Over the past year, the entire world has witnessed a bewildering surge in demand for cryptocurrencies which, in contrast to fiat currencies such as USD or EUR, are not under the control of a centralized financial authority. And this is pretty cool.

The best example of this trend was December 2017, when the almighty Bitcoin reached almost 20,000 USD, while the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies rose to 613 billion USD, representing a value increase of more than 3,300%, compared to start of the year figures.

But I bet most of you are aware of this, so let’s take a few moments and talk about the creation of cryptocurrencies, through mining.

Simply put, crypto mining is the process that puts new cryptocurrencies into circulation, as it validates transactions on the blockchain. And it’s dealing with a major issue as we speak…

Mining costs A LOT!

The entire cryptocurrency mining process needs a lot of energy and this is because of the power requirement of solving complex cryptographic calculations, which is done by rigs that are also heavily ventilated, since they generate way too much heat for passive cooling to be effective (except if you live in the Arctic… something which many miners have surely already considered).

Actually, due to the intensive use of electricity by miners, the average temperature of the world is also getting higher. It’s like Mother Earth is telling us that we need to do something about this!

According to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index tracker, the annual energy used in mining Bitcoin alone stands at about 53.7 terawatt hours per year. Fun fact: this is more than enough electricity to power a country such as the Republic of Ireland. Also, the correlated CO2 emissions are currently placed at about 20 megatons.

Yes, things aren't looking too good, considering that the number of mining rigs continues to increase.

But solutions do exist

Lately, green energy has become more affordable and accessible, becoming a real competitor for coal and fossil fuels. And yes, it would be amazing if miners would switch to it to power their rigs.

To be more specific, we’re talking about waste energy, wind energy, hydropower, and solar energy. Let’s talk a bit about each of them, shall we?

The first is probably one of the most interesting types! Waste energy is created by waste material treatment plans, which generate heat that makes turbines move, thus resulting in electricity. This form of energy is very cheap, compared to ‘classic’ electricity, not to mention that it’s also great for the environment, as it helps clean it by consuming waste.

Wind energy is far from being an unknown, since turbines able to generate electricity are present pretty much everywhere in the world, and the same thing goes for hydro plants, that generate energy from the flow of water.

As for solar energy, it can be easily harnessed around the globe, providing yet another clean energy source. Back in 2016, the entire world’s solar power capacity was approximately 302 GW, while by 2050, it is expected to become the biggest source of electricity, worldwide.

Done powering your house? Let’s mine some crypto!

All these types of energy can be used to power mining rigs and Restart Energy is one of the first companies doing something in this direction, offering solar kits which can have mining rigs added on, as a package deal. They will produce electricity and owners will use it for their homes first, while the excess will be used to power a GPU/CPU, which then mines cryptocurrencies.

Basically, once the solar panels cover the electricity a home uses, the mining rig will automatically be powered by the extra green energy!

Sure, this is still early days, but hey, it has to start somewhere, right?

Green energy can surely become a prominent solution to this emerging problem, so we’re looking forward to that moment when the majority of rigs will be powered by either the sun, wind, water, or even waste… unless you live in Iceland and use geothermal power, but that’s a story we’ll cover some other time.

About Restart Energy

Restart Energy Democracy (RED) is a blockchain-powered platform, backed by Restart Energy — a European energy provider with 20 million USD in revenues. The company was built with a vision to democratize the energy sector and quash the dominance of legacy monopolies in the energy world. The company’s credentials include a customer base of 27,000 household and 3,000 corporate clients, expanding at more than 2,000 clients per month (5,000 new customers in the first two months of 2018), and its impressive growth: 1,700% from 2015 until today.

Restart Energy is developing the world’s first peer-to-peer, fully decentralized energy transfer platform allowing users to send and receive energy worldwide, based on its proprietary virtual balancing system, that uses A.I., Big Data, and IoT technologies. The RED ecosystem is comprised of the RED-Platform, RED-Franchise, and MWAT Tokens.

The RED-Franchise is the first power retail franchise to simplify and allow any company or entrepreneur to operate their own power utility enterprise, enabling them to start selling energy in more than 35 deregulated energy markets globally.

MWAT tokens are crypto-tokens that enable the buying and selling of up to 1 MWh of electricity per month on the RED-Platform Software and will facilitate the development of affordable clean energy, through free-market practices. Upon completion of registration on the platform, an initial loyalty bonus of 0.11 kWh is applied. Producers send out monthly loyalty bonuses through the RED Loyalty System, totaling 1–5% of traded on-grid energy in exchange for access to the RED Platform.

Importantly, it should be noted that potential franchise partners will need to own (this is not a form of payment to us) a certain number of MWAT tokens, in order to qualify for our various franchise tiers — the secret to our award-winning growth as a business!

For more information, please visit our website, our Telegram, and read the Restart Energy whitepaper. Join our announcement channel for updates regarding Restart Energy Democracy.

We invite you to join our RED Platform’s beta and earn 50 MWAT for joining now; refer your friends for even more rewards.