> through wasting superlative amounts of energy and destroying the atmosphere It's true, Bitcoin does spend a lot of energy to provide proof-of-work, the under

> through wasting superlative amounts of energy and destroying the atmosphere It's true, Bitcoin does spend a lot of energy to provide proof-of-work, the underpinning of distributed trust in the blockchain. But you might find proof-of-stake[1] interesting. It requires far less energy--no repetitive hashing. It could also provide stronger protection against sybil attacks, requiring the attacker to spend far more in real terms in order to obtain a 51% stake. The Ethereum blockchain is planning a move to proof-of-stake[2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-stake [2] http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/9/why-does-ethereum-plan-to-move-to-proof-of-stake http://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/9/why-does-ether... EDIT: Formatting