{"id":36633,"date":"2022-07-16T09:00:20","date_gmt":"2022-07-16T14:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=36633"},"modified":"2022-07-16T09:01:57","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T14:01:57","slug":"currency-always-has-costs-ctd-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2022\/07\/16\/currency-always-has-costs-ctd-21\/","title":{"rendered":"Currency Always Has Costs, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

And the cost of cryptocurrency<\/a> can become prohibitive – when you can’t take the heat<\/em>:<\/p>\n

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As a\u00a0blistering heat wave<\/a> smothered Texas this week and taxed the power grid with record-high demand, bitcoin mining operators in the state shut down their electricity-guzzling machines.<\/p>\n

Complying with requests from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas \u2014 the grid operator that asked businesses and residents to voluntarily conserve electricity during the heat wave \u2014 nearly all industrial-scale mining in the state powered down, according to the\u00a0Texas Blockchain Council<\/a>, an industry association.\u00a0[WaPo<\/strong><\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Just to reiterate:<\/p>\n

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Around the world, the cryptocurrency industry\u2019s massive carbon footprint has\u00a0drawn increasing scrutiny<\/a>. The commonly used method of extracting coins involves\u00a0huge amounts of computing power<\/a>. Networks of miners have to use processors to solve complex puzzles to earn coins as well as track and verify transactions \u2014 all of which consumes energy.<\/p>\n

A 2019 study<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>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.)<\/p>\n

I wonder if we’ll see something most older programmers had not thought to see again – the rebirth of efficient code.<\/p>\n

And, for those wondering, Bitcoin’s<\/em><\/a> value doesn’t seem to have moved much of late.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And the cost of cryptocurrency can become prohibitive – when you can’t take the heat: As a\u00a0blistering heat wave smothered Texas this week and taxed the power grid with record-high demand, bitcoin mining operators in the state shut down their electricity-guzzling machines. Complying with requests from the Electric Reliability Council \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36633"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36640,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36633\/revisions\/36640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}