British Columbia to Permanently Ban New Crypto Mining Projects From Grid (coindesk.com) 54
British Columbia is permanently banning new cryptocurrency mining operations from connecting to its power grid to conserve electricity for industries that generate more jobs and tax revenue. The province is also capping power allocations for AI and data centers, while launching a competitive allocation process in January 2026. CoinDesk reports: The move from the government of Canada's third-most populous province is part of a broader legislative and regulatory overhaul unveiled Monday [...]. "Government will also implement several regulatory and policy changes in fall 2025 that will ... permanently ban new BC Hydro connections to the electricity grid for cryptocurrency mining to preserve the province's electricity supply and avoid the overburdening of the electricity grid," the government said in a post on its website
The province said the restrictions will help prevent grid strain and ensure industrial development is powered by clean electricity. "We're seeing unprecedented demand from traditional and emerging industries," Charlotte Mitha, the president and CEO of power utility BC Hydro, said in the web post. "The province's strategy empowers BC Hydro to manage this growth responsibly, keeping our grid reliable and our energy future clean and affordable." Crypto mining operations often consume large amounts of electricity without creating many local jobs or tax revenue, according to the statement. By contrast, projects like mines or liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities are seen as more beneficial to the economy.
The province said the restrictions will help prevent grid strain and ensure industrial development is powered by clean electricity. "We're seeing unprecedented demand from traditional and emerging industries," Charlotte Mitha, the president and CEO of power utility BC Hydro, said in the web post. "The province's strategy empowers BC Hydro to manage this growth responsibly, keeping our grid reliable and our energy future clean and affordable." Crypto mining operations often consume large amounts of electricity without creating many local jobs or tax revenue, according to the statement. By contrast, projects like mines or liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities are seen as more beneficial to the economy.
Kick them out (Score:1)
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Every country everywhere should do this. You'd push mining back to people doing it in their basements. :-) (Profit into the hands of the nerds instead of the elite.)
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The more decentralized mining is, the harder the 51% attack
Therefore, you want mining that is about as efficient on a current CPU as it is on a high end GPU or even ASIC. That way big server farm investments scale up with a low integer factor -- compared to a Bitcoin ASIC farm which can be (IIRC) dozens of millions of times more efficient per dollar than your PC CPU.
Various strategies were considered and tested. The end result [github.com] was really clever: create a simple virtual machine with specific characteristics
Re: Kick them out (Score:3)
Untraceable transactions are too ripe for money laundering and as such generally illegal at scale.
You might not agree with it, but that's the world we live in.
Target harmful AI (Score:1)
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another person who's afraid of what they don't understand and would just misuse it anyways
Re: Kick them out, who the corrupt politicians? (Score:1)
This is a political stunt and most likely just paving the way for Big Business Datacenters instead. Our classist authorities don't like currencies they don't control and regulate. No surprise there.
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Re:If they're paying for the power.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a government's purpose is to serve its citizens needs. It is as simple as that.
Without the Social Contract [wikipedia.org], a government does not have legitimacy.
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That's exactly the same thing as banning them. Because no one's going to practically take them up on the offer.
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Because a government's purpose is to serve its citizens needs.
Obligatory: You must be new here.
Counter example being the USA which is an oligarchy. The interests of the citizens get met only when they intersect with the interests of the oligarchs, e.g. in most first world countries there is no such thing as medical bankruptcy.
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Feeling lonely Jock? You could try a constructive comment rather than being a dick. You are very good at being a dick already, maybe you don't need to practice?
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Because a government's purpose is to serve its citizens needs. It is as simple as that.
Without the Social Contract [wikipedia.org], a government does not have legitimacy.
God damn, I wish someone would inform my government of this. It would be a shocking revelation for some. And be pushed aside as fake news by the rest.
Modern government exists to enrich itself and entrench its power by any means necessary. I can't remember seeing any proof that the government has any concerns at all about serving the citizens.
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In truth, our governments are far too corrupt to be legitimate, clearly the Social Contract is broken, look at all the hungry, homeless and dysfunctional citizens, meanwhile the privileged upper class is getting more and more privileged. This is what classism looks like.
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Because a government's purpose is to serve its citizens needs. It is as simple as that.
Except in the eyes of every government since the dawn of civilization, the masses are not citizens, they are a resource to be exploited. While some governments did indeed try to live up to the dream, they were quickly invaded and subdued so a more 'traditional' form of government could be practiced.
All money and power concentrates into the hands of a few who go on to believe that they deserve what they have. That is the entirety of Western Civilization in a nutshell. Meh. Boring and tedious.
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And not just via direct subsidies but by externalized costs. Like the health impacts from generating electricity because we are still dependent on burning fossil fuels.
So sure if you want to charge them five or six bucks per kilowatt hour instead of 15 or 20 cents, maybe we will talk.
Except that's not what they want. They want to pay the same heavily subsidized price per kilowatt hour that a genuinely beneficial and useful business would.
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As I said, charge them 10x what everyone else is paying.
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There's only so much hydro, especially with the drought and everything coming online is already spoken for, by industries that produce stuff including jobs.
Impossible (Score:2)
We are in all or nothing civilization. If we want we wouldn't be in the process of handing over all of our money and electricity and water to a handful of billionaires so they can automate away all our jobs and relegate us all to intense poverty.
Americans suck at complexity and nuance. We are there kick the data centers out and keep our water and electricity or we go without water and electricity so we can have ai data centers tak
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Well you're clearly not from BC. 98% of the electricity in BC is from clean sources, such as hydrodams.
