up to date bitcoin bisector set for tonightThe network underlying the world’s largest cryptocurrency is set to undergo its biggest transformation in years.
Many predictions have been made about what the changes will look like. Affects BTC price And the wider it is cryptocurrency market. But what effect will halving have on Bitcoin? controversial, often controversialand undeniably huge Does it affect the environment?
The answer is complicated.
Bitcoin’s recent halving caused a 50% reduction in BTC mining rewards. yet again When creating new BTC, it shifts the focus to who can afford to supply massive amounts of power and who cannot. In the old days, Bitcoin miners could earn 50 BTC per block. Currently they are earning 6.25 BTC. In a few hours the amount will drop to 3.125 BTC.
As BTC mining rewards become lower and lower, independent miners be pushed out of business—Apart from the large institutional players that invested in it. huge millions of dollars State-of-the-art technology designed to maximize the efficiency of mining operations.
“Miners will have to become more efficient to remain profitable,” said Kyle Schneps, vice president of public policy at Foundry, a cryptocurrency mining and staking company. decryption. “This means not only more efficient machines, but also the cheapest energy, which tends to be renewable energy in remote locations.”
Large corporations are much better equipped than independent miners to make the leap to both energy-efficient machinery and hard-to-reach renewable energy sources. Halving will make such companies even more dominant, and BTC mining will therefore overwhelmingly be a product of highly efficient and renewable energy sources.
Isaac Holyoak, Chief Communications Officer $3.6 billion Bitcoin mining giant CleanSpark said it expects Bitcoin’s global hash rate to fall by up to 15% after the halving.
Bitcoin’s hash rate is a measure of the amount of computing power used on the network at any given time. The number increases as more miners compete to win valuable BTC rewards. A 15% reduction in this ratio would lead to a significant reduction in energy use, says Holyoak.
“What’s important about that is that this (disappearing) 15% consumes disproportionately more energy than the remaining 85%,” he said. decryption. “Machines that are still operating will continue to monetize stranded energy, balance the grid, and do so in a more efficient manner.”
So, at least in the short term, the halving could be good news for those concerned about the sustainability of Bitcoin mining’s environmental impact. But other industry experts say the improvements may be short-lived.
“The upcoming halving event will transform the Bitcoin mining process, notorious for its inherent inefficiency, into a more energy-efficient operation than ever before,” said Nishant Sharma, founder of a Bitcoin mining research firm. Bloxbridgesaid decryption. “Will this reduce energy consumption? “It’s probably temporary.”
Over time, Sharma believes that Bitcoin will increasingly mainstream and more used extensively The variety of purposes causes a surge in transactions on the network, which in turn increases the computing power required to run the network. He said it won’t take long for these increases to outpace the declines caused by this week’s halving.
Therefore, halving could be good news for Bitcoin’s immediate environmental outlook.
But that is very different from saying that the event will bring about the end of the world, or even the beginning of the end. heating debate About the still enormous energy consumption of cryptocurrency networks. It doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. Earlier this week Norway introduced a law This would effectively give national governments the power to halt cryptocurrency mining operations they deem environmentally harmful.
Editor: Andrew Hayward
