Inside the dirty world of Bitcoin mining
The energy requirements of Bitcoin are expected to double this year, but some miners are turning to renewables to clean up their act
28 January 2021 • 12:00pm
Today in Norilsk, the world’s largest northerly city, the weather is minus 32 degrees celsius, about average for the region where conditions can reach 50 below.
The Russian city within the Arctic circle is known for its heavily polluting nickel mines, and acid rain and smog are common.
But now, a new kind of mining is in town. Bitcluster, a Russian cryptocurrency start-up, has erected a giant scrap metal B - for Bitcoin - above a set of warehouses packed full of 5,000 digital coin mining rigs.
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Bought any Bitcoin lately? Chances are it was made in China. That could be a problem for the burgeoning digital currency and an opportunity for ambitious rival “miners” in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Bitcoin mining is virtual, but requires expensive real-world inputs. Simply put, miners compete to solve increasingly complex equations generated by the Bitcoin network. The first to solve one wins the right to process and confirm new Bitcoin transactions, and win newly minted coin as recompense. Being first requires massive computing power, which in turn requires huge amounts of electricity.
Chinese entrepreneurs jumped on this ecosystem in the early 2010s, while Westerners remained wary. Miners harnessed nearly-free hydropower near dams that the country had built with abandon. Beijing-based Bitmain got a lock on the specialized chips and machinery the miners needed (and is aiming for a blockbuster IPO this year). BTCC and other exchanges mushroomed to trade the
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Indonesia’s fintech lending platforms have disbursed a total of 56.16 trillion rupiah ($3.98 billion) in new loans as of October this year, marking a 23.88 per cent year-on-year increase. Photo supplied
Indonesia P2P platforms optimistic about 2021 amid growing users, disbursement
Sun, 27 December 2020
Indonesia s peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms are looking forward to further growth next year, amid the promising increase of users and disbursement this year, and low bad loans ratio, despite the raging Covid-19 pandemic.
P2P lending platform KoinWorks chief operating officer Bernard Arifin said that while the company had experienced a decline in loan requests during the first large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) period from March to July, it had enjoyed an increase in loan requests nearing the end of the year.
12:09 PM MYT
JAKARTA (The Jakarta Post/ANN): Indonesia’s peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms are looking forward to further growth in 2021, amid the promising increase of users and disbursement this year, and low bad loans ratio, despite the raging Covid-19 pandemic.
P2P lending platform KoinWorks COO Bernard Arifin said that while the company had experienced a decline in loan requests during the first large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) period from March to July, it had enjoyed an increase in loan requests nearing the end of the year.
KoinWorks has disbursed Rp 2.5 trillion (US$175.5 million) in loans to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as of November, a 38.8 per cent increase year-to-date (ytd) from Rp 1.8 trillion by 2019 year-end.
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Cambridge launches Regulatory Genome Project
The project will use machine learning to sequence the world’s regulatory text and create an open-source repository of machine-readable regulatory information.
An open access repository of regulatory information will serve to level the regulatory playing field for those who develop and comply with regulation, particularly in emerging markets Robert Wardrop
The University of Cambridge has launched the Regulatory Genome Project, a transformational initiative to sequence the world’s vast amount of regulatory text to create a comprehensive open repository of machine-readable regulatory information for use by regulatory agencies and businesses around the world.