Cryptocurrencies and Excessive Energy Use? The Surprising and Unsustainable Environmental and Climate Impacts of Bitcoin Mining: The Rise (and potential fall) of Cryptocurrencies and the Potential of Blockchain Technology

Cryptocurrencies and Excessive Energy Use? The Surprising and Unsustainable Environmental and Climate Impacts of Bitcoin Mining: The Rise (and potential fall) of Cryptocurrencies and the Potential of Blockchain Technology

Cryptocurrency, digital currency, cyber currency, virtual currency, cryptocoins – these all refer to a form of currency, or rather, a payment system, controlled and valued by computer algorithms that provide excellent mathematical security, potentially unparalleled speed of transactions, and could ease the role of banks and bank fees. The total global market cap of cryptocurrencies is now over $500 billion with the recent price jumps. The recent rise in value has precipitated quite a deluge of media about cryptocurrencies. Scientific American has called it the future of money.

“Bitcoin is a mathematically protected digital currency that is maintained by a network of peers. Digital signatures authorize individual transactions, ownership is passed via transaction chains, and the ordering at those transactions is protected in the block chain. By requiring difficult math problems to be solved by each block, would-be attackers are pitted against the entire rest of the network in a computational race they are unlikely to win.”

Mining refers to how the cryptocurrency ledger is arrived at. Some have referred to these mining operations as “cryptoeconomic networks.” Computing power through cryptography basically records and verifies the ledger through consensus agreement, or consensus protocol, on the ordering of transactions through what is called a ‘blockchain.’

Cryptocurrencies and Illegal Activities

Some say this is the future of currency and can’t be stopped. Others like me are quite doubtful. In some ways cryptocurrencies are superior to traditional ones: inflation cannot occur and the need for third parties to record and verify is circumvented. However, there are several issues with these cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Etherium (Ether). These currencies are unregulated and “unbacked.” They cannot currently be exchanged with other forms of currency. Transaction fees can be high. Companies that accept cryptocurrencies may be slow in updating their value so that one may pay significantly more in the case of rising value as now or lower during falling value. They have been cited as havens for tax evasion and other illegal activity. Just recently it was just reported that a Long Island woman laundered $85,000 to ISIS through Bitcoin. Russian pipeline operator Transneft just reported that its computers were illegally being used to mine cryptocurrencies and warned of them being used to fund terrorism. Oil wells in China have been outfitted with mining machines to effectively siphon energy from the coal-based power grid by posing as part of the oil pumping equipment. North Korea is suspected in hacking Bitcoin exchanges and collecting bitcoins as ransom payment in ransomware attacks. There is even a cryptocurrency mining trojan malware that can damage the batteries of Android phones. Cryptocurrencies are becoming the preferred way to buy on the black market due to the anonymity of transactions without third party verification. It has been implicated in darkweb weapons dealing. At least one piracy site on the web is through malware “borrowing” visitors’ computers to mine cryptocurrency. This has come to be termed "cryptojacking." While the transactions themselves are very secure the exchanges where cryptocurrencies are traded are not and have been targeted successfully by hackers. This is being addressed by new models such as AirSwap involving true ‘peer-to-peer’ transactions. However, it is an extreme problem with the Reuters article referenced below noting that:

"More than 980,000 bitcoins have been stolen from exchanges, which would be worth more than $15 billion at current exchange rates. Few have been recovered, leaving some investors without any compensation."

Questions of regulation of both cryptocurrencies and mining are coming up all over. Many think that could ruin the benefits of blockchain tech but frankly something will have to be done about the mining especially as interest continues to grow and the algorithms become more complex and power-consuming. Mining is also very accessible:

“Everyone who can afford to spend a few bucks on a dedicated CPU, and pay for electricity to maintain a blockchain, can mine digital coins.”

Speculation Markets are High-Risk High-Return Dens of Volatility

How these currencies are valuated can only be termed speculative. Of course, speculation is by nature risky. One of the reference articles below has a note:

“[Ed note: Investing in cryptocoins or tokens is highly speculative and the market is largely unregulated. Anyone considering it should be prepared to lose their entire investment]”

Outgoing Fed chair Janet Yellen recently weighed in:

“Bitcoin at this time plays a very small role in the payment system. It is not a stable source of value and does not constitute legal tender. It is a highly speculative asset.”

