Anicet Mbida 06:56, September 16, 2022
Anicet Mbida delivers to us every morning what is best in terms of innovation.
This Friday, he is interested in the consumption of cryptocurrencies which should decrease.
This morning, good news at a time when we are advocating energy sobriety: cryptocurrencies will consume much less electricity.
This is nothing short of saving pennies.
We are talking about 78 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, the equivalent of what the entire population of Austria or Israel consumes!
So it's colossal.
You should know that cryptocurrencies are not managed by banks or governments.
There is no central authority to validate that a transaction is legitimate or fraudulent.
The task is entrusted to thousands of ultra-powerful computers, distributed all over the world.
They spend their time doing ultra-complex calculations.
And that requires crazy amounts of electricity.
Since yesterday, this model has changed.
The calculations have become less complex.
You only need a handful of machines to do the same job.
Which saves 99.9% electricity.
Once again, it's colossal!
Isn't there a risk, suddenly, of having more scams, if there are fewer computers that check the transactions?
In principle not, since the system handles both the carrot and the stick.
On the one hand, it remunerates each validated transaction.
And on the other, it requires investing at least €50,000 in the system.
However, if anything dishonest is found, all property will be confiscated.
Enough to encourage you to do the job properly.
It is true that the risk is significant.
We are talking about a network that brews hundreds of billions of euros, with machines that can be operated by anyone around the world.
But the new model was intensively tested for two years.
And for the moment, the changeover is going rather smoothly.
All cryptocurrencies have switched to this new model?
Nope !
Only Ethereum for now.
Bitcoin still works on the old model.
As a result, we are talking about a consumption of more than 200 Terrawatt-hours per year.
A single bitcoin transaction would consume as much electricity as an average household for a month!
One transaction… when there are thousands every day.
However, unfortunately, bitcoin still has no plans to change models.