keyword: Bitcoin

could-a-‘crypto-climate-accord’-erase-cryptocurrencies’-carbon-footprint?

Could a ‘Crypto Climate Accord’ erase cryptocurrencies’ carbon footprint?

A newly announced “Crypto Climate Accord” aims to erase cryptocurrencies’ legacy of climate pollution. That’s a tall order considering the enormous amounts of energy that the most popular cryptocurrencies — bitcoin and Ethereum — consume. The loose goals laid out in the plan so far face potentially insurmountable challenges.

The “accord” is led by the private sector — not governments — and outlines a few preliminary objectives. It seeks to transition all blockchains to renewable energy by 2030 or sooner. It sets a 2040 target for the crypto industry to reach “net zero” emissions, which would involve reducing pollution and turning to strategies that might be able to suck the industry’s historical carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere.

Lastly and perhaps most realistically, it aims to develop an open-source accounting standard that can be used to consistently measure emissions generated by the crypto industry. They also want to develop software that can verify how much renewable energy a blockchain uses.

If achieved, those goals would solve a very real problem. Bitcoin alone has roughly the same carbon footprint annually as Hong Kong, while Ethereum’s annual carbon emissions rival Lithuania’s. Their climate pollution is growing even as scientists’ research warns that global emissions need to be cut almost in half this decade to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

The accord has support from some influential names in climate action and the crypto industry — including cryptocurrency company Ripple, blockchain technology conglomerate Consensys, billionaire climate crusader Tom Steyer, and the United Nations-appointed “climate champions.”

While tackling the environmental damage done by the crypto industry might be a worthy challenge, critics say the broad goals are unlikely to result in meaningful change.

“Some things just can’t be fixed,” says economist Alex de Vries.

Unfortunately for the Crypto Climate Accord, bitcoin is the biggest player in the game, and it’s likely to cause the accord the most trouble because of how much energy it uses. Bitcoin is purposely inefficient — which is a problem renewables can’t fix. It uses a model called “proof of work” to keep its ledgers secure. “Miners” who verify transactions to get new coins do so by using energy-guzzling machines to solve increasingly difficult puzzles. (Ethereum also uses proof of work but has said for years that it will eventually transition to another model.)

Those machines will continue to compete for renewable energy with arguably more essential needs, like keeping the power on in people’s homes. And if cryptocurrencies increase electricity demand beyond available renewable resources, utilities might turn to fossil fuels. That’s why cleaning up energy sources and increasing energy efficiency are two sides of the same coin when it comes to tackling climate change.

Regardless, the accord’s founders are optimistic about a greener future for bitcoin. “I’ve been in conversation with folks from the bitcoin ecosystem, it’s a pretty simple pitch,” says Jesse Morris, chief commercial officer of the nonprofit Energy Web Foundation, which is spearheading the initiative. “If we can make bitcoin green, it will be much easier and lower risk for other organizations to come in and buy more Bitcoin.”

Bitcoin still accounts for more than half of the entire cryptocurrency market capitalization. But it is facing competition from newer cryptocurrencies that have found ways to be greener. Other cryptocurrencies use different blockchain technology than bitcoin and consume very little energy in comparison as a result. For those cryptocurrencies, like Ripple’s XRP, running on renewables could be more feasible.

And while renewable energy costs have fallen dramatically, luring bitcoin miners to places with abundant renewable energy would likely require heavy subsidies to keep them from turning to cheaper, dirtier fuel sources, de Vries says. “Just the sound of that — It sounds really wrong,” he says. “Why would you want to subsidize an industry that uses energy just because it is set up to waste resources?”

The new crypto accord, however, is “not about coming together and asking for subsidy by any means,” says Morris. “We just want to get everybody together and start nailing the action here.” Many blockchains, like bitcoin, were designed to be a decentralized system with no top-down oversight. So getting everyone on board, even within a single blockchain, will be a huge task.

The accord’s objectives are supposed to be fleshed out and finalized by the time a big United Nations climate conference rolls around in November. But Morris admits that the initial plans chase big aspirations rather than fine details. “So many of these other decarbonization efforts are very much thinking their way into acting,” Morris says. “Whereas in Crypto, because it’s kind of the Wild West, it’s about acting our way into new thinking.”

microsoft-is-now-submerging-servers-into-liquid-baths

Microsoft is now submerging servers into liquid baths

Microsoft is starting to submerge its servers in liquid to improve their performance and energy efficiency. A rack of servers is now being used for production loads in what looks like a liquid bath. This immersion process has existed in the industry for a few years now, but Microsoft claims it’s “the first cloud provider that is running two-phase immersion cooling in a production environment.”

The cooling works by completely submerging server racks in a specially designed non-conductive fluid. The fluorocarbon-based liquid works by removing heat as it directly hits components and the fluid reaches a lower boiling point (122 degrees Fahrenheit or 50 degrees Celsius) to condense and fall back into the bath as a raining liquid. This creates a closed-loop cooling system, reducing costs as no energy is needed to move the liquid around the tank, and no chiller is needed for the condenser either.