She noted that the Fed is always on the lookout for interactions with those cryptocurrency participants that may be laundering money through them. In response to a question about some global central banks possibly exploring their own cryptocurrencies she notes that the Federal Reserve has no such plans, stating “limited benefits” and “substantial concerns.” Speculation is often the source of bubbles. Cryptocurrencies just entered futures markets which is one reason for their rise. In a recent survey, 80% of Wall Street economists and strategists see Bitcoin as a bubble and 66% do not think it even qualifies as a currency under most definitions. Although many think it is the wave of the future, others say it will implode. Bill Gates and Richard Branson have seemed to praise it but real-life “Wolf of Wall Street” speculator Jordan Belfort calls it a “huge scam” and likens it to the Dutch “tulip-mania” in the 1500’s which began to implode shortly after futures trading began. Volatility in cryptocurrencies has been demonstrated, with one assessment at 6 times the volatility of the S & P 500 and 5 times the volatility of gold. Warren Buffet explains why it is not a currency, that it is actually based on the value of the dollar, and why he thinks it won’t last. Buffet also invokes tulip-mania. Bill Gates notes the lack of a need for a traditional third party for transactions and the potential of bitcoin technology, likely referring to blockchain technology. Elon Musk, who said he does not own any Bitcoin, thinks it will be used quite a bit for illegal transactions as well as legal ones. Richard Branson notes that prediction of volatile markets is often a means to profit.

As in any financial market successful prediction is profitable. Futures markets and other short-term trading promote volatility and sometimes can be manipulated. Cryptocurrencies have come to be seen as high risk/high return investments due to the volatility. A recent trend is Bitcoin IRAs that now also utilize other cryptocurrencies. A younger person’s retirement account typically is more weighted to growth funds that are high risk/high return.  

The ledger is provided by what are called bitcoin miners and is verified globally by all bitcoin owners. It is a ‘distributed ledger’ that can be “witnessed” by all participants. This can help with auditing. Computing power becomes the way transactions are verified and ordered, balances are determined, and provides security. Bitcoin owners have a public key and a private key. If one were to lose one’s “private key,” say through a hard drive failure one might lose access to one’s money. Ordering transactions on the network is done through what is called “blockchain” technology. This is done mathematically through what is called a “cryptographic hash.” Each “block” in the “chain” needs to be solved to determine the order of transactions and this results in a “hash output,” or transaction fingerprint. Mining refers to solving blocks. Doing this mathematically uses energy, a lot of energy. Thus, mathematical algorithms (ever-increasing in complexity) are in a sense what is “backing” the alleged currency and behind that the energy required to generate the algorithms is the primary backer. The blockchain can be seen as a strong encryption technology that eliminates the need for third parties to process transactions. The energy-sucking algorithms back the encryption technology. Traditionally the third party is also the party that might provide a way to retrieve one’s password if forgotten. This is an issue now apparently with many who made a windfall and can’t access it. There is even a password recovery service that uses high-powered computers and algorithms to retrieve passwords for a 20% cut of the value.

Cryptocurrencies from Different Perspectives

From an ‘ease-of-transaction’ perspective digital currencies are potentially great. Not needing centralized banks with employees and buildings can save resources but it can also contribute toward less job availability. Consumers can potentially bypass fees and waiting. However, presently cryptocurrency transaction can be quite inconvenient due to transaction fees, waiting times, and synchronizing updated values. In fact, Bitcoin fees have been rising which makes them entirely impractical for small purchases which ironically was an original selling point. Fees did decrease for a while. In early 2017 fees were usually less than a dollar per transaction and often less than ten cents per transaction. Now the avg. bitcoin transaction fee is around $28. This is due to its popularity and the failure to keep up with it. Intermediary companies like BitPay insulate companies that opt to accept Bitcoin from the volatility of the currency. However, with high transaction fees BitPay has also raised their fees. Another issue is congestion. Paying with Bitcoin can take hours. Users can pay a higher fee to pay faster. Video game streaming service Steam just announced they would no longer accept Bitcoin due to the transaction fees. So we see that ease-of-transaction is not a current feature.

