Switching systems may have made electricity savings similar to the amount used by Ireland.
A change in the way the cryptocurrency Ethereum works may have cut its power consumption by country-sized amounts.
Previously, this was maintained and verified by a system called Proof of Work, used by many cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. But it cut Ethereum's electrical energy consumption by at least 99.84%, the peer-reviewed "perspective" article suggests.The Ethereum blockchain also supports hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of other coins and crypto products such as non-fungible tokens .
Mr De Vries said: "The Bitcoin community has been very anti-change - but the Ethereum community has shown that despite concerns and resistance, it is possible to make the necessary changes on a live blockchain, which means that the Bitcoin community may need a little bit of a nudge from the outside to actually make things happen."Gavin Brown an associate professor at the University of Liverpool, told BBC News: "Sustainability is an essential problem to resolve in the crypto space.
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