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Photo: Police News Agency (AP)
The price of bitcoin has hit record prices this month, and that’s bad news for the climate. As the price of the currency shoots up, so does the energy consumption as people are incentivized to mine more bitcoin. And a new paper published Wednesday in the journal Joule estimates that by the end of the year, bitcoin mining could use nearly as much energy as all the world’s data centers combined.
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The paper, authored by data scientist Alex de Vries, who runs the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, examines the implications between what skyrocketing bitcoin prices could mean for energy use, and how high prices could, without regulation, lock the world in to years of increased mining, emissions, use of fossil fuels in areas with high security risks, and resource scarcity. There’s a “fundamental relationship” between bitcoin price and energy use, said de Vries. “Miners are making more money than they ever have before, which i
Image: Long Island Ice Tea Corp (Gizmodo)
I’ve got that deja vu feeling. In 2017, the price of bitcoin exploded, prompting a bunch of randomcompanies to announce their business was pivoting to “blockchain” in some form or another before being forgotten when the mania subsided. Three years later, we’re seeing bitcoin’s price fall from another record high and Long Blockchain Corp is back in the news.
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The Long Island Ice Tea Corp’s decision to change its name and suggest it would be diversifying its business with vague plans to invest in the technology underlying cryptocurrency had the immediate benefit of tripling its stock price. But by 2018, it found itself under scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The tea-slingers quickly decided that promoting “globally scalable blockchain technology solutions” wasn’t for them, and the company was kicked off the Nasdaq exchange.
Bitcoin Hit All-Time High at Over $50,000, Leaving Us in Dire Need of Sound Financial Advice
Photo: Ozan Kose (Getty Images)
Bitcoin is the future, again: this morning, it hit an all-time high value of over $50,000. Is there a lesson in here? Are Elon Musk’s tweets a good investment strategy? Should we get in on this? We have yet to learn. Or maybe we learn nothing, and the notoriously volatile currency will level out, unlike when some lost everything to the 2018 crash.
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Elon Musk first sent Bitcoin and Dogecoin soaring a few weeks ago as a sort of sequel to Reddit’s WallStreetBets frenzy, changing his bio to “Bitcoin” and tweeting “Doge”
Investment Week is hosting its Global Emerging Markets Briefing at a pivotal time for investors as they start to position for the recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic, although risks remain.
During this interactive briefing, we will hear from a number of global emerging market managers about their response to the extraordinary events of the past year and their outlook for the rest of the year and beyond.
The managers will identify where they are seeing the biggest opportunities and risks at the moment in emerging markets and explain the role their strategies could play in client portfolios.
Attendees will also get the chance to network with peers, quiz our speakers, as well as benefit from CPD points