From a market portfolio perspective cryptocurrencies are going more mainstream with Goldman Sachs just announcing they will set up a cryptocurrency trading desk in response to client interest. With cryptocurrency IRAs and inclusion in hedge funds these volatile and power-gobbling markets are growing. The lure of high growth is strong.

In a cosmic sense participants are consuming massive amounts of energy to make digital financial transactions safe from hackers while traders and hedge fund managers play a volatile speculative market. It’s a bit ironic that records of transaction, once kept on clay tablets in cuneiform writing in greater Mesopotamia can now be kept on the computers of every participant but at an energy cost that should be seen as unacceptable or at least unnecessary. The energy is providing security of records, from hackers.

From an energy consumption perspective cryptocurrencies are an outright failure and add much to endanger environment and climate. In order for them to survive this issue needs to be addressed as soon as possible. It is unsustainable, outrageous, and excessive.

Energy Consumption of Cryptocurrency Mining

According to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index the current rate of annual energy use for Bitcoin mining is 36.3 TWh and with more participation and more difficult algorithms to solve it is only set to grow. This is more energy use than some entire countries. Electricity consumed per transaction is now at a whopping 273 KWh, enough to power a typical house in the U.S. for a week or two!

The culprit is a power-hungry kind of algorithm that basically” crunches numbers.” Apparently, the current ‘consensus algorithm’ is Proof-of-Work which is very power hungry. Alternative algorithms like Proof-of-Stake consume negligible power in comparison but have yet to be proven. Another possible algorithm that is much less energy intensive is called Proof-of-Time-and-Storage. Utilizing this model has been called cryptocurrency “farming” rather than mining. However, it has yet to be launched and those who plan to launch it for their own cryptocurrency say there are still kinks to work out. Also, it is unclear how much energy it will save over current mining. Ethereum plans to offer a Proof-of-Stake model in 2018. The philosophy of Proof-of-Work has been summarized as “security comes form burning energy” since it is the most power-consumptive solution that leads to blockchain consensus. The philosophy of Proof-of-Stake has been summarized as “security comes from putting up economic value-at-loss.” Here any maliciousness is penalized so threat of penalty discourages it. So P-O-W is motivated by reward while P-O-S is motivated by punishment. In this case punishment is cheaper in energy expenditure than reward. Ethereum founder John Lilic notes that “mass adoption of Bitcoin across US households will result in very large increases of electricity use relative to existing financial systems.”

The Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index provides a graph (shown below) indicating that another financial payment service, credit card company VISA, provides its service for over 50 times less energy use. VISA by itself processes 800 times more transactions than Bitcoin. By one estimate a Bitcoin transaction uses 3000 times more energy than a VISA transaction. (VISA - households 50,000 – households refers to energy required to run that many households)

The Index calculates energy use as a probable percentage of miner income rather than Watts consumed per Gigahash/sec since other assumptions will vary considerably and likely underestimate energy use. As the length of the blockchain increases so too does the power usage. As cryptocurrencies rise in value the miners add more power to their operations. It is not only cryptocurrencies but all automation and IOT functions increase energy use. However, the cryptography of the cryptocurrencies takes it to new levels. Digital technologies utilized in power regulation such as frequency response, grid balancing, quick-startup of peaker plants, and software-based industrial automation, etc. can reduce overall power use by digitally cutting waste but where do we draw the line and declare excessive power use by certain digital technologies as “frivolous”?

It is not only the computing power that burns energy but the cooling requirements of the machines. The same is true of power-hungry data centers. Current mining machines trade efficiency for reliability: the more efficient machines are less reliable and vice versa. At 5000 BTU per hour of waste heat per machine this makes each comparable in consumption to a portable electric heater. That accounts for about 80% of total power usage for one operation (Bitmain, mentioned in paragraph below). For the same mining operation, the cooling costs through the use of fans and evaporative cooling calculates to the 20% of the total power consumed. However, cooling could approach 30% of consumption if they were running full capacity since machines are throttled back if they get too hot, especially during hot summer days.

