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Bitcoin Energy Consumption Is Far More Efficient and Greener Than Today’s Banking System – Mining Bitcoin News
Bitcoin Energy Consumption Is Far More Efficient and Greener Than Today’s Banking System
While bitcoin and a variety of digital currencies have swelled in value, a number of critics have spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) in regard to the energy consumption proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies leverage to produce new units of currency. Just recently the software engineer Stephen Diehl expressed his dissatisfaction over the environmental cost of bitcoin. However, cryptocurrency supporters believe Diehl failed to mention the amount of renewable energy used by a great number of mining facilities, alongside the insurmountable cost to operate today’s banking system.
Bitcoin’s Waste of Energy Argument Is a Fool’s Errand
The latest hot topic within the cryptocurrency industry is the topic of Bitcoin’s proof-of-work (PoW) energy consumption, and whether or not the consumption is efficient. The conversation was sparked by a number of articles published during the last year, alongside software engineer Stephen Diehl’s recent critique of the network’s power consumption.
Besides the fact that Diehl considers the crypto asset to be “a giant smoldering Chernobyl,” he also said that “bitcoin economics [is] a pyramid-shaped investment scheme backed by the collective delusion that value can [be] created out of nothing by convincing greater fools to buy it after you do.”
Diehl’s criticism toward Bitcoin’s energy consumption is filled with obvious fallacies, but he also doesn’t realize how Satoshi’s cryptocurrency network is more energy-efficient than most think. Diehl and many others, also fail to recognize the cost to maintain today’s banking system, which consists of a great number of terawatts dedicated to servers, branches, and automated teller machines.
1/ Bitcoin’s energy consumption is not “wasteful.”
– It is much more efficient than existing financial systems
– No one has the moral authority to tell you what is a good or bad use of energy (ex: watching the Kardashians)
Let’s debunk this FUD?
— Dan Held (@danheld) January 18, 2021
Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index Discrepancies
Most of the consumption data stemming from the BTC network is derived from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI). Interestingly enough analysts and mainstream media reporters also reference the digiconomist.net bitcoin energy consumption index as well. Unfortunately, both CBECI and digiconomist.net’s annualized consumption of terawatt per hour (TWh) data has a very large discrepancy.
The digiconomist.net stats show the BTC network captures 77.78 TWh, while CBECI indicates the network is 111.08 TWh. That is a huge variance (44% difference) when attempting to estimate the data consumption of the crypto asset’s network. Yet, these are the most leveraged sources used by bitcoin naysayers who say BTC’s electrical consumption is a ‘waste’ without any shame.
Further, we don’t even know how accurate the CBECI data is because a team member from the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) recently explained to news.Bitcoin.com that the CBECI map is not up-to-date and will be updated in 2021. This has led to numerous reports stating that China captures 65% of the Bitcoin mining hashrate, which may be entirely inaccurate. In July 2020, a hashrate report written by Bitooda said China was steadily losing its concentration of bitcoin hashpower and the country dropped to 50%.
It is far more likely, that CBECI’s theoretical lower bound estimate for the BTC network’s energy consumption is more accurate. This theoretical lower bound estimate is around 4.6 gigawatts or 39.3 TWh annualized on January 19, 2021. Moreover, there are countless rebuttals and data points that show people complaining about Bitcoin’s energy consumption are overreacting.
we had the exact same debates about the perceived ‘costliness’ of the gold standard
I would direct the energy crew to go read those rebuttals instead of boring us with 100 yr-old arguments
— nic carter (@nic__carter) January 18, 2021
Studies Show Over 75% of Cryptocurrency Miners Leverage Renewable Energy Sources
For instance, the anti-bitcoin environmentalists do not weigh the fact that much of the PoW mining industry uses renewable energy sources like hydropower, wind, solar, and geothermal energy. There are a number of reports that show over 70% of crypto miners use a mix of renewable energy to power facilities across the world. There is also abundant efforts dedicated to energy cogeneration as well.
