- How much energy does Bitcoin actually consume?
- Ukraine: Decision on crypto currencies in three weeks!
- Mining Giant Bitmain receives $ 50 million in funding round!
- ICO: Atlant wants to revolutionize the real estate market via Blockchain!
Blockchain applications consume energy. Both a transaction and the associated mining of the blocks cost electricity and money. Let us take a closer look at the energy consumption of crypto currencies.
In addition to decentralization and transparency, cost-efficiency is one of the foundations of the success of the digital crypto currency Bitcoin and the underlying blockchain technology. The attractiveness of blockchain transactions is to be able to transfer without intermediary values. This makes the transaction faster and avoids additional costs in the form of fees.
With all this rhetoric, the impression is that blockchain-based transactions are - in the technological ideal case - in vain or at least for a comparatively low price. This appearance is deceptive, however, because every single blockchain transaction costs a resource: energy! By the way the mining of blocks in the blockchain is designed, the increasing demand for a blockchain application increases the difficulty of a block to be mined. This means that with a high mining activity, a high computing power of the mining computers is also required to mine a block. The more active the users along a blockchain, the more energy they consume.
In the case of Bitcoin blockchain, the annual energy consumption has already assumed the level of consumption of a medium-sized country. According to data from digiconomist.net, the estimated annual energy consumption of all Bitcoin activities is currently about 16.36 terawatt hours (TWh). If Bitcoin were a state, it would be on place 76 of the world's most energy consuming countries framed between Lebanon (77) and Cuba (75). Altogether, approximately 0.08% of global energy consumption is attributable to Bitcoin activities, with the trend increasing.
In order to make these abstract statistical figures more tangible, we will mention two practical everyday examples: the energy consumed by Bitcoin could supply more than 1.5 million average households over the same period; the spent energy of a single Bitcoin transaction can supply 6 US households with electricity. The estimated profit of nearly $ 3.8 billion by mining within one year is estimated to have about $ 820 million in energy costs.
Ethereum is not quite comparable to Bitcoin's values. The energy consumption is about 4.9 TWh, which would place Ethereum at position 121 between Brunei (122) and Moldau (120). 0.02% of the world's energy consumption is generated by Ethereum. Nearly 450,000 households can be supplied with Ethereum energy and a US household through a transaction for a whole day. The cost-benefit ratio for Ethereum is also similar to that for Bitcoin: $ 2.3 billion profit cause about $ 590 million in energy costs.
Is crypto mining, therefore, not ecologically or even inefficient? This conclusion can only be drawn to a limited extent from the above figures. Much of the mining of cryptos is nowadays not operated by private individuals, but by professionalized providers. Most of them receive their energy from regenerative sources. A well-known mining company, for example, operates its activities in Iceland using geothermal energy, a technology that uses natural geothermal energy to generate energy.
The aspect of efficiency is not so difficult with regard to the net profit by crypto mining. A high demand for a crypto currency will not only affect energy consumption, but also the price of the currency. Accordingly, the equivalent of a mined token is still a multiple of the effort that must be spent on it. Nevertheless, energy costs are, of course, not a completely negligible factor of crypto actions, since costs are hidden in every transaction.
The Ukrainian government has announced that it will decide in three weeks about the legal status of crypto currencies in Ukraine.
The Cabinet of Ministers, the highest executive body in Ukraine, has set itself the goal of coming to a decision on the legal treatment of crypto currencies in Ukraine over the next three weeks. This will be done in consultation with the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance, the Ukrainian Central Bank, the Ukrainian parliament and the blockchain community of the country.
Tymofiy Mylovanov, deputy chairman of the Central Bank, emphasized that participants in the meeting were aware of the importance of blockchain and digital currencies. They see the need to develop the industry, create a reasonable regulatory framework and ensure protection against misuse.
The chairman of the Ukrainian stock market regulator Timur Khromaev said that blockchain, Bitcoin and other tokens are already part of the financial market of the country and therefore need a regulatory framework.
Yakiv Smoliy, the temporary head of the central bank, claimed that the central bank would neither recognize nor forbid Bitcoin. It does not fall under a definition which the bank uses to describe a currency. He sees the establishment of a definition as a logical consequence for the decision in three weeks.