Boiling liquid surrounds servers at a Microsoft data center.
Image: Microsoft

“It’s essentially a bath tub,” explains Christian Belady, vice president of Microsoft’s data center advanced development group, in an interview with The Verge. “The rack will lie down inside that bath tub, and what you’ll see is boiling just like you’d see boiling in your pot. The boiling in your pot is at 100 degrees Celsius, and in this case it’s at 50 degrees Celsius.”

This type of liquid cooling has been used by cryptominers in recent years to mine for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This method inspired Microsoft to trial its use over the last few years, using it to test against spikes of cloud demand and intensive workloads for applications like machine learning.

Most data centers are air cooled right now, using outside air and cooling it by dropping it to temperatures below 35 degrees Celsius using evaporation. This is known as swamp cooling, but it uses a lot of water in the process. This new liquid bath technique is designed to reduce water usage. “It potentially will eliminate the need for water consumption in data centers, so that’s a really important thing for us,” says Belady. “It’s really all about driving less and lower impact for wherever we land.”

Microsoft is hoping to see less hardware failures.
Image: Microsoft

This tub of servers also allows Microsoft to more tightly pack hardware together, which should reduce the amount of space needed in the long term compared to traditional air cooling. Microsoft is trialing this initially with a small internal production workload, with plans to use it more broadly in the future. “It’s in a small data center, and we’re looking at one rack’s worth,” says Belady. “We have a whole phased approach, and our next phase is pretty soon with multiple racks.”

Microsoft is going to be mainly studying the reliability implications of this new cooling and what types of burst workloads it could even help with for cloud and AI demand. “We expect much better reliability. Our work with the Project Natick program a few years back really demonstrated the important of eliminating humidity and oxygen from an environment,” explains Belady.

Microsoft’s special container for its liquid bath servers.
Image: Microsoft

Project Natick saw Microsoft sink an entire data center to the bottom of the Scottish sea, plunging 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage into the water. The experiment was a success, and Microsoft had just one-eighth the failure rate of a land-based data center. “What we’re expecting with immersion is a similar trend, because the fluid displaces the oxygen and the humidity, and both of those create corrosion … and those are the things that create failure in our systems,” says Belady.

Part of this work is also related to Microsoft’s environmental pledge to tackle water scarcity. The company has committed to replenish even more water than it uses for its global operations by 2030. This includes Microsoft using an on-site rainwater collection system at its offices and collecting condensation from air conditioners to water plants. Nevertheless, Microsoft withdrew nearly 8 million cubic meters of water from municipal systems and other local sources in 2019, compared to a little over 7 million in 2018.

Microsoft’s effort to address its water usage will be extremely challenging given its trend toward more water usage, but projects like two-phase immersion will certainly help if it’s rolled out more broadly. “Our goal is to get to zero water usage,” says Belady. “That’s our metric, so that’s what we’re working towards.”

cryptocurrency-market-cap-passes-$2-trillion-as-ethereum-prices-reach-all-time-high

Cryptocurrency Market Cap Passes $2 Trillion as Ethereum Prices Reach All-Time High

(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Don’t expect cryptocurrency miners to stop buying up the best graphics cards any time soon. Reuters today reported that the cryptocurrency market cap surpassed $2 trillion, a new record, as the prices for Bitcoin, Ethereum and other coins attract the attention of more investors.

According to Coindesk ,Bitcoin pricing hit a 24-hour high of $59,243 at time of writing. That doesn’t quite match the cryptocurrency’s all-time high price of $61,556 but it was still a 1.21% increase over the previous day and a sign of the coin’s stability.

Bitcoin can maintain a $1 trillion market cap all on its own if its price stays above $53,000, Reuters said. Coindesk’s price info shows that it’s been hovering around that threshold since mid-February and hasn’t dropped below it since March 8.

Bitcoin wasn’t the only coin contributing to this $2 trillion market cap, however. Ethereum reached its all-time highest price of $2,144 on Friday; it’s sitting at $2,106 at time of writing. Other coins have also enjoyed price increases over the last day.

Much of this growth has been attributed to more investors buying into the crypto market. Tesla purchased $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin in February, for example, and trading apps like Robinhood have pushed to make crypto trading more accessible.

These price increases are good news for cryptocurrency miners, but people hoping to upgrade their builds with new graphics cards for gaming might be disappointed that the crypto market will continue to affect GPU supplies. When the best GPUs for mining go out of stock, miners are sure to turn to whatever’s available. 

MSI and Asus have already warned that the ongoing GPU shortage will lead to higher graphics cards prices throughout 2021—and that was before reports indicated that water rationing in Taiwan could affect GPU production if conditions don’t improve.

Rumor has it that Nvidia has resorted to increasing production of the outdated GTX 1050 Ti, 1650 and RTX 2060 in an attempt to give manufacturers something they can sell to gamers. But that isn’t much of a consolation when the RTX 30-series exists.

All of which means the crypto market cap passing the $2 trillion mark probably isn’t great news for gamers. For anyone interested in joining the mining frenzy, however, now’s an appropriate time to check out our guides explaining how to mine Ethereum and how to optimize your GPU for mining Ethereum.