The 2020 third Global Cryptoasset Benchmarking Study by the University of Cambridge also indicates that 76% of digital currency miners use renewable power sources. Backing up this data is a report from Deutsche Bank Research, the Chinese National Energy Agency, Morgan Stanley, and Coinshares. The report from these four organizations highlights that “78% of Bitcoin’s electricity usage is from renewables.”
There are countless reminders and real-world examples of bitcoin miners using a far more efficient means of electric use than all of the financial systems on the planet. Two years ago, Bill Tai, an investor and board director of Bitfury, detailed that Satoshi is smiling because of the green energy use bitcoin miners use today.
“It’s been clear to me for years now, that mining of Bitcoin and other ‘proof-of-work’ based cryptocurrencies are driving positive change in the underlying infrastructure of energy production — at an accelerating rate,” Tai explained at the time. The investor is also the chairman of Hut8’s board and he said the company has a “policy to ‘be green’ as we build.” Tai detailed that the most efficient sources of electrical power are not fossil fuel-based in order to scale, but the marginal costs of water, solar, and wind-based energy, Tai stressed.
Delivery Trucks, Servers, Branches, ATMs, and the Insurmountable Cost of the Modern Banking System
Then ultimately there’s the cost of the modern banking system, something that bitcoin naysayers never account for when they criticize the crypto’s energy consumption. There is a great number of articles and statistics that indicate the current banking system uses well over 140 TWh a year. In one study, Katrina Kelly-Pitou, a researcher who “studies clean energy technology, specifically the transition toward decarbonized energy systems” says the energy conversation surrounding bitcoin is “oversimplified.”
Furthermore, the researcher stressed that “Bitcoin’s energy consumption isn’t as bad as you think.” Then the Hacker Noon contributor, Carlos Domingo, called the comparison of bitcoin’s electrical usage to Visa’s a complete “fallacy.”
Domingo said:
Stop complaining about Bitcoin and start complaining about Xmas lights.
Despite the Fact That ‘the Cost of Bitcoin Mining Has Never Really Increased,’ Cancel Culture Pundits Want to ‘Criminalize Bitcoin’
This past October, the researchers Yo-Der Song and Tomaso Aste, published a report which highlights that the cost of bitcoin mining “has never really increased.” In the paper, Aste and Song detail that the Bitcoin network consumes a lot of energy, but the researchers still manage to estimate the “lower bound for the global mining energy cost for a period of 10 years from 2010 to 2020.”
“Despite a 10-billion-fold increase in hashing activity and a 10-million-fold increase in total energy consumption, we find the cost relative to the volume of transactions has not increased nor decreased since 2010,” the paper notes.
The researchers add:
This is consistent with the perspective that, in order to keep the Blockchain system secure from double-spending attacks, the proof of work must cost a sizable fraction of the value that can be transferred through the network. We estimate that in the Bitcoin network this fraction is of the order of 1%.
It is clear that the bitcoin mining industry is not as wasteful as the current banking system filled with not only servers, ATMs, and branches, but it is also free of rampant fraud and manipulation as well. Despite this, members of today’s woke crowd and cancel culture want to “criminalize bitcoin,” because it is allegedly “grotesquely damaging to the environment.” As usual, these critics are filled with emotional opinions and weak virtue signals, without a whole lot of facts to back them up.
What do you think about the recent critique toward Bitcoin’s energy consumption? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.
Use Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash to play online casino games here.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.
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Big Tech And White House Staff Working Hard To Manipulate Online Response To Favor Of Biden
(TeaParty.org Exclusive) – Americans aren’t buying the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s presidency. This isn’t like in 2016 when the Democrats whined and cried about President Trump colluding with Russia to steal the presidency.
There just wasn’t proof of that. It didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense. There was literally no reason at all to believe that President Trump had teamed up with Putin to defraud the American people and steal the election.
He didn’t need to. He had plenty of support and he won the election fair and square. Just like he won the 2020 election. President Trump had far greater support than Joe Biden and it was obvious and undeniable.
