Bitcoin is saving lives today by fighting a winter storm. Let me explain
Apparently the snowpocalypse has knocked about 30% of the global Bitcoin hashrate (miners) offline. Pretty crazy to watch it in real time, and good to know the US is a leader in this space.
One of the benefits of having Bitcoin miners on your grid is that they soak up un-used electricity, which means 100% efficiency on the generation end. Miners don't "compete" with normal electricity users, as they can only afford to buy the cheapest electricity (which is produced as excess during times of low demand). Miners help increase the size of grid capacity by ensuring no generated electricity is a loss for the power company, allowing for greater amounts of generation. Yet mining can also be turned off instantly in emergencies, ensuring that even in peak demand like a snow storm, there is enough capacity for everyone. And because miners were there before, the total capacity is larger than if they never existed in the first place.
Because of Bitcoin, people can keep their heat on in a deadly storm.
Systems like energy generation, sewage, and traffic are generally designed to meet the expected peak demand over a certain time period (100 year flood etc). You don't size for infinite capacity because capacity costs money to keep online. While that 100 year metric works 99% of the time, it also means that once you hit that 100 year event, the system will be overburdened and fail. But Bitcoin mining fundamentally changes this calculus and allows you to scale beyond the normal limits.
Cool to see how resilient this network is. 30% of hashrate can drop offline and coins will keep being issued and transferred just as scheduled. Imagine what would happen if 30% of the US banking system went offline. International finance would break.
#bitcoin #snowpocalypse #texas #storm #mining 
