Andreas Antonopoulos claims Bitcoin mining's energy consumption is a solution - he is wrong, here is why

I'd like to share how I encountered his ideas and why are they wrong.

Once, on a forum, someone defended bitcoin mining, claiming the mining’s energy consumption is more of a solution than a problem. However, this was not his thought. His source was this video:

The person talking in the video is Andreas M. Antonopoulos, someone I have never heard of before. Turned out I was living under a rock, because he has more that 430 thousand followers on twitter, being a claimed open blockchain expert, and teaching Digital Currencies at the University of Nicosia. Clearly, he is very knowledgable.

Yet, so many of the points he raised are wrong, that I can not hesitate to correct some.

The basic principle he is missing is the following:

You need to produce the exact same amount of electricity demanded every single second.
If you produce more, the frequency increases, if you produce less, it decreases. 0,1% difference is tolerated in my country, and I believe in whole Europe.

If you build a power plant with the capacity of 50 MW, it will not produce 50 MW all the time. The output can be regulated. Not only steam-turbine plants and gas-turbine plants, but even if the power plant is based on alternative/renewable energy sources like wind, solar or hydro can be regulated to a certain extent. An important element is how quickly can you adjust the power output.
For example, nuclear power plants with huge steam turbines are actually really slow in this aspect, whereas gas turbines tend to be quicker, with coal-fired steam turbines falling in between them. It is worth noting, that modern power plants with gas turbines are really quick to start, and is pretty easy to regulate the load.

But other power source's output can theoritically be regulated, for example in hydro power plants, is the easiest way to regulate the power output is with the flow rate. The three most commonly used tubines are: Francis, Pelton, and Kaplan turbines.
Lets say this plant uses Francis turbine, there are guide vanes consist of number of blades that can be adjusted in order to increase or reduce the flow rate through the turbine. Similar regulation works with other types of turbines aswell, for example with Pelton turbines, moving the spear closer or further away the nozzle head changes the flow rate. With Kaplan turbines, the blades are adjustable to change the amount of fluid flowing through.
Or with wind wind turbines, the blades can pitch to change angle of attack. When the power output becomes too high, the blade pitches (turns) slightly out of the wind.

Also, you can turn these power plants off, he was wrong at that point, too. Think about maintenances, it would be interesting if the turbines couldn’t be stopped. Wind turbines usually shut down in heavy winds, to prevent damage. With hydro, there are bypass tubes to let the water flow, so the turbine can be shut off.

So he got these points wrong by stating that there is unused, wasted energy on the grid, which could be used to mine Bitcoin. Essentially, the mining turns waste into something having value, making it a great subsidiary for renewabels, also making Bitcoin a Green Coin, at least in his words.

Which is not true.

Using his logic, any power consumer adding value could be considered green, which is not correct.

He also stated the power used by mining balances supply and demand. He would have a point, if Bitcoin mining would play a role in balancing the loads on the power grids - which is a really interesting idea, but nothing that exists.

It is astonishing in a negative way how such an influental person can state things that are so wrong, misleading lots of viewers. Looking at the Youtube video, we can see two thousand likes and 141 dislikes, indicating how many got decieved by Antonopoulos’s words. The positive sentiment of the comment section reinforces that most viewers probably believed his words.

I’m going to leave the definition of propaganda here, letting you decide if his video falls into this category:

propaganda /prɒpəˈɡandə/

noun

1. information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.

Andreas Antonopoulos might be very knowledgeable about cryptocurrencies, and be respected, but he got some things wrong. I'm sorry if I was a bit hostile, but the false ideas he had about how the power grid works was something I needed to correct.

Lets get some things right. Every electricity consumer is polluting the world. Nothing is green about mining Bitcoins. It is not a hypocrisy.