Crazy use for Bitcoin: mine Bitcoin in satellites with giant solar arrays, at a capacity that makes it cheaper than terrestrial mining. Since terrestrial mining no longer economical, it ceases altogether resulting in reduction of energy consumption. I.e. space Bitcoin mining captures solar energy in space and sends it to earth in the form of coin, which is much safer than beaming the energy itself.
I'm sure there are many reasons this wouldn't work, but it's fun to think about.
Instead of launching solar panels into space and getting free energy there, they could be placed on Earth to save the launch costs and get free energy here. Let's ignore that because the following is far more interesting ;)
To give you an idea of the scale of the problem that such an enterprise would be dealing with: the ISS has a cooling capacity of less than 100kW and current mining infrastructure has a power consumption in the order of gigawatts. This energy ends up as waste heat that needs to be dumped into space at the same rate. So for every gigawatt, there is 10000 times the cooling capacity of the so-far largest human-made object in space required.
> Instead of launching solar panels into space and getting free energy there, they could be placed on Earth to save the launch costs and get free energy here.
I suppose Solar panels in space can be arranged such that that it's always solar noon, and it's never cloudy. So more efficient at collecting than on the ground, in theory.
You realize this doesn't actually transfer any energy, right? Assuming you're not joking, all you've done is calculate the world's most expensive sha256.
I was serious about that part - computing the hash requires energy, which is acquired in space instead of on land. By using the energy right there in space and shipping the final product
(the hash) you don't have to transfer the energy which you would have needed to make the computation on land.
Installing a solar array in space has a larger carbon footprint than mining those coins with coal on earth. Proof-of-work will be seen as a crime against humanity in retrospect
I'm sure there are many reasons this wouldn't work, but it's fun to think about.