As we know, one of the main problems of bitcoin today is its massive energy consumption.
Currently, bitcoin, if ranked by energy consumption, consumers more energy than Columbia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. It is about to overtake Chile, Austria and the Philippines in energy consumption.
The growth in difficulty or energy consumption of bitcoin averages around 10% a month if you base it off of historical mining difficulty increases.
Ten percent a month in growth in energy consumption, month after month, year after year is completely not sustainable. We are entering a period of resource scarcity and in order for a cryptocurrency to survive, it cannot sonsume as much energy as bitcoin.
Mining:
The main reason why bitcoin uses this much energy is mainly because of mining. Miners are a central part of any cryptocurrency because miners compete with each other to "win the block".
Winning a block is important because if you win the block, you get the block reward of 12.5 bitcoins. The question you will ask is why not just scrap mining? Why is mining important?
Mining is important because the winner of the block also validates or stated in another way, does the accounting for the block to add to the ledger. Only the winner can do the validation or accounting for that block because he won the block.
Then, the block is broadcasted to the network and everyone updates their ledger to reflect the new balances.
That is why mining is central to any cryptocurrency.
Proof of Work, Proof of Stake, Proof of Capacity:
Bitcoin uses Proof of Work, which is a mining protocol in which miners compete with CPU or GPU or ASIC computing power.
Nowadays, everyone uses ASICS which consumes massive amounts of energy and it will only get worse.
Proof of Stake:
A proposed solution to Proof of Work or bitcoin's energy consumption is Proof of Stake.
This mining or accounting protocol states that the miner who has the most coin in their wallet is the one who is most likely to win the block. As an illustration, if there are 100 blocks in existence and you have 50 coins while the other miner has 5 coins, you will have 50/100 = 50% chance of winning the block whereas the other miner has 5/100 = 5% to win the block.
Proof of Stake does solve the energy consumption problem of bitcoin but it adds a new problem.
The wealthy gets wealthier and the poor will stay poor.
Proof of Capacity:
This is best mining protocol to solve both bitcoin’s energy consumption problem and to prevent the wealthy from getting wealthier. As in, even the poor man has a chance to get rich, is the Proof of Capacity protocol.
Currently, only one coin in existence, which is Burstcoin uses this mining or accounting protocol.
Burstcoin uses hard drives to mine instead of CPU, GPU or ASICS. This is key because hard drives consume 4 watt of electricity whereas ASICS (bitcoin) consumes 1400 watt of electricity. That is a 350 times reduction in energy consumption.
It also solves the “wealthy getting richer” problem of proof of stake because if you want more burstcoin, you can just add more hard drives and compete in the open market in terms of mining.
In Proof of Stake, even if you have the most feverish intention of getting more coins in terms of mining, you have no way of getting more coins if the miner does not sell their coins to you.
So in my opinion, Burstcoin is the way to go. What do you guys/girls think?
