Gadgets
Why Does Bitcoin Mining Consume ‘Insane’ Energy?
“Energy usage trend over past few months is insane,” Musk tweeted on Thursday, sharing a chart from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), his latest missive in a salvo that’s caused Bitcoin’s price to drop.
Obtaining Bitcoin (price in India) is an energy intensive endeavour, and the chart showed the evolution of its power usage, rising constantly from 2016 and accelerating sharply in 2020 on an annualised basis to hit its current level of 149 terawatt-hours (TWh), an all-time high.
That’s compared to Google’s entire energy usage of 12.2TWh, and the approximately 200 TWh used by all data centres in the world except those that mine Bitcoin, according to George Kamiya, an analyst at the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“If Bitcoin was a country, it would use around the same amount of electricity a year to mine as Switzerland does in total,” Deutsche Bank analysts said in a note.
Indeed, the IEA predicts the situation could worsen: if miners used the most energy intensive equipment, their consumption could rise to 500TWh.
Citing its energy consumption particularly by miners who use coal, Musk on Wednesday said Tesla would no longer accept Bitcoin as a means of payment for its electric cars.
The announcement sent the cyrptocurrency’s value down 15 percent to a two-and-a-half month low, a reversal from late March, when Tesla announced it would accept the digital currency as payment after announcing a $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 10,930 crores) investment in Bitcoin.
Big reward
The promise of a juicy reward has fueled the rise in giant data centres dedicated to Bitcoin, which reached a $1 trillion (roughly Rs. 73,36,550 crores) market capitalisation earlier this year, before falling back.
The cryptocurrency is earned by participants in the network called “miners,” who solve deliberately complicated equations using brute force processing power under the so-called “proof of work” protocol.
“Proof of work” was one of the founding principles of the best-known cryptocurrency, created in 2008 by an anonymous person or group that wanted a decentralised digital currency.
The system is designed so that around every 10 minutes, the network awards some Bitcoin to those who have successfully cracked the puzzle.
But as the price of Bitcoin has risen, interest in obtaining it has followed, along with electricity consumption.
Last month, scientific journal Nature published a study saying that emissions from mining in China, which powers nearly 80 percent of the global cryptocurrency trade, could compromise the country’s climate goals.
That country relies on a particularly polluting type of coal, lignite, to power some of its mining.
Bloomberg predicts that it will take until 2060 before China can meet its cryptocurrency industry’s needs through renewable energy.
‘Wake-up call’
One way to reduce energy consumption would be to move away from the processor-intensive “proof of work” model, similar to changes being considered for the Ethereum (price in India) cryptocurrency.
But it’s hard to imagine Bitcoin making such a change, which could make its network less secure and decentralised.
“Tesla’s move might serve as a wake-up call to businesses and consumers using Bitcoin, who hadn’t hitherto considered its carbon footprint,” said Laith Khalaf, a financial analyst at AJ Bell.
“This highlights that the long-term adoption of cryptocurrencies by businesses, consumers and investors is still highly uncertain.”
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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