This paper studies the socio-technical aspects of the energy footprint of technology, and is intended to address the issue from a variety of lenses: developer community, mining operations, location economics, technological, regulatory, qualitative, historical, and social. For simplicity, this article focuses primarily on the energy footprint of () due to its wide and available research.
’s energy consumption footprint is of no small concern: It’s been estimated that it consumes as much energy annually as all of Nigeria[14], Ireland[6], or Denmark [1]. The mining network alone consumes 0.14%[1] of global generated electricity, which represents only one part of the environmental footprint of a single technology. The timing of its popularity has garnered significant attention; humanity is faced with rising concerns regarding its energy consumption and imminent climate change, while at the same time embracing a technology with an exponential demand for computing power. This has provoked some recent research and discussion on the topic, which makes for worthwhile study of the many influencing factors contributing to ’s energy footprint.
There is a natural analogy to be drawn between the mining of and the mining of a natural resource, such as gold or oil. Given that costs and efforts rise as both systems reach their resource limit, this provides for worthwhile historical perspective. As such, it should not be seen as a sustainable currency, as no comprehensive assessment has yet been performed. Such a study would consist of both computer energy consumption and disposal of e-waste. Given that much of the network is decentralized and ‘underground’, it makes quantifying the environmental footprint difficult. According to an Australian sustainability organization called the ‘Long Future Foundation” (LFF), could have generated almost 13% of GHG per annum [2]. In December 2017, the electricity demanded by the network was projected to outstrip the available energy, requiring new infrastructure and plans [5]. This presents a nuanced reality of energy consumption, but at the time of writing, a energy index puts annual consumption around 44 TWh/yr. According to an article in Wired Magazine, written in December 2017 [5], it claimed that by July 2019, will require more electricity that the entire US. However, that was written during a time of significant gain, and is part of many sensationalizing articles written about consumption. Presently, according to the EIA, the U.S, Energy Information Administration [17], 2017 US energy consumption was 97.7 quadrillion BTU (which converts to 28,641 TWh*yr). Compared with present energy consumption, this puts power consumption of only 0.15% of US annual primary energy consumption.
DeVries performed research in 2018 that estimated is consuming between 2.6 and 7.7GW, and pointed out that the consumption is directly related to the price point. At $8,000 price point, the power consumption is expected to land at the higher end, around 7.7GW. If the price were to fall significantly, miners would turn off the least energy-efficient mining equipment, and energy use might fall. However, if it were closer to the $20,000 high of December 2018, energy consumption would rise much more quickly [7]. If the price were to stabilize, [13] claims that the network energy consumption will steadily fall over the coming decades due to the reward halving every four years, as mining profits would commensurately be reduced. However, this assumption of a stabilized price is historically inaccurate. To match cycles of growth and of economies, the Milton Friedman monetary theory considers the role of a central bank to increase the money supply by a constant annual percentage, preventing excessive inflation. With , there is no centralized inflation management; it automatically supplies currency in a slowing logarithmic growth, possibly creating a deflation to its value[2].
Each transaction requires the same amount of energy to power nine US homes for one day[5]. The network consumes around 300 kWh of electricity per transaction [7], but DeVries points out that the consumption figure is often misconstrued. Since an empty block takes almost as much energy as a full block to mine means that making fewer transactions per block wouldn’t conserve any significant amount of energy, it would simply cause the energy per transaction to skyrocket.
If seen purely as a digital currency, the energy consumption footprint is comparatively insignificant. The environmental cost of mining comes in at estimated 3.97 PJ/y. Compared with other currencies it has a significantly smaller footprint. Paper currency/minting consumes 39.6PJ/y, gold totals 475 PJ/y, and the worldwide banking system consumes 2,340 PJ/y [2], Although this study only accounted for energy consumption of these industries, irrespective of embedded or organizational inputs. Kelly-Pitou [6] points out that banking consumes an estimated 100 TW of annual power, and that if were to mature by more than 100 times its current market size, it would still only equal only 2% of all energy consumption. As the technology stands today, it is not competitive with credit card or existing banking system processing due to network latency hurdles. However, the technology is much more than simply a digital currency, as it represents a novel type of distributed and database system. There are significant technical hurdles that need to be addressed if the technology were to scale.
