BT Daily News: Bitcoin adoption on the rise in Africa; Offset Your BTC Mining Carbon Footprint and more
1. Bitcoin adoption on the rise in Africa: A discussion on the Lightning Network and mining technology
The first episode of the “Bit Talk” podcast discusses recent developments in the world of Bitcoin. Hosted by Akiba and James from CryptoSlate as well as Bitcoin pioneer Nick from Mercury Wallet, the podcast is a bite-sized, easy-to-consume bi-weekly overview of the Bitcoin network.
This episode starts with the adoption of Bitcoin in Africa, with more and more people using the lightning network. The lightning network is a second-layer payment protocol that operates on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, allowing for faster and cheaper transactions.
The hosts also discuss the state of Bitcoin mining, mentioning that some miners are struggling due to the bear market and the increasing difficulty of mining. The bear market refers to the decline in the price of Bitcoin over the last few years, which has made it more difficult for miners to turn a profit.
The podcast also includes a segment called “Bitcoin Weather” with James from CryptoSlate. In this segment, James provides a brief overview of the current state of the Bitcoin market, including recent price movements and key developments. This segment provides listeners with a quick and concise summary of the most important on-chain events in the Bitcoin world.
2. LANDING 2023: Offset Your BTC Mining Carbon Footprint
It’s no secret that crypto is changing the world, but it’s not all sunshine and proverbial rainbows. As of 2022, Bitcoin (BTC) mining is said to be responsible for 0.1% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.While this number might not seem very high, it’s equivalent to 50 tonnes of CO2. Bitcoin is made by using electricity that is partially generated by coal- and gas-fired power plants, two substances that emit harmful greenhouse gases when burned.
However, the solution is not to cease BTC mining operations entirely. Mining is invaluable in the process of verifying the legitimacy of Bitcoin transactions while keeping crypto users honest and preventing double spending. In fact, the entire integrity of Bitcoin depends on miners recording and validating transactions.
And that’s where PEGA Pool comes in, encouraging miners to keep doing what they do best – in a more sustainable and eco-friendly way.
By making the shift to PEGA Pool, BTC miners can mine with confidence knowing that they are proactively reducing their BTC mining carbon footprint every single day. PEGA Pool even has a dedicated separate website where users can find updates on how many trees have been planted so far on their mission to offset BTC mining CO2.
3. Bitcoin Miners Have Hope Again and Have PEGA Pool to Thank
PEGA Pool’s goal is to offset the carbon emissions released by BTC miners in the Bitcoin industry. How? By planting trees, which they’ll be achieving by using a portion of the fees of members who aren’t yet mining using green energy. Reforestation is emerging as humankind’s most powerful weapon in the war against climate change.Global warming is primarily caused by greenhouse gas emissions, which the Bitcoin industry is notorious for contributing to. That’s because BTC mining relies on heavy computational power which burns fossil fuels and emits hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
By planting more trees, we can offset this damage, minimise the amount of CO2 in the air, and create more oxygen to boot. And while we’d need to plant hundreds of millions more trees to see a significant difference, PEGA Pool has already planted over 75,000 as we write this – and that’s before their official launch.
Ranked as the 13th largest BTC mining pool on the planet by BTC.com, PEGA Pool is already making waves in a sector they technically do not even exist in yet. Learn more about the world’s first ecological mining pool and to join the waiting list before PEGA Pool goes mainstream in 2023. Together, the savviest Bitcoin miners can lower their collective carbon footprint, keep making a living amidst the fluctuating BTC price, and give future generations a reason to (actually) be proud of us, their predecessors.
4. Did the Ethereum Merge Do Anything to Crypto Emissions?
The Ethereum network “achieved a tremendous reduction in electricity use; the big challenge is trying to determine whether this is also reflected from a global point of view,” de Vries said. Looking at the range of possibilities contained in these different scenarios, it’s clear that the Merge had a significant impact on the Ethereum network’s energy use either way. Even when going from the total best-case scenario before the Merge — assuming all the devices on the network were running as efficiently as possible — to the worst case after, the energy reduction is still 99.84%, the paper found. Meanwhile, going from the worst case to best case represents a more than 99.99% reduction. In real-world terms, that means that the Merge could possibly have reduced the Ethereum network’s power use by as much as the electrical demand of the entirety of Austria. (This best-case scenario, de Vries said, “seems unlikely,” but we simply can’t know for sure.)There are a couple important caveats to consider when thinking about this potential reduction and the maths involved. First off, it’s not possible to know what happens to all those energy-sucking machines after the Merge — just that they’re not connected to the Ethereum network any more. The fact that the network has shifted to a process that requires significantly fewer machines doesn’t mean that miners who have invested money in countless machines are simply going to throw them in the trash and end their energy use.
So what are these machines being used for? Ethereum has already split off into two different forms of Ethereum-based currencies, Ethereum Classic and Ethereum POW, which, while not as profitable as Ethereum to mine, are still proof-of-work based and could theoretically provide ways for miners to keep using their expensive equipment. Graphics cards previously used to mine Ethereum could also be used to mine smaller cryptocurrencies or be repurposed outside of crypto mining, for processes like gaming or cloud computing. While these uses represent significantly less energy use than running mining equipment 24/7, they would still impact the overall global emissions reductions of the Merge.
More importantly in terms of energy use, while Ethereum miners would not be able to use their devices to mine Bitcoin — some mining machines can only be used to mine Ethereum, while others couldn’t compete at a profitable level with Bitcoin — suddenly nuking a handful of machines from service frees up server space that can be taken up with other devices miners may have been keeping offline, meaning that more Bitcoin machines can get started on mining dirty crypto.
5. BlocksBridge Introduces TheMinerMag to Set Standards of Research for Bitcoin Mining
BlocksBridge Consulting, the consulting and advisory firm for institutions in the bitcoin mining industry, launched TheMinerMag, a data and research resource “for journalists, analysts, industry executives and anyone interested in coherent and decisive information on Nasdaq-listed bitcoin mining companies.”Additionally, BlocksBridge announced “the appointment of Wolfie Zhao as Partner and Head of Research.”
Wolfie brings “a wealth of experience to BlocksBridge: he has been involved in the bitcoin mining space since 2017.” Wolfie first started covering the industry as a reporter/Editor. Most recently he was a bitcoin mining analyst, where he “oversaw mining research and consulting for funds and investors interested in bitcoin mining.”
BlocksBridge has been “publishing parts of its research and analysis in the Miner Weekly newsletter and introduced a new metric called ‘Realized Hashrate,’ which utilizes the monthly disclosures of a public mining company to paint a clearer and more accurate picture of the company’s bitcoin production capacity in a month.” It aims “to publish more such metrics, with analysis, through TheMinerMag.”