The 'halving' sounds like a horror story and may well turn out to be one for Bitcoin
Monday, April 4, 2016 - 08:02
in Mathematics & Economics
Bitcoin relies on the participation of people and organisations to act as the "bankers" of the system. Called Bitcoin miners, they effectively record each transaction on a ledger called the Blockchain and in return, they are awarded with bitcoins. The process of mining is to do a series of calculations to discover a specific number, and the first one to do so gets the reward of 25 bitcoins (valued at approximately US $10,500). In order to increase their chances, Bitcoin miners have large numbers of computers with specialised hardware that consume significant amounts of electricity. The entire Bitcoin system has been estimated to use about 350 Megawatts of electricity which is the same demand as 280,000 US homes.