Technical Overview:
A utilizes cryptographic algorithms to provide a secure record of transactions in the form of a distributed database. It consists of nodes, in which a node collects a number of valid transactions onto a block, and computes a cryptographic hash. In essence, it is solving a processor-intensive computational puzzle for the sake of security. This is also known as a consensus mechanism, where miners do much more than unlock new coins. Their role is to check the to make sure coins aren’t being ‘double spent’ (a common method of fraud), while adding new lists of transactions to the chain. Each list must be transformed into a signature to prove the authenticity of the information, which is done with a cryptographic tool that spits out a string of seemingly random characters[14]. This is akin to a computational competition, in which the objective is to be the first to determine a signature based on three inputs: the signature of the preceding block, the new transaction list, and a random third number. This random third number is found by miners guessing until they get it correct, which expends an immense amount of energy. The wasteful computation method is a form of guaranteeing authenticity of the information contained in the lists, later to be added to the , and is known as Proof Of Work (POW).
The system itself is an elastic one, as the number of attempts to find a valid hash depends on the computing capacity of the entire network. The supply of new bitcoins is capped at 21 million, with the reward halving every four years. When launched in 2009, each block came with a 50 reward for block creation. In 2012, it fell to 25 , and 12.5 in 2016. In 2020, it will again fall to 6.5 . This block reward is independent of the number of transactions processed by the network. In this calculation, the difficulty of creating a block is adjusted to the amount of computational power that joins the network. Thus, more computing power is required to produce each , reducing profit margins for miners, and driving up energy consumption [7]. However, the economic realities are far more nuanced.
Miner Incentives:
The network is regulated to generate a new block at a rate of one every ten minutes. As a result, the distribution is not linear, but rather logarithmic. This is where differs from traditional commodity mining, which follows a logistic distribution [2], though still requires energetic and material inputs to maintain increased computation power. This shows that the increasing demand of computing/electrical power are not a limiting factor in the mining capacity of the network. In addition to block reward, miners also collect per-transaction fees from users, which are much smaller, but less variable [13].
The combination of block reward halving and computational hashrate adjustment factors make mining activity highly sensitive to economic incentives. When mining industry revenue falls by half, some suggest that energy consumption should fall by the same proportion. This follows the logic that if it didn’t, mining would become an unprofitable activity [13]. This has been disputed by [1], where Giungato demonstrates that has been designed to require even greater computational power, therefore increasing energy consumption over time. This represents one of the critical factors in understanding the energy footprint of blockchains, and an area that warrants future study.
Location & Qualitative:
A critical factor in mining is choosing an economically suitable area, of which the cost of energy is the driving factor. According to one prominent mining operation in Wenatchee [9], additional factors for a mining operation include low temperature (to cool the equipment), existing energy distribution infrastructure (to fuel high demand), and high-speed internet. Internationally, Kelly-Pitou points out that Iceland is a popular place for mining[6], and is nearly 100% powered by renewables due to the abundant geothermal, hydropower, and wind. The datacenters are kept naturally cooled by cold Icelandic air, keeping costs down. Given that mining operations are mobile, they will locate the best sites based on economics, as the cost of energy is a significant portion of the profit margins. Mining operations have been deemed ‘energy nomads’ by TBC[6], with no incentive to build out new energy generation capabilities.
According to [5], the mining industry will spend 60% of its revenue on electricity. This 60% estimate is a point of contention in the energy consumption debate. While some argue that the consumption is as low as 40% [2], Pitou [6] claims that the cost of electricity is actually closer to 90% of mining costs, but variable with location. As a result, mining operations tend to cluster around areas with cheap and abundant power. This tends to cluster around both cheap coal and renewable energy, specifically hydropower. Blog The Block Crypto (TBC) [22] states that miners have honed in on this to gain an edge, and have done so through retail markets with no direct role in energy curtailment.