While some mines brag that they run on renewable energy many more, especially in China, run essentially on coal from nearby coal plants. One of the world’s largest, Bitmain Technologies, is in China’s Inner Mongolia. Their 8 buildings, 25,000 mining machines and 50 employees spend $39,000 per day to consume 40MW per hour to mine. Their energy costs are discounted by the government in exchange for taxation on their profits. Running on coal the carbon footprint of this mine was calculated to be 24-40 tons of CO2 per hour, roughly equivalent to a Boeing 747-400 in hourly carbon footprint. It would calculate to 2-3 kg CO2 per transaction and 8-13 tons CO2 per coin mined. It is interesting to note that of the 140+ references cited in the Wikipedia entry on ‘blockchain,’ none refers directly to energy use.

While one may argue that other energy intensive digital activities like the cloud, mass sharing of video and audio content, and streaming are also dubious it is clear that those activities have social and artistic functions that humans broadly agree are valuable. Nobel prize winner in economics Joseph Stiglitz notes that Bitcoin "creates no value for society and only works by getting around the role of the government in controlling currency and as such should be outlawed." Stiglitz did note, however, that he would like to see a shift away from paper currency towards digital currency, just not the unregulated types of cryptocurrencies that have enmerged. 

Blockchain Technology and Its Potential

According to the World Economic Forum:

“Like the Internet, blockchain is an open, global infrastructure upon which other technologies and applications can be built. And like the Internet, it allows people to bypass traditional intermediaries in their dealings with each other, thereby lowering or even eliminating transaction costs”

Many people are looking at blockchain technology in other applications to reduce corruption but with far less energy use (typically in much smaller networks) than the cryptography math used to secure Bitcoin etal. It is automated and decentralized, or distributed. The Long Island Ice Tea Corporation recently changed its name to “Long Blockchain” and its stock price tripled reminiscent of adding “.com” to a company’s name in the 1990’s before the dotcom bubble burst. The company notes that: “Emerging blockchain technologies are creating a fundamental paradigm shift across the global marketplace.” What makes blockchain tech attractive is “its high level of security, lack of a centralized authority, and low barrier to entry.” The success of blockchain technology is dependent on making it greener by finding much less power consumptive algorithms because at present it is unsustainable and frankly outrageous.

Blockchain technology has many other potential uses. The following definition for blockchain is given in Wikipedia:

“A blockchain,[1][2][3] originally block chain,[4][5] is a continuously growing list of records, called blocks, which are linked and secured using cryptography.[1][6] Each block typically contains a hash pointer as a link to a previous block,[6] a timestamp and transaction data.[7] By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data. The Harvard Business Review describes it as "an open, distributed ledger that can record transactions between two parties efficiently and in a verifiable and permanent way."[8] For use as a distributed ledger, a blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. Once recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without the alteration of all subsequent blocks, which requires collusion of the network majority.”

Blockchain technology is “potentially suitable for the recording of events, medical records,[10][11] and other records management activities, such as identity management,[12][13][14] transaction processing, documenting provenance, food traceability[15] or voting.[16]”

“The first blockchain was conceptualized in 2008 by an anonymous person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto and implemented in 2009 as a core component of bitcoin where it serves as the public ledger for all transactions.”

The World Food Program is successfully using blockchain tech to provide secured cash advances to people in need of food. The secure system allows them to purchase food of their choice from local sources. This makes food distribution more secure, keeps better records, and makes the distribution process more efficient. It has the potential to simplify, speed up, and better manage life-saving food and cash assistance to communities facing hunger or for victims of natural disasters. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aims to utilize blockchain tech in food and cash distribution to some of the 2 billion people in the world who lack a bank account. Most of those people now have cell phones and can benefit from a digital payment system which saves time and eliminates the problems with physical cash. This can speed up humanitarian response and make it more efficient and less costly to implement and manage. 

Blockchain tech is being used to verify land titles in places where land has been taken due to corruption. Several countries are implementing land registry and entitlement secured through blockchain. Accounting firms are testing and adopting blockchain distributed ledgers. So-called smart contracts such as those that might instantaneously pay musicians when their songs are played on music services are utilizing blockchain. Banks, music distribution services, and payment services like Visa and Mastercard are also testing blockchain.

Blockchain tech has potential for use in the so-called ‘sharing economy’ which itself is based on what has been called the ‘information economy’ or the digital economy. In terms of addressing global financial inequality blockchain tech has potential implications through giving access to the digital economy to the poor, reducing corruption in aid distribution, and efficiently and quickly helping the needy. Blockchain tech itself emerged from the collaborative open-source movement.