But you know, go on, you do you as usual.
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If they're paying for the power they're using, what difference does it make?
The difference is that if the demand suddenly disappears after the new facilities have been financed, the existing rate payers will be on the hook for those costs. Similar to WPPSS [washingtonhistory.org].
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They increase prices when there's high demand,
Not always. If they can sell more energy using the same infrastructure, sometimes the price goes down. It's called higher load factor. Particularly for high capital cost/low fule cost systems. Like what we used to have in the Pacific Northwest.* The system capital costs are spread over the number of megawatt-hours of energy sold. Sell less power and the $ per kwh goes up.
*But now, every additional megawatt-hour above the hydroelectric base requires burning more fossil fuels. Since fuel costs are averaged,
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Have the bitcoiners and whomever pay the financing costs.....
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If they're paying for the power they're using, what difference does it make?
Hell, just raise their rates and make money off them. Charge data centers and crytomining projects 10x what you're charging everyone else.
My guess is it is bad PR to see electricity rates rise because of activities the neighbors find wasteful. I doubt that the rules that govern the utilities would allow them to jack up rates on what goes on in the data centers. How would anyone audit this activity without serious implications on securing a lot of protected information? If they claim the computers are processing tax returns, or file servers for hospitals, then how do you check without breaking rules on some very personal data?
I expect these
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Electricity used for AI may actually provide worthy additions to human knowledge or production efficiency, etc..
Electricity used for bitcoin mining provides no benefit to humanity. In fact, by adding to the total planetary supply of money and money equivalents, it increases inflation, making everything worse. Since day one, it's been a waste of human resources, a negative-sum game.
Finally, some common sense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop letting crypto miners leech off of the customers the grid was intended to serve. They can create their own damn grid if they want.
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They can create their own damn grid if they want.
With blackjack! And hookers!
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Stop letting crypto miners leech off of the customers the grid was intended to serve. They can create their own damn grid if they want.
"Customers the grid was intended to serve".....Who's going to tell them?
Re:Can BC can diesel generators? (Score:4, Informative)
BC Hydro does use diesel generators in a few locations such as on Haida Gwaii. They also have backup diesel in locations at the end of the line, like Prince Rupert.
Also, BC does not have any nuclear generation.
BC Hydro currently imports a lot of power from Washington as it has insufficient generating capacity from installed hydro.
I meant, can BC *ban* diesel generators? (Score:1)
BC Hydro does use diesel generators in a few locations such as on Haida Gwaii. They also have backup diesel in locations at the end of the line, like Prince Rupert.
I had a typo in the title. The question was if BC could prevent individual companies from using diesel generators to avoid a grid connection? Regardless that is some interesting information. Nearby Alaska seems to use diesel generators quite a bit, they scale down well for the small communities as well as run quite large for backup power for steam plants. It appears that military bases in Alaska will be getting small modular reactors soon, which gets to the next point.
Also, BC does not have any nuclear generation.
Yep, got that wrong. I got some fa
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Natural gas is dirt cheap in BC and neighbouring Alberta, at times going negative in price. Many places in BC are already trying to ban natural gas heating.
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Then what's the point of locating them in BC in the first place? After all, the reason
At least, that’s partially true. I’m not sure where you got the idea that BC has nuclear plants. We don’t.
And the conclusion feels rather muddle
questionable move (Score:2)
2. How far do they control what people do with their resources? Today it's electricity, what would it be tomorrow?
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1. How can they find out if someone is mining at a property they own, aside from barging into it and searching?
I think the power consumption of your property and its thermal signature would be dead giveaways?
How far do they control what people do with their resources? Today it's electricity, what would it be tomorrow?
This isn't exactly unprecedented. If I convert my warehouse into a paper mill or textile plant and start consuming extraordinary amounts of water, I'd expect someone from local government to come knocking to ask what I'm doing and whether I have the necessary permits.
You say it's controlling what people do with "their" resources, but public electricity generation is a shared, limited resource. It makes sense
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I think the power consumption of your property and its thermal signature would be dead giveaways?
They are not. The thermal signature show you are using power. You can be running ASICs in order to train LLMs. Or you could be switching the ASICs over in your spare time to start cryptomining. And the thermal signatures don't indicate your own activity. The point is those are your own private and activities, and while they should be interested you are powering industrial-scale computing gear.. the a
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They are not. The thermal signature show you are using power. You can be running ASICs in order to train LLMs.
Did you miss the part where they're limiting data centers/AI too? They're trying to limit high-draw+low-human endeavors, not just crypto.
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They are not. The thermal signature show you are using power. You can be running ASICs in order to train LLMs. Or you could be switching the ASICs over in your spare time to start cryptomining.
Or they could be growin' dope ....
Re:avoiding COMMONS tragedy (Score:2)
Marginal costs (Score:2)
They realized the downside (Score:2)
Investing heavily in ai will kick millions out of jobs, costing governments in terms of tax revenue, welfare benefits, and infrastructure investments. What do these AI pushers expect their consumer base to look like? The USA seems to be pushing yo socialize the costs of data center power while the employees lose their jobs. So who ultimately picks up the tab?
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If AI pushes people out of jobs, it's because AI allows the work to be done at lower cost. Remember, cost means "human cost." Those out of jobs are out because they were wasting human effort, wasting human lives. The AI allows a lower cost to humanity.
A good government would help the displaced workers find or create new jobs; so would their former employers if they were good employers (it does happen.)
One thing the government can do to help generate new jobs is to remove restrictions on home businesses and