In the US, 44% of hydro is produced in the Columbia River Basin, WA, where the annual hydro power waste is many times the power of network[10]. By combining cheap hydropower with high-speed fiber internet infrastructure, the Columbia River Basin has become a hub for mining. Crypto is not the first industry to arbitrage energy prices to make a good’s production profitable. This is still common in aluminum production[9] : coincidentally, the Pacific Northwest and New York are both hotspots for aluminum manufacture and mining. This is due to a confluence of factors: miners look for places with cheap power and energy distribution infrastructure, much like manufacturing and datacenter industries.
In Washington, miners took advantage of ALCOA’s bankruptcy, and set up in the facility [6]. The environmental impacts of mining in this region is reduced, given that the Pacific Northwest is nearly 100% powered by hydroelectricity. In Wenatchee, WA, previously 80% of the power output of the massive hydro operations was exported to areas like California, resulting in advantageous gain to the local communities[6]. However, in the past several years California has shifted towards renewable energy, and resulted in a reduced demand for imported power. As a result, Washington hydro capacity has been shifting towards more local consumption. Coincidentally, the rise of mining operations in Wenatchee caused a spike in energy demand, which means that this power is being produced and consumed on-site, resulting in less transmission loss. Coinshares argues that this results in a far more efficient measure of consumption, given there are significant efficiency losses when transmitting power over large distances.
However, Kelly-Pitou points out a large portion of miners are set up in , which is 60% coal-powered. As a result, when attempting to understand the energy footprint of , it is necessary to think qualitatively about the sources of energy. The LFF adds that it is not sufficient to simply study energy consumption and e-waste, but two additional factors: (1) the carbon intensity of the consumed electricity, depending on the mix of traditional vs. renewable energy in a nation and (2) the price of . They note that an increase of value can drive extended mining activities, and therefore cause an increase in energy consumption[2]. This makes ’s energy footprint influenced by both qualitative power characteristics and economics, making analysis difficult.
This information is corroborated by research produced by Christopher Bendiksen of Coinshares [10], which conducted a study and mapped out mining region, compared it with regional renewable energy penetration, and estimated that the renewable mix is at 77.6%, where the global average is 18.2%. Bendiksen also claims that is one of the cleanest billion-dollar industries on the planet. This Coinshares study has been deemed not rigorous by TBC [22], because it doesn’t compare comparable energy generation and present trends in curtailment reduction. It brings the renewables penetration closer to 51%. TBC also points out that Bendiksen also wrote the article ‘Beware of Lazy Research’ which claims that hydropower has no compelling transport or storage alternative to mining. It also argues that spikes in demand will not lead to an increase in clean energy R&D or policy development, and that miners do not directly consume excess grid generation.
Coinshares argues that mining actually promotes renewable energy generation: “… offers immediate electricity monetization independent of grid connection can play a vital part in the renewables development cycle” [10]. The article points out that many renewable generation sources are located in low-population areas, like dams, wind, or solar farms. It claims that mining operations can serve as a cornerstone demand for low-cost stranded renewables (due to the cost of power transmission) and states that annual hydropower waste is many times that of the network energy consumption.
This article is hotly disputed by TBC [22], which states that the reasoning makes the incorrect assumptions that (1) renewable energy implies carbon-free and (2) the energy market operates as a free market. TBC observes that there is no supply-based pricing in operation around the world, and that miners do not actually time their mining operations with peaks in renewable energy. This has increasingly proved to be challenging for utility service providers, straining existing antiquated power distribution infrastructure with new power-hungry energy consumers.
Utilities:
This brings to the forefront of a wave of concern from utilities. This sudden demand is upending a decades-old power model and taxing an antiquated infrastructure. This demand has been known to overload grid infrastructure, cause fires, or melt insulation. In some cases, illegitimate mining operations have become a game of cat and mouse, with the utilities targeting mining operations based on the spike in their electricity consumption. These are referred to as ‘rogue operators’ by utilities, however, it is difficult to sufficiently control, as mining infrastructure is mobile.
