Microsoft bans crypto mining on cloud platform

It looks like the crypto community cannot catch a break. With news ranging from crypto billionaires dying mysteriously to the coins’ plummeting rates,  2022 was not entirely the year for crypto investors and enthusiasts. Now, another big blow to crypto bros has come from Microsoft which has decided to enforce new restrictions on cryptocurrency mining.

Microsoft bans crypto mining

Microsoft, one of the biggest players in the cloud computing arena has decided to take drastic measures to increase the stability of its cloud services. As a result, crypto mining has been axed from Microsoft’s cloud platform. There was no official announcement of the same as Microsoft quietly decided to ban crypto mining from its online services in order to protect its customers and clouds. The Register, a British tech news agency was the first to crack this development on December 15, 2022.

Microsoft introduced the new restrictions as a part of its universal license terms of Microsoft Online Services. Microsoft’s updated acceptable policy clarifies that crypto mining is now ‘prohibited’ on its platform without prior approval. The latest policy states that users now require users to obtain a written pre-approval from the company in order to use any Microsoft Online Services for crypto mining.

As per reports, Microsoft said that the latest restrictions laid upon crypto mining aims to protect the online service from cyber risks like fraud, attacks, and unauthorized access to customer resources. Furthermore, the company stated that it may consider permissions to mine crypto only for testing and research purposes, thus crypto whales running big mining operations on Microsoft cloud will take a massive hit with this development. Microsoft won’t be the first company in recent times to adopt the new restrictions. Earlier, Google also restricted users from engaging in crypto mining without the company’s prior written approval. Besides this, platforms like Oracle have banned crypto mining entirely, whereas Digital Ocean also requires users to take written permission.

What is Bitcoin mining?

At this point, I am pretty sure most of you know what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is a form of crypto or digital currency used to make payments for online transactions. Well, even if you didn’t know what Bitcoin was, you will surely know what is mining. If you look up the meaning of mining, it says it is the process of extracting minerals from the Earth.

Now you might be thinking, cryptocurrency and mining, don’t correlate very well. What is this so-called Bitcoin mining? No wait, it does not involve anyone going underground with a pickaxe and tools digging all day waiting to strike gold (or Bitcoin).

If you have heard of Bitcoin or have done some basic research on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency, it is highly unlikely you have not come across the word ‘Bitcoin mining’. But what does mining have to do with a currency, that too a completely digital form of currency?

Bitcoin mining is referred to the process through which new Bitcoins are entered into circulation. Think of Bitcoin mining is the process of printing new money to ensure the circulation of new money by central banks of different countries. Issuing new paper currency involves printing new money, but that can’t be the same for Bitcoin because cryptocurrency is not a material form of money. This is where Bitcoin mining comes into play. Bitcoin mining is generating more Bitcoins, a task performed by computers with high-performance functions. Bitcoin mining is a complex process performed by solving complex math problems that are too difficult to be performed otherwise.

Bitcoin mining is essential for two reasons. When a computer solves a complex math problem on the Bitcoin network, a new Bitcoin is produced. This ensures Bitcoin is generated and circulated in the system. And to maintain a ledger of transactions for each generated Bitcoin. By doing so, Bitcoin miners ensure that the Bitcoin payment network is secure and trustworthy by verifying the payment transaction information.

 

When someone sends anyone a Bitcoin or makes an online payment with Bitcoin, it is called a transaction. Since Bitcoin is not a centralized form of currency, every transaction is stored and documented by Bitcoin miners. These transaction pieces of information are clumped together and called “blocks” and added to a public record called “blockchain.” Further, these blocks are recorded and stored so that they can be verified in the future. When adding a new block of the transaction to the blockchain, miners should ensure that the transaction they are uploading is accurate. This means that miners should ensure their blocks are not duplicated.

 

You must have got a small idea of what is Bitcoin mining and how it works.

also, read – how does bitcoin work?

