And adding green energy to the grid would let you displace/turn off non-green generation if the load wasn't increasing (as much).

What if you're using that energy in your hot tub, or to heat your house during the winter?

Are you arguing staying alive through winter as something less beneficial to bitcoin mining?

If electricity is being used to generate heat (for a house, hot tub, etc), and that heat happens to be generated by a bitcoin miner, is it more or less wasteful than only using the electricity to generate heat?

That's fine, provided you weren't going to heat it with a heat pump before you decided to use a Bitcoin miner. I suppose there's also a slight environmental cost in producing a Bitcoin miner vs producing a heating coil but I'm going to assume that's negligible.

Depends if they are wintering inside or in the hot tub.

Since energy isn't easily transported, wouldn't that really depend on where the energy was produced?

I'd argue that no other thing, apart from information, is transported as easily as electricity, once the grid exists. Sure, there are capacity limits, but I doubt that shutting down crypto mining would cause problems to the grid.

I recently read that some are thinking about connecting the US with Europe via DC cabling.

Here's a related, old article: "Submarine power cable between Europe and North America: A techno-economic analysis" (2018)

• Developed a 2030 power dispatch model of Europe and North America (NA).

• Identified socio-economic benefits of European-NA electricity trading through a HVDC cable.

• A 4000 MW cable increases social welfare by 177 M€ on an annual basis.

• This benefit for society is sufficient to cover the investment costs.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261...

I did not expect the the energy would flow so heavily to North America (24.1:3.3 TWh ratio over a year).