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Level39's avatar

I'd encourage you to read Alex Gladstein, of the Human Rights Foundation. He recently traveled to Africa and reports a very different conclusion. Cheers.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/check-your-financial-privilege/stranded-bitcoin-saving-wasted-energy-in-africa

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Kyle Schutter's avatar

Here's a shocking statistic: Zambia has 4x the per capita energy consumption of Kenya. How could this be? Only 30% of their populace is grid connected against Kenya's 70%. Answer: Zambia has a lot of demand from the mining sector.

Your posts often deal with the African energy problem for the supply side. But also there is a problem with the demand side. If Kenya increased it's supply to the level of Zambia, much less China, who would buy the energy? There needs to be demand. An economy driven by safari eco lodges and agriculture pack houses for export is not going to cut it.

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Kyle Schutter's avatar

Todd, I always like your posts. You might like to know that cryptocurrencies, generally, are NOT anonymous. But rather EXTREMELY traceable. There are some exceptions like Monero which is a privacy coin, but 95% of crypto is very traceable.

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Kyle Schutter's avatar

You also might like how Gridless @whiteafrican https://gridlesscompute.com/ is using Bitcoin mining to STIMULATE energy build out in Africa.

As I always say, "if you can't beat them, piggyback on the selfish motives of capitalism and provide energy to the rural poor who otherwise would go unserved."

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Kyle Schutter's avatar

Another thought I had, if you think Bitcoin mining electricity consumption is high, wait til you see AI training energy consumption. Could be 10-25% of world power consumption. Also since latency for AI training doesn't matter it could be done in any place power is cheap, like Ethiopia.

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BigOinSeattle's avatar

That’s crazy man. And what is BTC good for except black market currency and ransom ware? And that’s the BEST cryptocurrency, most crypto exchanges and sh**coins are nothing but scams.

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Green Leap Forward's avatar

2014 called and wants its outdated narrative back.

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BigOinSeattle's avatar

lol 😂

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