We have heard several times that cryptocurrency mining activities consume huge amounts of energy. That has been marked as a problem by several experts in the matter, and different solutions have been analysed. The US technology company Intel has presented a patent that reduces the amount of electricity consumed by bitcoin mining hardware.
Intel Tries to Reduce Cryptocurrency Mining Energy Consumption
According to a patent application released on march the 29th by the US Patent and Trademark Office, there could be a more efficient way to mine bitcoin. The patent application was presented back in September 2017 but released just today.
As explained by Intel, critical paths in the computation intensive message digest and scheduler data paths can be optimized. That would result in “extra time that can reduce switching capacitance or scale the supply voltage.” In this way, Intel claims that there would be an improvement in the message digest logic of 35%.
At the same time, the patent explains that Bitcoin is one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in the markets. It also says that bitcoin works with a distributed ledger called blockchain and that the cryptocurrency is used as a unit of accounting. Bitcoins are kept inside a Bitcoin wallet
.The patent reads as follows:
“Bitcoin is the most popular type of digital currency used in the digital currency ecosystem. The Bitcoin transactional system is peer-to-peer, meaning transactions take place between users directly, without an intermediary. Peer-to-peer Bitcoin transactions may be verified by network nodes and recorded in a public distributed ledger called blockchain, which uses Bitcoin as its unit of accounting.”
The patent application writes that sometimes, mining a single Bitcoin is costlier than the energy used to mine such virtual currency. These situations happen when there are temporary market dips and the price of Bitcoin loses an important percentage of its value.
This is not the first time that Intel is trying to have influence in the cryptocurrency industry. In May 2017, the US technology company partnered with a health care transaction service provider and software development firm PokitDokso as to use blockchain technology in the health care industry.
Images Digital Trend and Fortune
