Cryptocurrencies work and what resources they need. Inesem business school master in climate change more information the most common process to obtain cryptocurrencies is called “ mining ” and is based on the blockchain registry . Miners compete to record the last “block” of transactions. To do this they solve cryptographic puzzles and the first one is rewarded with new minted cryptocurrencies. It is known as proof of work (pow). As these puzzles are solved, the search for the next block becomes more complicated, so more resources will have to be devoted to its resolution.
Due to this, the technology has been evolving and, since 2012, a specific hardware is being used for it: application specific integrated circuits (asic). The more asics you have, the more chances you have to find the resolution that the coin e commerce photo editing provides you. Therefore, the mining process, which was originally done by individuals with normal computing devices, has now become strongly entrenched and computers are much more effective at solving these puzzles. Analogy with the physical world the term "mining" is an ideal analogy to explain the difficulty of obtaining cryptocurrencies. In this way, and if we associate it with marble extraction, we can see that, in a quarry, at the beginning, the extraction is "simple" and the material is accessed quickly.
As it is exploited, the efforts increase and access to marble becomes more complicated and expensive. In cryptocurrency mining, the more transactions there have been, the more complicated it will be to have a new one, so the resources invested must be greater and the energy consumption increases . And it is this high energy consumption that we are going to focus on, since it makes us think that it can be an important conditioning factor for the health of the environment. Energy consumption: the largest farms in the world high energy consumption is not a fault of cryptocurrencies, but a