Turning excess energy straight into heat is NOT doing something useful.
Install a boatload more storage. Set up desalinization plants. Get manufacturing to move to 3rd shift.
Anything other than Shitcoin.
Renewables can't do base load. Renewables can't do base load. Renewables can't do base load.
If you have enough storage, you don't have to adapt your reactor second by second. You let the storage buffer out the peaks and valleys and you use the reactor to backfill the storage over the course of hours and days.
I think your "just" is carrying a lot of weight here. Building more renewables requires buy-in from a LOT more people, like state and local government officials, never mind the actual construction of them, with all its cost overruns and boondoggling. It takes a long time.
Setting up a bitcoin mining facility is comparatively a lot easier, especially when your goal isn't "mine the highest value at the lowest cost" (which would require the latest and greatest hardware, etc.), but rather "burn off this extra energy and make a non-zero amount of money off of it in the process."
Of course investing in better long-term solutions would lead to better long-term solutions. But it would require more investment. You'd have to get so damn many people on board, especially in state government, to authorize projects like that, never mind all the bidding and constructing and cost overruns and what have you.
If you want to set up a Bitcoin mining facility to burn off excess energy, you need a well-ventilated room and a bunch of hardware. You don't even need the best of the best hardware, because the main purpose is burning off the energy, and the money earned from it is ancillary, so maybe saving money on the hardware cost and making less money than you could but more money than you're making now is worth the tradeoff.
This doesn't require government and voters to get involved. The utility company execs can make that decision, and then either keep the profits or reduce the local energy costs.
If the problem is extra energy, producing something people will pay you for with your extra energy is a viable solution, even if you think the people are stupid for wanting to buy that thing from you. And if you don't want to have to wait for the political process or deal with trying to build things by committee, bitcoin mining is one way to burn a lot of energy generating something people will pay you for, in a way you can turn on and off programmatically so you're only burning energy when you have extra energy you need to get rid of.
