Headline Feb 24, 2018/ ''' VIRTUAL FORTUNES VECTOR '''

''' VIRTUAL FORTUNES VECTOR '''

VIRTUAL CURRENCIES ARE USHERING IN a new world, a new era in the march of progress, modernity and the future.

The World Students Society, - most lovingly and respectfully called !WOW! the world over, must look at this master opportunity with mind and eyes very wide open.

Merium, Rabo, Haleema, Zilli, Seher, Zainab, Dee, Saima, Eman, Hussain, Shahzaib, Salar, Bilal, Vishnu, Jordan, Toby/China,  must come up with the cohesion and  energy for The World Students Society to make some real *virtual fortunes*.

THE MINING RACE is meant to be hard so that the no one can dominate the accounting and fudge the records.

In the 2008 paper that first described Bitcoin, the mysterious creator of the virtual currency, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote that the system designed to thwart a ''greedy attacker''  - who might want to alter the records and - ''Defraud people by stealing back his payment.''

Because of the mining and accounting rules, the attacker ''ought to find it more profitable to play by the rules.''  The rules have kept such attackers at bay in the nine years since network got going. Without this process, most computer scientists agree, Bitcoin would not work.

But there is a disagreement over the real value of  Bitcoin and the network that supports it. For people who consider  Bitcoin  nothing more than a speculative bubble any new contribution toward global warming is probably not worth it.

But Bitcoin aficionados counter that it has allowed for the creation of the financial network with no government or company in charge. In countries like Zimbawe and Argentina, Bitcoin has sometimes provided a more stable place to park money than the local currency.

And in countries with more stable economies, Bitcoin has led to a flurry of new investments, jobs and start-up companies.

''Labeling Bitcoin mining as a ''waste'' is a failure to look at the big picture,'' Marc Bevand, a miner and analyst, wrote on his blog. The jobs alone, he added:

''Are a direct, measurable and positive impact that Bitcoin already made on the economy.''

Mr. De Vries, who keeps track of the use on site Digiconomist, estimated that each Bitcoin transaction currently required  80,000 times more electricity to process than each Visa credit card transaction, for example ''Visa is more centralized,'' Mr. De Vries said.

''If you really want distrust the financial system maybe that is unattractive. But is that difference really worth the additional energy cost? I think for most people that is probably not worth the case.

The figures published by Mr. de Vries have been criticized by Mr. Bevand and other Bitcoin fans, who say they overstate the energy costs by a factor of about three.

Many critics add that producing and securing physical money and gold also require lots of energy in some cases as much as or more than Bitcoin uses.

Mr. Van Valkenburgh of the CoinCenter, has argued that Bitcoin miners, who can do the work anywhere, have an incentive to situate themselves near cheap, often green energy resources, especially now that coal-guzzling China appears to be getting out of cryptocurrency mining business.

Several mining companies have opened server farms near geothermal energy in Iceland and hydroelectric power in Washington state.

But the concerns about electricity use have still hit home with many in the industry. The virtual currencies known as Ripple and Stellar, which were created after  Bitcoin, were designed not to require electrically demanding mining

Perhaps the biggest change could come from the new mining process proposed by Mr. Butterin for Etherium, a process that some smaller currencies are already using. Known as ''Proof of Stake,'' it distributes new coins to people who are able to prove their ownership of existing coins - their stake in the system.

The current method which relies so heavily on computational power, is called ''proof of work.'' Under that method, the accounts and people who get new coins don't need existing tokens. They just need lots of computers to take part in the computational race.

Energy concerns are not the only factor encouraging the move, Mr. Butterin also says he believes the new method, which is likely to be rolled out over the next year, will allow for a less centralized network of computers overseeing the system.

But it is far from clear that the method will be as secure as the one used by Bitcoin. Mr. Butterin has been attacked by Bitcoin advocates , who say his proposal will lose the qualities that make virtual currencies valuable.

Mr. Van Valkenburgh said that for now, throwing lots of computing power into the mix - and the electricity that it burns - was the only proven solution to the problems. Bitcoin solves.

''At the moment, if you want robust security, you need proof of work,'' he said.

With respectful dedication to the Leaders, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all on !WOW! - the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW! - the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Zero Exclusion '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless