Currency Always Has Costs, Ctd

Around the world, the cryptocurrency industry’s massive carbon footprint has drawn increasing scrutiny. The commonly used method of extracting coins involves huge amounts of computing power. Networks of miners have to use processors to solve complex puzzles to earn coins as well as track and verify transactions — all of which consumes energy.

A 2019 study estimated that bitcoin, one of the most popular cryptocurrencies, emitted between 22 and 29 million metric tons of carbon dioxide during the previous year, according to findings published in the peer-reviewed journal Joule.

While the entire point of mining is to take lots of time and energy in order to regulate the creation of more bitcoins, in general I have to wonder if software development managers are beginning to become uncomfortably aware that a new metric may be soon created: How much energy does your software consume to fulfill its function? While I have not performed any research on the topic, my passive reading has covered that topic for functionalities as diverse as meteorological forecasting and automatic driving. (No, I’m not looking up those links. Tired.)

I wonder if we’ll see something most older programmers had not thought to see again – the rebirth of efficient code.

And, for those wondering, Bitcoin’s value doesn’t seem to have moved much of late.