Blockchain mining with a carbon-free footprint

Is it a hoax? Is it a pressing issue? Certainly, yes. Who should know? We should. This blog will incorporate a deeper look into this topic. Carbon footprint is the entire quantity of greenhouse gas emissions produced by a product or service during its manufacture, use, and disposal. It comprises carbon dioxide, the most prevalent gas released by humans, as well as other gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases, all of which trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming. Transportation, housing, and food account for the majority of an individual’s carbon footprint.

Some people do require this cosmic energy, which is expensive due to the cutthroat premise of proof-of-work blockchains. Cryptographic money exchanges are documented by a conveyed group of excavators, who are aided by block rewards rather than being saved in a central data store. These specialized computers are competing in a computational challenge to create new squares by solving cryptographic puzzles.

Cryptographic money proponents agree that this framework has a number of advantages over other monetary systems since it does not rely on a trusted intermediary or weak link. Regardless, the mining puzzles necessitate multiple energy-intensive calculations.

Because of the calculations required for mining, digital currencies consume a lot of energy. According to the most recent estimates, the network consumes as much energy in a year as in Argentina. China, which generates the majority of its energy from coal, is home to 65 percent of crypto diggers.

Supporters have downplayed the energy consumption of cryptocurrencies, claiming that mining operations tend to concentrate around areas with surplus renewable energy like solar energy.

Sun-based energy, which is a common fuel source, could only supply 40% of framework electricity before utilities were forced to cover key concerns with higher power bills. Regardless of whether mining is included in a close planetary system, energy suppliers – whether utilities or autonomous elements – can influence the exchange between power and mining expenses. 

Solar is now the world’s cheapest energy source; however, it is experiencing deployment obstacles due to its intermittent power supply and system congestion. It’s a flexible load alternative that might help solve a lot of the grid’s intermittency and congestion issues by allowing networks to deploy a lot more renewable energy.

The more solar deployment will likely lower these generation technologies’ cost curves even further, bringing them closer to zero marginal cost energy production and zero carbon footprint.

The Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for solar power has decreased by 71 percent over the previous decade, making sustainable power the most cost-effective and environmentally benign option. The current unsubsidized costs of solar power are 3-4 cents per kWh.

As a result, sun-oriented energy is currently less valuable than coal and gaseous gasoline. Sunlight-based crypto mining has reached cost parity with both geothermal and hydroelectric power, which are both relatively inexpensive at roughly 3-5 cents per kWh. Market experts have argued that success necessitates development but that this comes at the cost of environmental degradation, which is regrettable but inescapable. Our current situation is frequently viewed as an extra cost or a corporate externality. The production of air pollution as a result of ingesting petroleum derivatives is a negative externality.

Carbon sequestration by trees, on the other hand, is a positive externality. In our current financial situation, these externalities are not fully expressed. Anyway, there has been solid protection from this commodification and value labelling of nature. These arrangements are top-down and planned in an approach to restricting harm. They are built to contrarily build up individuals to do less awful.

Also read- https://www.exhibit.tech/crypto/revolutionizing-agriculture-with-blockchain/

 

 

In Crypto We Say…!

1. HODL:

The term which went viral, is popularly abbreviated for ‘Hold On For Dear Life’. It refers to the common sentiment among Bitcoin enthusiasts to hold on to their investments in the face of market volatility.

2. ALTCOINS:

Coins that are not Bitcoin are usually known as Alt(ernative) coins. In reality, this coin serves no true unique purpose and should, in a fair market, fall back to their original low value.

3. FUD:

FUD is the short form for ‘Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt’. Just like rumours, FUD is baseless negativity spread intentionally by someone who wants the price of certain coins to drop. This may sound funny but they are usually used as “xxx spreading FUD again” and someone who is spreading FUD is known as a ‘FUDster’.

4. TO THE MOON:

For all the romantics out there, this one’s for you! To the moon is a phrase used to refer to a price going up to astronomical levels. There are many cryptocurrencies that Bitcoin have ‘mooned’ in the past years for instance Bitcoin that went up in price almost 15–18 times.