Utility providers find themselves in a difficult position. They are caught between a skeptical public, and a power-hungry, well-funded new industry. Significant demand that exceeds capacity requires new infrastructure, which is quite costly for utilities. By rejecting a load that requires new transmission lines, utilities invite major legal fights with well-funded adversaries [6]. The volatility of the industry means that in the event of a major market collapse, miners will abandon their operations. To address this, utilities have increasingly been seeking legislative recourse, with some success in the US.
In a recent vote by the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC), municipal power companies now can charge higher electricity rates to miners who try to capitalize on low power rates[11]. This decision primarily focuses on industrial-grade consumers whose demand exceeds 300kW, or whose load density exceeds 250 kWh/ft²/yr. This came as the result of a petition from 36 municipal power authorities in New York, with production capabilities ranging from 1.5 MW to 122 MW. Mining operations excessive power appetite has challenged small local grids and caused rate hikes for other . However, the PSC ruled that mining should be treated differently due to the lack of local community benefit, as compared with jobs from aluminum processing plants.
Several concerns have been raised by locals about rates rising to meet demand. In Plattsburgh, monthly bills for residential increased by $10 because of two mining companies. In Akron, NY, a mining operation requested a 5MW increase in electricity delivery, which would increased bulk power supply costs by 54%[11].
Regulatory:
Given this strained relationship between mining operations and utilities, there is a strong need for nation-state accountability and regulatory frameworks, which is addressed by Truby[1]. Unfortunately, there are many challenges to such an implementation. If any one country tries to force a change, operations would simply flee to another jurisdiction, as evidenced by a crackdown in in 2016 that caused 200MW of mining operations to move internationally. Coincidentally, a flood of Chinese investors and equipment caused a surge in inquiries for warehouse rentals in Wenatchee [6]. Successful implementation to regulate bitcoins energy consumption would require global regulatory effort, which is unlikely [13].
Unfortunately, any efforts to regulate currency result in a ‘race to the bottom’ theory of nations competing to offer lower regulatory standards to attract businesses seeking reduced operating costs [1]. Additionally, any change to a decentralized protocol would undermine trust in the system. Upgrading the protocols would require amendments to the overall framework, which is observed in . Some developers do upgrade this technology, such as in the instance of Cash, which has increased its block size. The best way for any regulatory changes to have impact would be to carry it out within a large market such as the EU, US, or .
From a policy perspective, Smarti McCarty, a member of Icelandic parliament, raised an interesting point that mining presents a risk to Iceland. If a substantial part of mining is concentrated in one country, it makes it appealing for electronic attacks. They are embracing the technology, but have expressed the need to set groundworks in place. [12] The energy consumption of mining is expected to exceed that of the population’s demand. Additionally, the mining requires almost no staff, very little capital investments, and leaves very little tax revenue.
However, suppressing blockchain technology comes with a high opportunity cost. Truby claims that nations discouraging blockchain innovation will miss out on the infancy of the industry and future benefits[1]. These states will not prevent the universal of the technology, but will miss out on its growth benefits. Interfering with a free market in this fashion presents a lack of incentive for nations to intervene with policy choices related to curtailing the energy consumption of blockchain. This principle has been a matter of debate throughout history. The existing policy choices have been focused on digital currencies, both at regulating their use and taxing their use. This dual-pronged regulatory and fiscal approach provides the most meaningful path forward to incentivize blockchain energy consumption reduction technology. Fiscal tools can incentivize innovators to design financially rewarding blockchain technology, while also achieving environmental goals.
As an example, within the EU, a ‘polluter pays’ principle was established on the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU. This purpose is not simply to raise revenue, but to hold polluters financially accountable for their harm. It is now commonplace for the EU to introduce a CO2-emissions based taxation on the registration of a passenger vehicle. This charge encourages low (or zero) emissions, and has successfully motivated manufacturers to switch production to such vehicles by shifting demand. Implementing this for a distributed technology poses many challenges.
The decentralized model has made regulatory efforts difficult, but combined with incentives for the developers of the technology, it could pose a powerful change agent. By failing to intervene in the consumption of , governments are building what is known as ‘path dependence’, which is an inertial constraint of future choices based on reinforcing limits like sunk investments, increasing returns, and network effects.
