Comment by rcxdude
3 days ago
Yeah. Anything that's designed to use nearly-free or negative-priced energy from the grid needs to be cheap to build and easy to start and stop (The former being one of the main issues with the 'bitcoin mining as grid management' idea).
In theory if you run it using negative priced energy you could maybe run with older less efficient hardware that's not viable for current mining that would be much cheaper, if you can source it. I'm thinking older ASICs for BTC for example where the best in class kHash/W has moved on and the price doesn't support running the older devices but the negative price would offset that by giving a reliable return on time to offset the extra energy burned.
It'd take a far amount of math to figure out if that tips it over though I don't feel like tackling haha.