摘要
Bitcoin is just over a decade old,and estimates suggest it already consumes more energy than many countries[1].The electricity use and potential environmental impact of Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrency systems alarm some experts and in 2019 prompted China to propose a ban on cryptocurrency mining—although the Chinese government later decided not to follow through[2].However,a well-publicized paper recently posted(August 2019)on the pre-print server arXiv describes a novel algorithm for securing digital transactions that would require little energy[3,4].It is just one of hundreds of proposals for cutting cryptocurrencies’electricity demand.
