Why Cryptocurrencies Use So Much Energy--and What to Do About It.

The article discusses concerns regarding the electricity consumption of mining for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and suggested prevention measures. Topics include Bitcoin's use of a proof-of-work system to mine new bitcoins which uses a lot of computer power and electricity, Bitcoin's adoption of...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Communications of the ACM Vol. 61; no. 7; pp. 15 - 18
Autor principal: Kugler, Logan
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Association for Computing Machinery Jul2018
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Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:The article discusses concerns regarding the electricity consumption of mining for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and suggested prevention measures. Topics include Bitcoin's use of a proof-of-work system to mine new bitcoins which uses a lot of computer power and electricity, Bitcoin's adoption of application-specific integrated circuits to allow faster mining, and efforts to find greener ways to mine cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum's mining on general-purpose graphics processing units (GPUs).