Yet, somehow, Joe Biden became the most voted for president in US history with 81 votes beating both the wildly popular Obama and Trump. Biden also managed to do this without winning the states of Florida and Georgia and without earning over 90 percent of the black vote, which has always been a must for any Democratic president to win.
There were so many election anomalies and irregularities and the American people plainly saw it. Now that Biden is in the White House the Democrats expect all talk of a fraudulent election to cease and desist.
Only problem is, they carried on with the phony Russian collusion hoax for President Trump’s entire four years in office. There is no reason for anyone in Washington DC to expect Trump supporters to just let it go when it comes to the stolen 2020 election.
Nonetheless, those in power don’t wish to hear from the American people. Online responses to Joe Biden’s virtual inauguration ceremony were overwhelmingly negative. This has led to White House officials to take action.
The Daily Wire reports a YouTube video of Biden’s inauguration had been disabled for comments though users could still give the content a thumbs up or thumbs down.
The comments appeared to have been enabled again at some point which resulted in around 1,000 people commenting, most of which were negative and the video received five times as many thumbs down responses as it did thumbs up.
Every tweet so far on his page has 70 to 80% negative comments. On the official White House YouTube page every video he has put out has 80% more dislikes than likes. Nobody voted for this guy. Maybe the people at the Capitol may have been right?
pic.twitter.com/509UC2GgTD
— Crip (@Crip56844525) January 23, 2021
The White House turned off the comments on today’s press briefing on their YouTube channel. Before they did, I had one of the top thumbed-up comments saying “In before they turn off the comments.” Yes, I can predict the future.
pic.twitter.com/8yJevD46At
— Mark Dice (@MarkDice) January 22, 2021
“When he says, ‘I really believe it,’ is he trying to convince himself or us? When he says, ‘I’m not joking,’ did he think it would sound like he was?” one user wrote. “The only disrespect of the last four years came from the news media, not Donald Trump.”
“Say Hi before they silence your comments… welcome to 1984. The purge is underway,” wrote another user in reference to author George Orwell’s 1940s-era classic about a big-government dystopian future that now appears to be upon us.
The Gateway Pundit reports that after just three days in office, the Biden administration has disabled comments on all thirteen videos posted to the official White House YouTube channel and erased thousands of comments too.
The American people have provided a relentless onslaught of negativity on the White House channel, so much so that YouTube got involved and began manipulating downvotes to make Biden appear more popular.
Despite YouTube removing tons of downvotes, they still greatly outnumber the upvotes. How funny that even now that Biden is in office, he still needs votes manipulated in his favor.
The American people aren’t stupid and we aren’t buying this charade of a presidency. We know the Democrats engaged in massive collusion with state and local officials in critical swing states to pull off the biggest election theft in the world.
Copyright 2021. TeaParty.org
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The Women in Tech Initiative at UC is proud to announce the fifth annual Athena Award winners. Sponsored by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute and Berkeley Engineering, the awards recognize those who embody, encourage, and promote the inclusion of women in technology.
Nominations opened in fall 2020 and submissions covered a wide range of expertise and accomplishments. Awardees were selected by a distinguished panel of representatives from academia and industry. It was a highly competitive process and we thank everyone who submitted a nomination. The awards will be presented on March 12, 2021, during the annual Women in Tech Symposium. This year’s symposium will focus on “The New Era in Human-Computer Interaction” and will examine leading-edge technologies and challenges to ensuring equitable and inclusive HCI.
This year’s Athena Award winners include UC Merced Professor Teenie Matlock, World Economic Forum’s Sheila Warren, UC Davis Assistant Professor Katia Cánepa Vega, and the nonprofit organization Self e-STEM.
Academic Leadership:
Teenie Matlock, Ph.D.