Social:
Given the location considerations of cheap power and available warehouse space, many mining operations set up in rural areas. These areas typically tend to be conservative, as seen in the case of Wenatchee, WA. In such typically conservative regions, there is a strong sentiment along the lines of “hell no, not here’” political NIMBYISM [9] which has created strife between operations and locals. Criticisms are common related to illegal uses and social consequences. Much of this is due to the public perception of as a tool for black markets, which is a vestige of ’s historical past due to the anonymous nature of the technology. However, this also makes it particularly attractive for libertarian and/or anarchist sympathizers, who want to see reduced governmental power. Thus, the social impacts of have less of an impact on the energy consumption of blockchain.
Developer:
Energy consumption is commonly not a concern in the design of blockchain tech; rather, decentralization and security is prioritized. It is ultimately the developers who are capable of designing a reduced energy footprint, but they have no motivation to do so as long as the rest of the chain (manufacturers, end-users, and the ‘blockchain’ itself) generates demand for the current system. Truby points out that as long as there is a continued demand for the high-consumption technology, no changes are likely to manifest immediately[1]. This has been addressed to some degree with ’s ‘difficulty bomb’, a date when mining on PoW becomes increasingly computationally challenging, therefore unprofitable, as an incentive to switch over the technology to a less energy-hungry Proof Of Stake technology, mentioned in the next section.
Historically, there is some precedent for the technology developers to make efficiency implementations. Truby points to study about growing energy demand for internet traffic/data, identified that some service providers are aware of their high consumption and have modified or advanced the technology to enable data efficiency. The article cites Netflix as having improved their technology to deliver the same services, but with less data [1].
Trends/Technologies:
In response to the social narrative and economic considerations, many blockchain developers and mining companies have searched for solutions in the form of renewable energy, different consensus methods, and more efficient mining chips.
(ETH): Determining an efficient consensus mechanism is seen by Vitalik Buterin, founder of The Foundation, one of the hardest problems in cryptocurrency development”. (ETH) has developed something called “Proof Of Stake” (PoS), which is in a good position to supplant PoW. These blockchains would select node validators based partly on their respective monetary deposits (stake). The consensus mechanism would be considerably more energy efficient, but the concept is unproven at scale, and the release timeline keeps being pushed back. This incremental-release update, known as ETH 2.0, processes through three phases: Byzantium (current PoW), Constantinople (transitional PoW/PoS), and ultimately to Serenity (PoS) [19]. Currently ETH is in the process of transitioning to Constantinople, which would have major improvements such as block reward reduction, reduced transaction costs, and State Channel compatibility.
Blockchain challenges center around striking a balance between scalability, security, and decentralization. Given the decentralized and nascent nature of ETH and , development is often convoluted, resulting from security challenges, infighting, hard forks, and many other factors [17]. The process is challenging to follow with clarity, as it is constantly revising. However, by mid-2019, PoS is expected to launch on ETH, which would allow for network scalability. This would have massive impacts on the energy consumption of blockchain technology. To encourage transition between PoW and PoS, ETH foundation has set a ‘Difficulty Bomb”: a date of increasing difficulty to mine, helping nudge the transition away from computationally wasteful protocols.
There is an ongoing debate between miners and community [20] of particular interest, focused on current inflation rate in the ETH ecosystem. The community wants a reduction in the ETH Inflation Rate (the speed at which ETH loses its purchasing power/value), addressed by reducing the amount ETH issued per block mined. This would align the inflation rate to ~2%. This would align the inflation rate to what it would be if PoS were not delayed. However, ETH miners don’t like that idea, as it would cut into profits. Miners claim that they would be forced off the network, since rewards wouldn’t be sufficient to cover operating costs. Each miner has an important role in the network, beyond simply processing/validating transactions. As they contribute to the network, they add hashpower, which increases the security of the network. A network containing more miners is more secure, so it is important to consider their needs.
A big difference between and ETH is that ETH rewards miners that find blocks that don’t make it into the longest chain. sees these blocks as ‘stale’, and are orphaned, but ETH rewards them for their work. This is because the low ETH block latency (~14 seconds/block) means that smaller-scale miners may unfairly lose out on potential rewards. This is addressed in the form of ‘Uncles’ which rewards stray block processing, increasing the security of the chain and incentivizing miners of all scales.