“A World Economic Forum report from September 2015 predicted that by 2025 ten percent of global GDP would be stored on blockchains technology.”

Indigo Advisory Group and University of Cambridge identified the industry segments where distributed ledger technology (DLT) (ie. blockchain) is being developed, often by venture-capital funded start-ups and pilots:

Blockchain Tech Potential for Distributed Energy Resources, Energy Trading, Utilities, and Other Energy Apps

Blockchain tech is also being explored in distributed energy systems (and this may be a future post) particularly with microgrids. It can be used in charging and sharing EVs as a recording ledger. It could also be used to throttle back smart IOT home appliance in response to the instantaneous energy needs of the local power grid.

“Samsung and IBM in January [2016] released a platform called ADEPT for controlling connected devices based on the blockchain concept. The platform uses software that Ethereum developed that authenticates smart contracts. The contracts could be microtransactions between appliances inside a home as they react autonomously and instantaneously to changing grid conditions.”

Navigant Research reports (in 3Q 2016) that:

“While many use cases have been proposed for the energy industry, the one gaining the most traction at present is peer-to-peer (P2P) power trading, where owners of small-scale generation can sell excess generation direct to other consumers. Today, centralized control of distributed energy resources (DER) restricts to whom and when DER owners can sell their energy back to the grid. A blockchain-enabled P2P model allows much greater flexibility and could be a powerful enabler for truly customer-centric transactive energy. The earliest adopters of blockchain will likely not be utilities, but other stakeholders. Currently, those leading the research into blockchain are the owners of DER and startups seeking to sell directly to them.”

Pre-programmed ‘smart contracts’ can automatically trigger transactions, cutting out any third party ‘middleman.’ Through pre-programming, meters can automatically communicate with one another, trade energy, and record those transactions directly to buyers’ and sellers’ balance sheets.

Unfortunately, we know that power grids have been frequent targets of hackers so it is unclear whether a vastly growing system of power trading DER generators would require an increasingly energy-consuming cryptography scheme in order to keep systems secure. There has been much talk of the vulnerability of IOT devices to hackers. However, as ‘permissioned blockchains’ only accessible to registered users they are less likely to be than say Bitcoin, as a public, anonymous, and permissionless blockchain.

Blockchain tech could eliminate the need for physical meter-reading and also lead to more accurate billing. According to the Bitcoin Magazine and Nasdaq.com article referenced below the implications of blockchain-based P-2-P trading:

“The broader implications of this would include increased industry competition leading to lower prices, streamlined energy distribution, reduced energy waste and better relationships between utility companies and their customers.”

According to the Harvard Business Review article referenced below:

“Finally, blockchain may make existing electric industry processes more efficient by serving as the backbone for utilities’ “smart grid” management systems that automatically diagnose network emergencies and problems and reconfigure in reaction to them. Austrian startup Grid Singularity is using blockchain technology to develop a decentralized energy exchange platform that can host applications ranging from validating electricity trades to monitoring grid equipment, in part because such a platform has the potential to prolong the life of equipment, improving both large and small power-generation system operators’ earnings.”

The overall potential of blockchain tech to make energy trading more efficient and to eliminate the need for over-redundancy and idling peaking supply resources likely will far outweigh the energy used up in cryptography so the potential is quite real here. Still it is unclear what level of energy use would be required to provide these energy grid functions, only that permissioned private networks not attached to a currency will require less energy. Size of the network and amount of data also matters in energy consumption. The blockchain-based DER pilot in Brooklyn, New York begun in 2016 utilizes the Ethereum platform so perhaps they too will migrate to the less energy-consumptive Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm as Ethereum plans to do. 

“Like the Internet, blockchain is an open, global infrastructure upon which other technologies and applications can be built. And like the Internet, it allows people to bypass traditional intermediaries in their dealings with each other, thereby lowering or even eliminating transaction costs”

The following graphic from Indigo Advisory Group indicates how emerging blockchain applications are being targeted in the energy and utilities sector, currently mostly through pilot projects:

They also note that the impact of blockchain tech on evolving utility business models is likely to be significant. They predict impacts will be both supportive and disruptive.