Professor, Vice Provost for Academic Personnel, and McClatchy Chair in Communications at UC Merced
@TeenieMatlock
Teenie Matlock is the Vice Provost for Academic Personnel and a professor of Cognitive Science at UC Merced. She has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles and has been awarded over $2M in extramural research funding. Matlock pioneered human-computer interaction research in the early 2000s, well before the ubiquity of attentive systems, and continues to push the boundaries of language processing through a deeper understanding of human communication. She is notably transdisciplinary in her approaches, meshing research across cognitive linguistics, experimental psychology, and human-computer interaction. At UC Merced, Matlock has broken down academic hierarchies and spearheaded an effort to hire new faculty using innovative approaches to inclusivity, and initiated the institutional membership to the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. Her commitment to guide women to succeed in technology is reflected through the expanded career opportunities she has opened for her mentees. Her mentorship has led to her mentees’ acceptance to top graduate programs, obtaining tenure-track positions, achieving tenure, or landing competitive positions in the technology industry.
Matlock is one of the few Native American faculty in the University of California system and served as Vice Chair of the American Indian Council of Mariposa. She continues to build community by inviting Native American Miwok tribal leaders to open lectures that focus on tribal rights and to honor the location of UC Merced on ancestral lands. Annually, she has served as a liaison to the local communities surrounding UC Merced through various outreach and engagement events. Beyond being a top scholar in her field, Matlock is also a musician and participates in the Merced Community Jazz Band as a solo trumpet player.
Executive Leadership:
Sheila Warren
Head of Blockchain, Digital Assets, and Data Policy at the World Economic Forum
@sheila_warren
Sheila Warren is the Head of Blockchain, Digital Assets, and Data Policy at the World Economic Forum (WEF). Sheila’s focus on building solutions to real-world problems has helped shape the space of blockchain technology and digital identity. Her first technical contribution was the 2013 launch of NGOsource, a first-of-its-kind SaaS product that focused on international grantmaking and revolutionized the way diligence in the sector is conducted using algorithms and blockchain technology. At the WEF she oversaw the development of the first proof-of-concept to combat corruption in public procurement. She has become one of the most influential women in blockchain. Her co-authored paper “Blockchain Beyond the Hype” is the most downloaded WEF paper of the decade. She has provided testimony to the EU and UK Parliament, served on high-level advisory boards for the OECD, World Bank, California government, and several critical projects. Her insistence on inclusion and problem solving has already shaped the trajectory of this technology, and she conceived of and oversaw the creation of the world’s first comprehensive guides to central bank digital currencies and blockchain for the supply chain. The Presidio Principles, which launched under her leadership, are the first ethical framework for blockchain technology.
Sheila’s current team is staffed entirely by women, a rare representation in the field of blockchain. As a leader, she does not hide her personal responsibilities. She emphasizes new models of leadership and flexible work that better accommodate the realities of modern life. Her openness about being a mother of young children and the complexities of work-life balance are inspiring the next generation of women leaders in technology.
Early Career:
Katia Cánepa Vega
Assistant Professor, Department of Design at UC Davis
@kfcito
Katia Vega is an Assistant Professor at the UC Davis Department of Design and directs the Interactive Organisms Lab. Katia’s pioneering research creates novel interfaces around the skin and within fungal colonies known as Beauty Technologies, Growable Interfaces, and Interactive Tattoos. This research integrates electronics into cosmetics to be applied directly to skin, fingernails, and hair to transform the body’s surface into an interactive platform. Her work in Beauty Technology (a term she introduced in 2012) helped open a field with innovations like Conductive Makeup, Tech Nails, Hairware, and FX e-makeup. Katia’s research helped open a new subfield in Wearable Computing by transforming the body into an interactive platform. Her work has been featured by the BBC, New Scientist, Wired, Discovery, CNN, and has received awards from SXSW, Ars Electronica, and the Ubimedia Competition, among others. She is the co-author of the book, “Beauty Technology: Designing Seamless Interfaces for Wearable Computing.”
