Thanks for your thoughts, Frederick!
I'm not as skeptical about the business potential of hydrogen. With the marginal cost of adding more solar going asymptotically to zero (or close to it), the price of "green" hydrogen becomes competitive. Better catalysts or better alternatives to electrolysis could bring this about sooner.
Hydrogen can be sold as a fuel when mixed with natural gas to heat homes without any changes to infrastructure.
Hydrogen can be used as a battery for storing energy from intermittent sources.
Hydrogen has value as a feedstock for various chemical industries.
Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are seeing significant investment, particularly in East Asia.
Hydrogen can be used as fuel for rockets.
I'm not saying the business models are easy, but if they didn't exist, we wouldn't be seeing investment. An example of this is the Murchison Renewable Hydrogen Project, backed by Danish infrastructure investment firm CIP, which will be powered by 5 GW of renewables.
I'm less familiar with how this could connect to cryptocurrency applications. Soluna in Morocco is the only one I've heard of, and I'm not sure they're still emphasizing Bitcoin mining as a strategy, but I could be wrong.
Exciting times, anyway.