State Channels (ETH): State channels are a mechanism for transacting with other users directly outside of the blockchain, thus enabling far more scalability while minimizing the number of ‘on-chain’ transactions conducted. This is similar to ’s Lightning network, except that it handles more types of transactions, (rather than simply payments) which allows for greater developer . This technology is one of the closest to being production-ready, and is an exciting new development[24].
Bitmain Chips: The world’s largest supplier of crypto mining chips, Bitmain, recently reported losses of $500 million in Q3 of 2018 due to the massive market correction. In response to this bear market, they are attempting to incentivize the industry with the release of more efficient chips, which are allegedly 28% improved, the BM1397. It is claimed to only use 30 joules of energy per TerraHash, meaning 33 terrahash can be computed with 1 kW [21].
Alternate Mining Algorithms: Gold (BTG) uses ‘memory-hard’ mining algorithm that might be less power hungry [13]. However, there is inertial momentum to use , and the currency has not been as widely adopted. Switching algorithms would be controversial among traditionalists, and are strongly opposed by miners. They would wipe out mining companies multi-million investments in custom mining hardware[13].
Lightning Network: The lightning network is another key development, providing a new network protocol that increases speed and reduces the cost of off-chain transactions. The lightning network creates dedicated channels between users that can facilitate thousands of transactions while they remain open. This promises to remove huge amounts of minor transactions that clog the network. However, the network is under criticism for its centralized nature [21].
Block Size Increase: As low-hanging fruit, the network could easily be upgraded to handle more transactions without significantly changing miner revenues or energy consumption [13]. However, this would not solve the network latency issues to allow for scalability, rather it represents an efficiency improvement.
Reward Halving: The design of the reward halving is claimed to potentially resolve itself without the need for intervention. As the mining reward is halved, it will become easier to confirm transactions, meaning less energy will be required. While miners will be less incentivized to continue mining, this issue has historically balanced itself out because the mining becomes easier when computational power of the network decreases [21]. As stated earlier in this paper, this is a highly variable economic proposition, exhibiting significant price sensitivity.
Computational Efficiency Gains: Moore’s law, a common timer for the speed of innovation, states that the number of transistors doubles on a chip every two years while the costs are halved. However, recent findings are showing that Moore’s law is slowing down [15], which will impact the blockchain mining infrastructure and economic incentives as related to energy costs. While was initially mined using CPU in 2009, the increase in computation needs shifted towards GPU, at the end of 2010. FPGA’s, and later, in 2013, ASICs contained dedicated hardware to solve hashing. Thus, the hash rate has increased from CPU (10⁵-10⁸ hash/second) with an energy efficiency of (10⁴-10⁵ hash/J) to ASIC’s (10¹⁰-10¹³) with an efficiency of (10⁸-10¹⁰ hash/J). As a result, to maintain profitability, the costs of electricity have become increasingly critical [2]. This results in an ‘arms race’, where equipment is outdated before it is utilized.
Mining hardware depreciates as the ASIC technology improves, so the lifespan of equipment is only such that it would last more than a few years. However, the pace of efficiency improvements is slowing [15], so the lifespan of these chips is projected to stabilize.
Despite the promise of these developments, any efficiency gains are not to be confused with reduced energy consumption. In his book Energy & Civilization, Vaclav Smil points out from a historical lens that for each technology, the energy saved through efficiency gains is simply applied to accomplish more work[8]. While this is a sober proposition, it is possibly the most historically accurate and realistic portrayal of ’s future energy consumption.
Conclusion:
According to clean energy technology researcher Katrina Kelly-Pitou, the conversation about blockchain energy consumption has been distorted. She points out that all new technologies, such as data centers, computers, planes, trains, automobiles are energy intensive in their early stages. This is corroborated by Smil, who illustrates the inevitable efficiency gains in any given technology over the course of time [8]. Kelly-Pitou points out that the dialogue has been oversimplified by talking purely about energy consumption, and ignoring the qualitative characteristics of where and how that power is produced. Pitou points out that the discussion should be shifted towards discussing ’s carbon footprint, and understand the impact of specific mining operations and their environmental burden.
