Bitcoin’s ongoing meteoric price rise has received the bulk of recent press attention with a lot of discussion around whether or not it’s a bubble waiting to burst.   However, most the coverage has missed out one of the more interesting and unintended consequences of this price increase. That is the surge in global electricity consumption… Read more »

From the outside, the company’s building looks unassuming. But as soon as you step inside, a wall of heat slams into you. Then comes the noise — the sound of hundreds of fans, trying to control the extreme temperature being thrown off by rows and rows of powerful computers sitting on utilitarian warehouse shelving, all working… Read more »

Bitcoin and other “cryptocurrencies” have been much in the news lately, in part because of their wild gyrations in value. Michael Lee and Antoine Martin, economists in the New York Fed’s Money and Payment Studies function, have been following cryptocurrencies and agreed to answer some questions about digital money. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York… Read more »

Bitcoin can’t catch a break in China.  Chinese authorities ordered the closing of operations that create a large share of the world’s supply of bitcoin, tightening a clampdown that has already shuttered exchanges for the trading of cryptocurrencies in China.  A multiagency government task force overseeing risks in Internet finance issued a notice last week ordering local authorities… Read more »