Another graphic from Indigo Advisory Group shows how the core blockchain technology is evolving in the energy and utilities sector:

They also note that:

“… the technology still needs time to mature and the core developer network estimates that this may be 2-5 years away, as such, we are in the midst of an experiment and right now blockchain technology is too slow to handle real-time market needs.”

In addition, they note that energy apps require much faster transaction confirmation times than financial apps and that the blockchains here need to be private and permissioned blockchains without any digital currency attached as in Bitcoin. Does this reduce the need for energy-consuming cryptograpy? Yes, but by how much is still unclear. They also say that the emerging technologies of AI, distributed ledgers (blockchain), and robotics will mature in the next decade with increased proliferation of DERs, increased deployment of sensors and data collection tools across the grid, and increased demand-side energy management (DSM). They call this the 4^th Industrial Revolution (4IR). They also suggest that emerging carbon markets will employ blockchain technology. One issue that is emerging is ‘fragmentation’ which refers to the proliferation of competing protocol frameworks (often software platforms) along with small-scale ‘testing’ networks in the myriad of pilot projects. In order to make the processes more efficient across industries there would need to be standards adopted for seamless operation so more universal platforms and frameworks would need to be agreed upon. AI innovations in the energy and utilities sector include renewables management (forecasting, equipment maintenance, efficiency, and storage), demand management (efficiency, management systems, demand response management, demand response game theory), and infrastructure management (digital asset management, equipment operation and maintenance, and generation management).

Blockchain tech in combination with AI and robotics may have myriad applications across the energy sector including in oil and gas (from zdnet.com article referenced below):

"Blockchain technology can be deployed across the entire oil and gas supply chain, from the wellhead all the way to the consumer," said Daniel Nossa, an attorney with the law firm Steptoe and Johnson, who has closely followed the development of blockchain technology.”

"When combined with IoT [Internet of Things], the technology can be used to securely track and monitor the extraction and transportation of hydrocarbons," Nossa said. "Smart contracts embedded in the blockchain platform together with emerging AI [artificial intelligence] technology can automate many of the transactions that occur, such as the sale and physical transfer of the commodity from producers to marketers to refiners and on to consumers."

References:

Mining Bitcoin Costs More Energy Than What 159 Countries Consume in a Year – by Dom Galeon, in Futurism, Nov. 27, 2017

Fed Chief Yellen Says Bitcoin is a ‘Highly Speculative Asset’ – by John Melloy, in CNBC, Dec. 13, 2017

Ether Climbs Past $750, Up More Than 9,000% This Year – by Charles Bovaird, in Forbes, Dec. 14, 2017

The Biggest Bitcoin Mining Farm in Russia – posted on youtube, published on Aug. 16, 2017

Inside of a Huge Bitcoin Mining Farm – techmagnet, published on youtube, Nov. 11, 2017

Bitcoin Mining Explained – published on youtube, Dec. 5, 2016

How Bitcoin Works in Five Minutes – by CuriousInventor, published on youtube, April 13, 2014

How Bitcoin Works Under the Hood – by CuriousInventor, published on youtube, July 14, 2013

Transneft Says Its Computers Were Used for Mining Cryptocurrency – in Reuters, Dec. 15, 2017

Long Island Woman Laundered Money to ISIS through Bitcoin, Prosecutors Say, in Fox News, Dec. 15, 2017

CNBC Fed Survey: 80% of Wall Street Economists, Strategists Believe Bitcoin is a Bubble: Survey – CNBC, Dec. 12, 2017

Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index – in Digiconomist, current through Dec. 15, 2017

Jordan Belfort: Real-life ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Says Bitcoin is a ‘Huge Scam’ – by Tom Barnes, in Independent U.K., Dec. 15, 2017

Bitcoin and Ethereum Can Make You Millionaire Fast – Coinomia 2017, posted on youtube, Feb. 5, 2017

Bitcoin: What Bill Gates, Buffett, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson Has to Say About Bitcoin? – posted on youtube, June 28, 2017

A Bitcoin Hedge Fund’s Return: 25,004 Percent (That Wasn’t a Typo) – by Nathaniel Popper, in New York Times, Dec. 19, 2017

