Bitcoin at Risk with EU's New Energy Labeling Plan
Bitcoin mining, which has received criticism for its excessive Energy usage, may be subject to a new Energy labeling system in the European Union. Bloomberg states the EU will work on a grading measure to promote environmentally-friendly crypto currency mining practices. Bitcoin uses “proof of work” to add to the blockchain, a process that requires a lot of Energy to run. PoW requires many separate computers to come to a consensus before new information can be added to the ledger. This draws a lot of Energy because computers must solve complex problems to earn the chance to edit the blockchain. The more the blockchain grows, the more powerful the computers needed to add to it must become. “Proof of stake,” however, requires much less power. With this system, there is no competition to write a new block. Block creators instead use their current crypto holdings and are selected by the algorithm to add new blocks. With this method, much less energy is dra...