As a Geek Girl LatAm Ambassador, Katia has a marked impact in encouraging Latina and female students to undertake STEAM disciplines. Seventy percent of the undergraduate students joining her lab have been women, and many come from outside the US (Peru, China, Taiwan, Turkey). Her design is women-centered, creating novel beauty technologies that are mindful of the social, aesthetic, and cultural perspective of women, and she positions women as innovation drivers.
Next Generation Engagement:
Self e-STEM
@selfestemorg
Self-eSTEM provides interactive, culturally responsive STEM literacy, leadership, and technical training for girls and young women. Self-eSTEM focuses on building the skills, confidence, and resiliency needed for the STEM workforce of the future. The organization helps young women visualize themselves as STEM educators, engineers, programmers, and future industry leaders and mentors. The program model is designed to scale culturally-relevant content for educators and provide participant support at core developmental stages: childhood, emerging adulthood, and early career. The Self-eSTEM team is recruited from the community they serve and shares the experiences and background of their constituents. Since 2014, Self-eSTEM has served over 1,200 girls and helped them realize their education and career pursuits.
Recently, Self-eSTEM launched a STEM Equity and Racial Justice Pledge as a direct response to our nation’s racial and gender challenges. It reflects a direct approach toward dismantling the systemic inequality and racism within STEM education and career pathways. The free program provides wraparound support and culturally relevant content to increase recruitment and retention of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) populations in the STEM talent pipeline.
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The Women in Technology Initiative at the University of California is a program jointly launched in 2017 by CITRIS and the Banatao Institute and Berkeley Engineering to advocate for women in the tech industry and academia to be proportionately represented and equitably compensated throughout the professional ranks.
The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute drive interdisciplinary innovation for social good with faculty researchers and students from four University of California campuses – Berkeley, Davis, Merced, and Santa Cruz – along with public and private partners.
The post 2021 Women in Tech Initiative Athena Award Winners Announced appeared first on CITRIS and the Banatao Institute.
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In terms of connectivity, the Mi Curved Gaming Monitor 34 has two HDMI 2.0b and two DisplayPort 1.4 ports, along with a 3.5mm option. The ports are accessible without too much of a hassle, and there is a shroud that hides the port enclosure.
The Mi Curved Gaming Monitor 34 has a 3440 x 1440 resolution and 21:9 ratio, and the 1500R curvature is ideal; it ensures the monitor doesn’t take up too much room, but you don’t notice any issues when gaming or reading text on the screen. The 300nit brightness is also decent, and coming from a Dell monitor that went up to 350 nits, I never had any issues in this particular area.
The Samsung VA panel is one of the best in this category, and the monitor is ideal for gaming.
The screen has a matte coating to prevent glare, and colors look great out of the box. Of course, you can always calibrate the monitor to set it up to your preferences, but if you don’t want to do so, know that the panel itself has a lot going for it. Colors are accurate, you get great contrast levels, and backlighting is even. The monitor uses a Samsung VA panel — like most other options in this category — and the 4ms response time is perfectly serviceable for most titles.
Before switching to the Mi Curved Gaming Monitor 34, I used a 25-inch QHD monitor. With the added screen real estate, I was easily able to run three windows side-by-side. Having used the monitor for just under four months, I’m fully onboard the ultrawide bandwagon. It genuinely makes a tangible difference in my day-to-day use, and I don’t have to deal with the hassle of using multiple monitors.
The monitor holds up just fine for viewing videos and movies, but know that most 16:9 content will show bars on the sides. As for gaming, I played over a dozen games over the last four months, and titles like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Monster Hunter: World, Horizon Zero Dawn, and other AAA games look fantastic on the monitor.
I used the monitor with a gaming machine featuring a Core i9-10900K and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 — and then upgraded to a RTX 3080 — and while it lacks G-Sync, I was able to get up to 120fps in a few titles without any issues. But your mileage may vary based on the game.
Xiaomi Mi Curved Gaming Monitor 34 What I don’t like
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Stash app – the tool to manage your finances, with all the tools to upgrade them
Big Tech And White House Staff Working Hard To Manipulate Online Response To Favor Of Biden
