrastructure buildout or ratepayers. Private miners do the same, indirectly

8/ The decision every nation is going to have to make is:

whether to allow the wasting of their natural resources through surplus/stranded electrical power

OR

to squeeze the $ out of every kWh, zero waste, generating more wealth for the nation and supporting the grid

/fin

Thanks to @thetrocro @Crypto_Mags @ScottAWolfe @level39 @alichehrehsaz @hhornblower95 for inspiring this thread!