5. PUMP AND DUMP:

This term means a recurring cycle of an altcoin from getting a ton of attention that leads to a fast price increase and then, of course, followed by a huge crash. Traders who pump, buying huge volumes, may invoke greed from the uninformed investors and then dump i.e.sell their coins at a higher price.

6. BULLISH AND BEARISH:

Bullish:It is like an expected rise in price of the bitcoins. It is expected that the price of bitcoin rises to about $300,000- $400,000 by some optimistic analysts.

7. BEARISH:

An expectation that price is going to decrease. Many altcoins (or the shitcoins) would have a generally bearish sentiment if people do not see value in them.

8. BAG HOLDER:

A bag holder is someone still holding an altcoin even after a crash in the market. A bag holder can also just refer to someone holding a coin that is sinking in value with few future prospects or people who believe in their dumped coins..

9. ATH:

Yes, just like we refer it, ATH is the short form for “All-Time High” and in crypto it means the highest historical price of a specific coin. For example, in 2017 Bitcoin reached an ATH at $19,000.

10. WHALES:

A wealthy trader who owns absurdly huge amounts of cryptocurrency can be called whale. Whales are often the market movers for small altcoins too, thanks to their huge capital.

11. Shilling:

The act of endorsing the coin in public is called shilling. Traders who bought a coin have an interest in ‘shilling’ the coin, in hopes of igniting the public’s interest in that particular coin and leading to an eventual pump in price.

12. CRYPTOGRAPHY:

The study of making information unreadable so that it can be kept secret is called as Cryptography. Hiding words in images, using micro dots and computer programs are the few uses of cryptography. The information can be unlocked and made readable using a code also known as a key. The key is made up of a string of letters and numbers.

13. MINING:

The process of creating new blocks i.e. new pages where the new digital blockchain can be stored, recording and verifying information is all a part of mining.

14. DISTRIBUTED & CENTRAL LEDGER:

An agreement of shared, replicable and synchronized data, in this case spread across multiple networks, across many CPUs is known as Distributed Ledger. A central ledger is the opposite in that all of the data, while being synchronized and replicable is controlled by a singular network or individual.

15. BOTS:

A bot is a type of software that can execute trades on exchanges. It may seem like cheating but bots do play an important in many ways too. They can help implement strategies like trailing stop losses for you as well. Like people, bots aren’t good or bad, they are neutral and depend on the ethics of the user.

16. HALVING:

The reduction of minable reward every so many blocks is called Halving. For Bitcoin the reward is halved after the first 210,000 blocks are mined and then every 210,000 thereafter.

17. NODE:

A node is essentially a computer connected to the Bitcoin network. A node supports the network through validation and relaying of transactions while receiving a copy of the full blockchain itself.

18. P2P:

P2P stands for peer-to-peer which has become a very large focus of blockchain as one of the biggest selling points is decentralization. Nearly every interaction on the blockchain can be fulfilled through P2P, or without a centralized variable like a store, bank or notary.

19. FUNGIBLE:

The positive quality where two or more of the same thing have identical value is known as fungible. So basically, it’s one of a group of things that can be used as a substitute for another without changing the value.

20. BEARWHALE:

A bearwhale is a person with large quantities of cryptocurrency that uses his massive account to drive the price down and profit from it.

21. BEAR MARKET:

A bear market is a decreasing set of prices for various types of assets and a bearish investor wants to profit from that.

22. FLIPPENING:

The flippening is the shift of other cryptocurrencies growing bigger, more important and more valuable than bitcoin. If the value of the coin cross that of bitcoins then we say that it’s called flippening.

23. MERKLE TREES:

The data structure that is used in computer science applications to organise cryptocurrencies. Merkle trees serve to encode blockchain data more efficiently and securely.

24. SHITCOIN:

Shitcoin is nothing but the Altcoin with no potential value or use. Shitcoin value may disappear because interest failed to materialize, because the altcoin itself was not created in good faith, or because the price was based on speculation.

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