Showing posts with label blockchain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blockchain. Show all posts

Sunday, November 14, 2021

The Metaverse and Its Possible Economic Impacts

 


Metaverse is a brand new concept that has entered our lives. Meta means beyond, and verse is the abbreviation of universe. In short, the metaverse. In short, a new virtual world is being tried to be created. In fact, this is the newest connection project discovered after internet technology. While a computer is required to connect to the internet, virtual glasses are sufficient to connect to the metaverse. In addition, equipment such as headphones and augmented reality glasses can also be used.

A whole new world, both physical and digital.

Metaverse is a brand new application with many components such as blockchain, augmented reality glasses, hologram. What is trying to be done with Metaverse? Let’s say you are not happy, unsuccessful, or have an unexcited life in your normal life. It invites you to the metaverse and there you enter a brand new world, perhaps just the way you want it to, that is, it is impossible to do or reach in real life.

You can also earn money while doing this. You can create your own avatar in the metaverse world and start a company there. You can move your current company to the metaverse in three dimensions. In that case, will you be able to transfer the money you earn there to your real-world account? This may be the first question that comes to mind.

Actually, the name metaverse comes from a novel called “Snow Crash” written in 1992. The author of the novel is Neal Stephenson. This novel is among the 100 best novels written between 1923-2005. The plot of the novel is that governments lose control after the great economic collapse. Governments are being liquidated. Control of America falls into the hands of entrepreneurs and organizers. Los Angeles is seperated from America.

In fact, investments in this technology started towards the end of the 1990s. For example, Facebook (renamed “Meta”) made its augmented reality investment in 1997. In order to take your place in Metaverse, you must first have a digital identity. Therefore, Metaverse is a combination of virtual world, internet and augmented reality.

One of my previous articles was “De-Fi”. So, decentralized finance. Here, Metaverse could be an environment where decentralized finance can be implemented. After that, the place where companies can make their real advertisements will be the metaverse area. Let’s say you created your identity and shape in this created virtual world and carried your company to your own avatar. Instead of coming to your company from New York to Los Angeles and interviewing, you will be able to meet with your customers or partners in the metaverse.

In such a case, if your identity in the metaverse becomes more successful and effective, will the real world begin to lose its appeal after that?

How acceptable would that be? Value generally occurs when many people accept that value or asset. For example, bitcoin would not exist today if it were not accepted by many as a means of carrying value. If the Metaverse is accepted by many, it can consolidate its position and the above-mentioned possibilities can be realized. It seems to me that this is not such a remote possibility.

In short, it is possible to do everything you can do in the real world (which is questionable) and more in the metaverse world. This new virtual world is likely to be adopted by everyone. One of the reasons for this is that in the real world, people who are overwhelmed by issues such as health problems, climate crisis will prefer the metaverse as an escape.

In my previous articles, I talked about digital states, the digital world. As mentioned in the novel, with an interesting similarity, an economic chaos emerges in the world and governments lose their effectiveness. There is an orientation towards digital citizenship human beings. For example, the parties that won the election in Germany, even before they came to power, changed the unemployment benefit to the name of “universal basic income”.

Big companies are investing in the metaverse. For this it needs to be at least 6g. Quantum processors are needed. These technologies need to accelerate.

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Friday, July 30, 2021

Blockchain

 

Technology is always created to serve the mind of its manufacturer. At this point, it is necessary to be careful and use it to our real benefit. While doing this, it should not be overlooked that technology can serve different ideologies and plans in the hands of different minds. For example, splitting the atom into its nuclei is a technological breakthrough, and while there are many useful things that can be done from it, some minds make bombs from it and threaten humanity. Blockchain is also one of the most important inventions of our day. It seems that it will also play an important role in building the future. At this point, what role it will play depends on which minds will be used. Blockchain is an invention that will bring innovation to our lives in many economic and technological aspects. It is necessary to look at its effects not only in economic and technological aspects but also in sociological aspects as an integral part of them.

Blockchain is a common registry. Its lack of central structure makes it think that it is reliable. Blockchain is like a structure that can even change the management style. One of the most important factors that make the bond between the state and the citizen strong is the official money printed by the state. Crypto currencies driven using blockchain will be able to break this link. This, too, is something to be desired. I think that as this technology matures over time, nation states will try to make this technology more controllable by intervening. I have a lot to write about blockchain, wait for the next issues …

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Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Cryptocurrencies Energy Consumption

 Cryptocurrencies continue their adventures that started with Bitcoin in 2009 by accelerating. The cryptocurrency market has grown significantly. Blockchain technology, which came to the fore with Bitcoin, seems to have an important role in the transformation of the financial and economic system.

The system we are in ignores the feature of being the basis of the future financial system, seeing the blockchain technology that will transform itself and crypto money such as bitcoin as an environment where money laundering is more common. Although cryptocurrencies have become widespread in recent years, there are also common opinions that most of them will not be in the future.

On the other hand, the energy used in bitcoin mining has attracted the attention of environmentalists, and concerns that global warming will increase if it becomes widespread.

Bitcoin and Ethereum, pioneers of cryptocurrencies, are produced through a process called mining, which uses the computer process to solve sophisticated algorithms. Huge data centers are being set up that consume huge amounts of energy to mine Bitcoin. Miners moved to China and South Korea because electricity is cheaper than in the Midwest.



Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/881522/bitcoin-energy-consumption-relative-to-select-countries/

In the chart, the ratios of the energy consumed in Bitcoin mining to the country’s energy consumption are given. Accordingly, the energy used in Bitcoin mining is approximately 1.25 times the total energy consumption of Czechia. When this rate is compared with the Netherlands, it is seen that it is about seventy-five percent of the total energy used by the country.

As can be seen from this, environmentalists are not wrong in their reactions. It is clear that the Proof of Work technology used in Bitcoin mining is increasingly causing high energy consumption.

Proof of Work is a system that validates functions and limits abuse by using computational resources to calculate algorithms. Mining uses more energy each year than several countries combined. This increase in energy consumption in the economy could open up a new market for utilities.

In fact, the population buys the application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), an integrated circuit designed for specific mining use. Cryptocurrency mining data centers generate a lot of heat. Mining not only needs computational power to solve complex algorithms, but data centers also need energy to keep their servers comfortable.

In 2017, the Venezuelan authority closed the execution of the mining process due to the illegal operation of 11000 computers. The country suffered serious consequences as a result of the consumption of electricity, including blackouts. Companies around the world are investing in more sustainable technologies to reduce the harmful effects of bitcoin mining on the environment.

Proof of Work versus Proof of State.

The main difference is that proof of work requires a very powerful external source (“mining hardware”) because proof of work is not. Proof-of-work critics argue that fewer people will be motivated to mine as Bitcoin prices/rewards/fees fall. As a result, the protection of the system is reduced. Since staking/adding new blocks to the blockchain is free, critics of staking argue that you can use it to stake multiple identical coins at the same time.

As a result, Bitcoin is produced with blockchain technology, which will form the financial and economic infrastructure of the future, and for now, the energy needed by this technology is too big for the world to handle.

However, this does not mean that the technology will be abandoned. It only reveals the necessity of searching or producing new energy sources. Perhaps in the future, new technologies will be developed that are similar to blockchain but require much less energy.

Source: https://arzualvan.com/cryptocurrencies-energy-consumption/

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