Random Basketball Thoughts (28/5/18) by Muhammad Amir Ayub

It's been an amazing conference finals so far, in the sense that both are going to game 7's, with the first today between the Cavs and Celtics, followed by the Dubs and Rockets. The former has been more "boring" in the sense that there have been no road wins so far, while the latter has been much wilder.

It seems that both may ultimately come down to who's healthier at the end; the injuries to both Kevin Love and Chris Paul may be what determines the outcome of the respective series. The every other day format with literally no 2 rest days is really decimating both teams, and it shows in the drop in the offensive aesthetics; it's all grit and grind.

Can LeBron reach 8 straight NBA finals by overcoming the quickly maturing Celtics? Can Harden ultimately overcome the Hampton's Five? I predict a Golden State versus Boston finals, as Cleveland has a severe lack of supporting talent surrounding James and Golden State is ultimately the team that's the most top heavy in the NBA.

Bitcoin Uses a Lot of Electricity Power (Which is Not Free) by Muhammad Amir Ayub

His estimates, based in economics, put the minimum current usage of the Bitcoin network at 2.55 gigawatts, which means it uses almost as much electricity as Ireland. A single transaction uses as much electricity as an average household in the Netherlands uses in a month. By the end of this year, he predicts the network could be using as much as 7.7 gigawatts—as much as Austria and half of a percent of the world’s total consumption. “To me, half a percent is already quite shocking. It’s an extreme difference compared to the regular financial system, and this increasing electricity demand is definitely not going to help us reach our climate goals,” he says. If the price of Bitcoin continues to increase the way some experts have predicted, de Vries believes the network could someday consume 5% of the world’s electricity. “That would be quite bad.”

Bitcoin is dependent on computers that time-stamp transactions into an ongoing chain to prevent duplicate spending of coins. Computers in the network perform calculations continuously, competing for the chance, once every ten minutes, to be appointed to create the next block of transactions in the chain. The user of the computer that wins is awarded 12.5 new coins—a process known as “mining” Bitcoin. But all the time, even the users that don’t win are expending computing power. “You are generating numbers the whole time and the machines you’re using for that use electricity. But if you want to get a bigger slice of the pie, you need to increase your computing power. So there’s a big incentive for people to increase how much they’re spending on electricity and on machines,” de Vries says.

Astonishing amounts of power.

It seems that the value of such cryptocurrencies lies in the cost to mine (to buy the necessary hardware and the power to run it).

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