Bitcoin bounced more than 6 per cent on Wednesday, climbing above $4,000 and heading for its biggest daily jump since July as it clawed back ground after recent heavy selling.
The world's biggest cryptocurrency was last as $3,970.04 on the Bitstamp platform, after being mauled in a broad sell-off in cryptocurrencies over the last two weeks. It has lost more than 70 per cent of its value this year.
Meanwhile, implementing Bitcoin at similar rates at which other technologies have been incorporated could alone produce enough emissions to raise global temperatures by two degrees Celsius as soon as 2033, according to a study. "Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency with heavy hardware requirements, and this obviously translates into large electricity demands," said Randi Rollins, a master's student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in the US.
Purchasing with Bitcoins and several other cryptocurrencies, which are forms of currency that exist digitally through encryption, requires large amounts of electricity, according to the study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Bitcoin purchases create transactions that are recorded and processed by a group of individuals referred to as miners. Miners group every Bitcoin transaction made during a specific timeframe into a block.
Blocks are then added to the chain, which is the public ledger, researchers said. The verification process by miners, who compete to decipher a computationally demanding proof-of-work in exchange for bitcoins, requires large amounts of electricity, they said. The electricity requirements of Bitcoin have created considerable difficulties, and extensive online discussion, about where to put the facilities or rings that compute the proof-of-work of Bitcoin.
(With inputs from Reuters)