Sequioa Capital and IDG Cpital are now investing both in Bitmain Technologies. The manufacturer of mining devices has gained popularity during the last Bitcoin Hard Fork, especially through its co-founder, Jihan Wu. Jihan Wu spoke openly to support Bitcoin Cash.
According to information available to the news portal Bloomberg, 50 million USD from various venture capital firms will have flowed into the mining company. Further information is not yet known. Sequoia and other companies also want to support the company with better management.
After the last increase of Bitcoin to nearly 75 billion USD the company valued its own value also in billions. According to Bloomberg TV, Bitmain is also considering an IPO in the near future and plans to produce computer chips for artificial intelligence. Bitmain also wants to be investing in mining farms in the USA.
The founders Jihan Wu and Zhan Micree were particularly well-known in the last debate about Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash in the time of the hard fork. Wu, who especially agreed to a block enlargement, pursued an aggressive tactic with Roger Ver, which should split the Bitcoin community on a sustained basis.
The real estate market has a long history. Like many other financial instruments, however, it is before the attack of blockchain technologies. Atlant wants to attack and liberalize the huge real estate market.
Real estate investments usually involve the problem that large initial investments are necessary. If you want to build a house, you have to pay a high amount for the start-up financing. If you want to buy an existing property as well. This leads to a lower liquidity of the market than e.g. for shares. Numerous factors such as the bureaucratic overhead and the incomplete fragmentation of real estate prevent owners and buyers from dynamically selling or investing small amounts.
At this point, Atlant invests: As a core concept, the project, whose ICO starts in September, wants to make real estate almost as small as possible. Instead of sharing real estate with just a few stakeholders each with a large stake, the investor circle could consist of many, possibly unknown, owners. There is nothing more to be called for than the blockchain technology, which finally showed us precisely this problem solution with crypto currencies such as Bitcoin.
What a real estate market over the blockchain brings with it:
On the one hand, due to the almost arbitrarily small divisibility of real estate market effects, on the other hand the blockchain deployment in the real estate market also brings technical advantages.
Atlant links two blockchains together: the local Atlant system and the Ethereum blockchain. Hashes are stored on the latter, which can be referenced. This is a higher level of security due to the size and spread of the Ethereum blockchain. Technically, by using the blockchain for real estate assets, e.g. an improvement of speed, security and transparency.
Speed:
Since the purchase of Real Estate is a lengthy, bureaucratic process for the regulation of property rights, long market delays arise. If it is ensured that ownership of tokens is a legally binding possession of a share of real estate, the process can be accelerated enormously. This is promoted, inter alia, by the fact that the role of a notary, which represents a temporal dependency in this process, may be eliminated. Instead, the token could be traded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, through various exchanges, or even OTC.Security:
Despite numerous safeguards in the traditional purchase process of a property, human fallibility can never be completely ruled out. Blockchain offers a higher degree of security due to its unchangeability - independent of the real estate market.Transparency:
It is easier to release information, or make it accessible to every market participant. The uniform format also makes it possible, for example, to build external services on the architecture. This allows third parties to use this data to create analyzes and, if necessary, to offer consulting services.
In the white paper, Atlant continually criticizes the principle of AirBnb and puts forward numerous options to improve the approach. This gives the impression that the approach is rather to improve existing products than to create new ones. While this may be sufficient for the success of the project, this view may be viewed critically on a long term basis.
Another challenge that Atlant must face is usability. The simplicity and the easy-to-understand process of AirBnb have made the project a success. In order for Atlant to address a significant user base, it is not only necessary to be technically superior to AirBnb by using the blockchain in the background, but also to surpass the customer focus offered by AirBnb. It is questionable whether at the same time the real estate market and the market for P2P overnight stays can be revolutionized. Since the real estate market in the last few years was developed less strongly than the P2P overnight market, one could expect in the first a larger impact.
The ATL token is issued at a conversion rate of 505 ATL per Ether over the Ethereum blockchain. The Hard Cap is currently at 225,403 Ether. From 7 September 2017 investments can be made. Previously, Atlant had already collected 1.5 million US dollars in pre-sale. Further information is available at atlant.io.
Sources:
Atlant Whitepaper
Atlant Website
Disclaimer: The information presented in this post is not a recommendation for purchase or sale. It is only an opinion of me the author. They serve merely to describe the project and are not to be understood as an investment analysis.
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