A lot has been written about Bitcoin[1] lately, as the value of the cryptocurrency[2] keeps surging at breakneck pace[3], which has made many people consider it as an investment option[4]. At the time of writing - it would've likely changed by the time you read this - one Bitcoin is valued at nearly $19,000, or approximately Rs. 12 lakh, up from under $1,000 in January this year. While the frenzy continues, many experts including the famed investor Warren Buffet are warning against buying Bitcoin[5] as an asset.
Gadgets 360 caught up with Ari Juels, Professor Computer Science at Cornell University, who is working on areas such as cybercrime, and creating new and secure technologies based on blockchain[6]. Before coming to Cornell, Juels was the chief scientist of RSA Security, which was acquired by Dell[7].
One of the things that Juels brings up is that at this point, Bitcoin isn't just a risky investment, but it's also not useful as a currency, which was its original purpose. Instead, he adds, Bitcoin is actively harming the planet[8].
"Bitcoin consumes an enormous - unconscionable from an environmental perspective - amount of electricity to achieve a transaction rate far lower than that needed for a real payment processing system," explains Juels, adding: "One irony here is that my colleague Markus Jakobsson and I coined the term 'Proof of Work' in a 1999 paper that was partly about how to recycle the work."
"Proof of Work" as defined by Jakobsson and Juels is data that is difficult (i.e. costly and time consuming) to produce, but easy to verify. This is the underlying concept of blockchain/...