How the Blockchain Revolution Will Decentralize Power and End Corruption – by Brian Behlendorf, in Big Think (video), Dec. 19, 2017

North Korea Said to Be Suspect in Hack of Seoul Bitcoin Exchange – in Bloomberg, Dec. 21, 2017

Five Myths About the Blockchain Revolution – by Don Tapscott, in HuffPost, May 23, 2016

Good News! You Are a Bitcoin Millionaire. Bad News. You Forgot Your Password – in Wall Street Journal, Dec. 21, 2017

Ice Tea Company Rebrands as “Long Blockchain” and Stock Price Triples – by Timothy B. Lee, in Ars Technica, Dec.21, 2017

Goldman Sachs to Set Up Cryptocurrency Trading Desk: Bloomberg, in Reuters, Dec. 21, 2017

The Bitcoin and Blockchain: Energy Hogs – by Fabrice Flipo and Michel Berne, in The Conversation, May 16, 2017

This Illegal Piracy Site is “Borrowing” Visitors Computers to Mine Cryptocurrency – by Dom Galeon, in Futurism, Sept. 17, 2017

Blockchain is Radically Transforming Society’s Oldest Institutions – by Kristin Houser, in Futurism, Sept. 27, 2017

A Deep Dive in a Real-World Bitcoin Mine – in Digiconomist, Oct. 25, 2017

Cryptocurrency “Farming” Could Make Blockchain More Eco-Friendly – by Dom Galeon, in Futurist, Nov. 9, 2017

Proof of Stake Design Philosophy – by Vitalik Buterin, in Medium.com, Dec. 30, 2016

How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Use? A Lot It Turns Out – by Zohair, in securitygladiators.com, March 15, 2017

Bitcoin Network is Changing the World Through Skyrocketing Fees – by Zohair, in securitygladiators.com, Dec. 20, 2017

A Single Bitcoin Transaction Takes Thousands of Times More Energy Than a Credit Card Swipe – by Christopher Malmo, in Vice (Motherboard), March 7, 2017

Proof of Work Flaws: Ethereum Lays Out Proof of Stake Philosophy – by Farzana Begum, in BTCManager.com, Jan. 7, 2017

Bitcoin and Energy Consumption: An Unsustainable Protocol That Must Evolve – by John Lilic, in LinkedIn.com, Jan. 1, 2017

What is ‘Blockchain’ and How is It Connected to Fighting Hunger? – United Nations World Food Program, March 6, 2017, updated November 2017

The Cryptocurrency Mining Trojan that Can Hurt Your Wallet – and Your Phone’s Battery – in zdnet.com

Enabling Digital Financial Services in Humanitarian Response: Four Priorities for Improving Payments – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2017

Blockchain and Value Systems in the Sharing Economy: The Illustrative Case of Backfeed – by Alex Pazaitis, Primavera De Filippi, and Vasilis Kostakus, in Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics No. 73 (EU), January 2017

How the Blockchain Will Create a Distributed Grid – in CCN.com, Feb. 29, 2016

Blockchain-Enabled Distributed Energy Trading – by Navigant Research, 3Q 2016

How Blockchain Tech Will Create a Distributed Future for the Energy Sector –by Michael Scott, in Bitcoin Magazine and Nasdaq.com, March 27, 2017

How Utilities are Using Blockchain to Modernize the Grid – by James Basden and Michael Cottrell, in Harvard Business Review, March 27, 2017

Blockchain in Energy and Utilities: Use Cases/Vendor Activity/Market Analysis – by Indigo Advisory Group, 2017

Benchmarking Blockchain in Energy and Utilities – A Bellwether for 2018 – by David Groarke, Indigo Advisory Group, Oct. 14, 2017

Artificial Intelligence in Energy and Utilities [Infographic] – by David Groarke, Indigo Advisory Group, April 11, 2017

Blockchain Shows Promise for Energy Companies: Potential Benefits Include Security, Transparency, Efficiency, and Speed – by Bob Violino, in zdnet.com, Dec. 20, 2017

Hackers Steal $64 Million from Cryptocurrency Firm NiceHash - in Reuters, Dec. 29, 2017

Why This Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Thinks Bitcoin Should Be "Outlawed" - by Paul Ratner, in Big Think, Nov. 30, 2017