According to technologist & social media scholar Danah Boyd in 2011 [23] “Big Data has become accessible to the general public, but is subject to four (often conflicting) forces: the market, the law, social norms, and architecture” . Given that blockchain is conceptually a new database technology, these still hold true. Additionally, with ’s short history and distributed nature, it has also been fraught with scams, thefts, regulatory bans, and community infighting. There is a confluence of considerations impacting ’s energy consumption and its path dependencies: technical, miner incentives, locational & qualitative considerations, utilities, regulatory, social, developer community, and emerging technologies. Increasing variable costs create pressure to innovate for energy efficient solutions, however, the technology also faces significant momentum in reducing its energy/carbon footprint.
References:
[1] Truby, J. (2018). Decarbonizing : Law and policy choices for reducing the energy consumption of Blockchain technologies and digital currencies. Energy research & social science.
[2] Giungato, P., Rana, R., Tarabella, A., & Tricase, C. (2017). Current trends in sustainability of bitcoins and related blockchain technology. Sustainability, 9(12), 2214.
[3] (2019, February 26). This Report Says Blockchain Is One Of 30 Key Innovations Set To …. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
[4] Imbault, F., Swiatek, M., De Beaufort, R., & Plana, R. (2017, June). The green blockchain: Managing decentralized energy production and consumption. In 2017 IEEE International Conference on Environment and Electrical Engineering and 2017 IEEE Industrial and Commercial Power Systems Europe (EEEIC/I&CPS Europe) (pp. 1–5). IEEE.
[5] (2017, December 6). Mining Guzzles Energy — And Its Carbon Footprint Just … — Wired. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
[6] (2018, August 20). Stop worrying about how much energy uses — The Conversation. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
[7] (2018, May 17). New study quantifies ’s ludicrous energy … — Ars Technica. Retrieved February 26, 2019, from
[8] SMIL, V. (2018). ENERGY AND CIVILIZATION: A history. S.l.: MIT PRESS.
[9] “This Is What Happens When Miners Take Over Your … — Politico.” 9 Mar. 2018, . Accessed 5 Mar. 2019.
[10] “Beware of Lazy Research: Let’s Talk Electricity Waste & How … — Medium.” 6 Dec. 2018, . Accessed 6 Mar. 2019.
[11] (2018, March 16). New York power companies can now charge miners more | Ars …. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[12] (2018, February 12). In Iceland, mining will soon use more energy than its residents …. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[13] (2017, December 6). ’s insane energy consumption, explained | Ars Technica. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[14] (2017, November 16). Blockchains Use Massive Amounts of Energy — But There’s a Plan to …. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[15] (2016, March 23). Intel Puts the Brakes on Moore’s Law — MIT Technology Review. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[16] (n.d.). Energy Consumption Index …. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[17] (n.d.). Hash Rate — Blockchain. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[18] (n.d.). U.S. Energy Facts — Energy Explained, Your …. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[19] (n.d.). Roadmap Update [2019]: Casper … — Mango Research. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[20] (2018, September 1). Inflation Rate: Ether Issuance Debate 2018 — Mango Research. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[21] (2019, February 26). Blockchain Developments Aiming to Combat Rising Energy …. Retrieved March 9, 2019, from
[22] (2019, January 30). doesn’t incentivize green energy — The Block. Retrieved March 11, 2019, from
[23] Boyd, D., & Crawford, K. (2011, September). Six provocations for big data. In A decade in internet time: Symposium on the dynamics of the internet and society (Vol. 21). Oxford, UK: Oxford Internet Institute.
[24] (n.d.). The Basics of State Channels | Understanding Scaling. Retrieved March 17, 2019, from
Published at Fri, 22 Mar 2019 02:31:54 +0000
![Should you buy, hold, or sell bitcoin? [survey]](https://ohiobitcoin.com/storage/2019/05/Gold_Bitcoin_1543419805.jpg "Should you buy, hold, or sell bitcoin? [survey]")
