A few years ago bitcoin was the embodiment of eternal human dream to get money out of nothing. However, the times when leaving the computer for the night, was mined fifty coins are long gone. Now, mining bitcoins requires special hardware and massive amounts of electricity: an Ecologist from the University of Leiden Sebastian Dittmann has counted that in 2020, the mining of bitcoins will absorb the quantity of electricity, equal to the annual power consumption of Denmark.
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"Bitcoin has many virtues, but perhaps its fatal flaw is the growing energy consumption", says guy lane, Chairman of the Foundation of the Long Future Foundation, in 2015 published an even more bizarre assumption that when the price of bitcoin up to a million dollars that mining will consume up to 13 140 tera of electricity per year, equivalent to the amount of energy required to heat 1.5 billion houses or 57,92% of the global annual production of energy. However, bitcoin has risen to a million dollars, it is only necessary to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency. But this fact does not change: mining becomes more difficult, required more energy, and electricity is not free.
The question of "payment for light" became only more acute after the fact Polovinnaya. As for the work of the network requires all large power hashing hardware manufacturers are constantly increasing the number of devices for bitcoin mining, which consume more energy.
Mining companies have their farms in countries with low cost of electricity, but the difficulty of mining continues to grow, increasing the need for electricity, so cryptocurrency industry needs alternative solutions — and it is likely that a greater role in the near future can play renewable energy sources.
SolarCoin
Digital currency, SolarCoin was developed by Australian businessman Nick Gogerty to encourage people who produce energy using photovoltaic solar panels. The concept of SolarCoin was developed in 2011 and is described in detail in one study Gogerty, but the gist of it is that for the production of 1 megawatt of solar power the program participant will receive 1 SolarCoin SolarCoin is completely free of charge.
Nick Gogerty is also the founder of the site Bitcarbon.org where is his method of calculating the amount of carbon emissions produced in the process of bitcoin mining — carbon footprint. According to estimates Gogerty, hour one solar panel to generate energy avoids the emissions of about 700 kg of carbon dioxide, 2.3 kg of sulfur dioxide and nearly a kilogram of nitrogen. Solar cryptocurrency has a significantly smaller carbon footprint than bitcoin. The main goal of the project is to create an economic motivation to complete humanity's transition to alternative energy sources.
Like many other ambitious projects of our days, they combine good intentions with a very eccentric PR moves: two weeks ago, the company entered into an agreement with Constellation Cloud about hosting your data warehouse on a real artificial satellite of the Earth, supposedly in order to protect against hacking.
However, the orbit in "Gravity" for his character ended much more badly, but SolarCoin maybe for this reason yet not to worry: to date, the market value of one solar coin is $0.063667 and SolarCoin market capitalization of more than $ 6 billion.
By their own estimates, industry solar power production will see a significant leap in development, and producers of solar panels — a significant increase in sales. Gogerty calls Germany and Britain are the main countries which are the focus of its digital currency.
BitVest
Last year major mining company BitVest signed a long term contract with Verne Global, an Icelandic company that owns and supports a giant data center in Keflavik with a size of 17.8 hectares, located on the territory of the former military air bases to NATO. The activities of the data centre is powered by 100 percent through a combination of 2 renewable energy sources: hydropower and geothermal energy.
For BitVest this cooperation means substantial savings: in addition to low cost energy, the company saves resources by low temperatures. As you know, in the production of professional miners generate large amount of heat, so in warmer latitudes, much power is spent on cooling. The location of the mining center in Iceland has allowed BitVest to reduce energy costs by 30%.
From hashcoins datacenter also has its own experience of placing mining farm in Iceland — however, with different results. In Iceland really comes out very cheap electricity, but the maintenance and other costs negate these benefits. So instead of Icelandic farm we opened one in China. Let's see how things go from BitVest in the future.
Megabigpower
Another example of the use of renewable energy our colleagues who hashcoins datacenter can compare with their own experiences: Dave Carlson — founder of massive data center Megabigpower for bitcoin mining in Washington state, with a capacity of 10 teraherz/s (10 000 gigaherz/s), which to Polovinnaya provided profit 1 bitcoin per day.
It equipment spend of 240 kW/h, which corresponds to the emission of 217 kg of carbon every hour according to the EIA. Such production every day would produce very substantial damage to the environment — if electricity is used Megabigpower was extracted by burning fuel.
Mining center Dave's, located on the banks of the Columbia river, where the hydroelectric power station provides the lowest in the country, the cost of electricity, on 100% is provided by hydropower and remains profitable. In the future, he hopes to open the largest solar-wind mining centre, and also considering the reinvestment in wind energy.
As for our experience, here is the story: almost 10 years ago Estonia subsidized producers of green energy, buying electricity at a high price. Now, the company grants came to an end, and owners of small power plants to sell their kilowatts for a penny. Their business is on the verge of bankruptcy. Hashcoins datacenter has partnered with some of those companies, posting at site the our equipment. Unlike the Icelandic case, this is a much better experience — but in this case it's not so much the cheapness of hydroelectric power, as such, as the consequences of a failed government program, which opens opportunities for some, being a disaster for others.
EDRCoin
EDRCoin another currency, the concept of which came to light thanks to the green trend. The mining process EDRCoin, according to the creators, leaves no carbon footprint at all, and is implemented using a combination of alternative energy sources, cooperation with private farms located in different parts of the world. 7% of the revenue of a startup will be directed to the Fund for restoration of mangrove forests of Asia, as well as on the development of new solar power plants. The cost of 1 EDRC equivalent to $1.
It is clear that it still looks not so much like a business, but a charity project. But in a sense, this applies to all projects attempting to combine renewable energy sources with mining. Is renting data storage on the satellite is a business? No, this is pure PR — costs that do not have much practical sense, but they bear mentioning in articles around the world, including this one. As well as our experience in Iceland shows that geothermal electricity is also not as cheap as it seems.
However, if these companies can afford it — why not? If mining bitcoin so even though indirectly, contribute to the development of green and space technologies — it was all worth it.
