In Defense of Proof of Work
I see some issues.<p>We can discard Hydro pretty much immediately. There&#x27;s not a lot of it that&#x27;s sitting unused, there&#x27;s not much opportunity for growth.<p>If there was this much wasted energy, the problem would be solved already. If the price went negative really often, that&#x27;d be a perfect business model for building some storage. Storage on the whole should be simpler than a mining farm. Putting extra megawatts into a pump or electrolysis is a relatively simple proposition. The computer hardware needed to burn that power on demand is far more expensive and complex.<p>Mining can cross borders, but cryptocurrency usage much less so. Yes, you can mine all you want across the border, but as governments sour on crypto they&#x27;re going to make it much harder to transact in it. And your crypto isn&#x27;t good for much if you can&#x27;t sell it and get $ or Euros in your bank account.<p>The countries most amenable to this kind of thing are not all that profitable. They&#x27;ve got weak economies, bad governments and bad infrastructure. They&#x27;re also easily pressured by wealthier countries, so they can&#x27;t do whatever they want.<p>Long term if this worked it&#x27;d lead to centralization. Once you find some optimum -- which is probably a company that produces solar panels around the equator, they win the game and are hard to out-compete.<p>And of course, in the end this is still all a pointless waste. It&#x27;s still countless video cards, solar panels, ASICs, and other hardware being piled up higher and higher to just keep up a global competition going that doesn&#x27;t really achieve any improvement. It doesn&#x27;t add capacity, it doesn&#x27;t improve speed, it doesn&#x27;t solve any practical problems. It&#x27;s just an arms race where you need an extra tank because the other side made another one.