Hardin is a city in and the county seat of Big Horn County, Montana, United States. The population was 3,818 at the 2020 census.
MicroStrategy Incorporated is an American company that provides business intelligence (BI), mobile software, and cloud-based services. Founded in 1989 by Michael J. Saylor, Sanju Bansal, and Thomas Spahr, the firm develops software to analyze internal and external data in order to make business decisions and to develop mobile apps. It is a public company headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia, in the Washington metropolitan area. Its primary business analytics competitors include SAP AG Business Objects, IBM Cognos, and Oracle Corporation's BI Platform. Saylor is the Executive Chairman and, from 1989 to 2022, was the CEO. It is widely considered to be a bitcoin proxy due to its massive holdings of the cryptocurrency.
Proof of work (PoW) is a form of cryptographic proof in which one party proves to others that a certain amount of a specific computational effort has been expended. Verifiers can subsequently confirm this expenditure with minimal effort on their part. The concept was invented by Moni Naor and Cynthia Dwork in 1993 as a way to deter denial-of-service attacks and other service abuses such as spam on a network by requiring some work from a service requester, usually meaning processing time by a computer. The term "proof of work" was first coined and formalized in a 1999 paper by Markus Jakobsson and Ari Juels. The concept was adapted to digital tokens by Hal Finney in 2004 through the idea of "reusable proof of work" using the 160-bit secure hash algorithm 1 (SHA-1).
Sherritt International is a Canadian resource company, based in Toronto, Ontario. Sherritt is a miner and refiner of nickel and cobalt. Sherritt is also the largest independent energy producer in Cuba. Sherritt’s common shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “S”.
UK Coal Production Ltd, formerly UK Coal plc, was the largest coal mining business in the United Kingdom. The company was based in Harworth, in Nottinghamshire. The company was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index. The successor company that contains the former property division, Harworth Group, is still listed on the London Stock Exchange.
Siberian Coal Energy Company (SUEK) is a coal and energy company based in Russia. SUEK is Russia’s largest coal supplier.
A gas-fired power plant, sometimes referred to as gas-fired power station, natural gas power plant, or methane gas power plant, is a thermal power station that burns natural gas to generate electricity. Gas-fired power plants generate almost a quarter of world electricity and are significant sources of greenhouse gas emissions. However, they can provide seasonal, dispatchable energy generation to compensate for variable renewable energy deficits, where hydropower or interconnectors are not available. In the early 2020s batteries became competitive with gas peaker plants.
Bitcoin is the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Nodes in the peer-to-peer bitcoin network verify transactions through cryptography and record them in a public distributed ledger, called a blockchain, without central oversight. Consensus between nodes is achieved using a computationally intensive process based on proof of work, called mining, that guarantees the security of the bitcoin blockchain. Mining consumes increasing quantities of electricity and has been criticized for its environmental effects.
South Africa has a large energy sector, being the third-largest economy in Africa. The country consumed 227 TWh of electricity in 2018. The vast majority of South Africa's electricity was produced from coal, with the fuel responsible for 88% of production in 2017. South Africa is the 7th largest coal producer in the world. As of July 2018, South Africa had a coal power generation capacity of 39 gigawatts (GW). South Africa is the world's 14th largest emitter of greenhouse gases. South Africa is planning to shift away from coal in the electricity sector and the country produces the most solar and wind energy by terawatt-hours in Africa. The country aims to decommission 34 GW of coal-fired power capacity by 2050. It also aims to build at least 20 GW of renewable power generation capacity by 2030. South Africa aims to generate 77,834 megawatts (MW) of electricity by 2030, with new capacity coming significantly from renewable sources to meet emission reduction targets. Through its goals stated in the Integrated Resource Plan, it announced the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme, which aims to increase renewable power generation through private sector investment.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it.
The Bitcoin protocol is the set of rules that govern the functioning of Bitcoin. Its key components and principles are: a peer-to-peer decentralized network with no central oversight; the blockchain technology, a public ledger that records all Bitcoin transactions; mining and proof of work, the process to create new bitcoins and verify transactions; and cryptographic security.
CoinDesk is a news site specializing in bitcoin and digital currencies. Founded by Shakil Khan, the firm also provides guides to bitcoin for those new to digital currencies.
Talen Energy is an independent power producer founded in 2015. It was formed when the competitive power generation business of PPL Corporation was spun off and immediately combined with competitive generation businesses owned by private equity firm Riverstone Holdings. Following these transactions, PPL shareholders owned 65% of Talen's common stock and affiliates of Riverstone owned 35%. As a condition for FERC approval Talen agreed to divest approximately 1,300 megawatts of generating assets in the PJM Interconnection Region to mitigate FERC's competitiveness concerns. On December 6, 2016, Riverstone Holdings completed the purchase of the remaining 65% of Talen's common stock, making it a privately owned company.
Digital Currency Group (DCG) is a venture capital company focusing on the digital currency market. It is located in Stamford, Connecticut. The company has the subsidiaries Foundry, Genesis, Grayscale Investments, and Luno. It also formerly owned CoinDesk.
Bitmain Technologies Ltd., is a privately owned company headquartered in Beijing, China, that designs application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips for bitcoin mining.
Cryptocurrency and crime describe notable examples of cybercrime related to theft of cryptocurrencies and some methods or security vulnerabilities commonly exploited. Cryptojacking is a form of cybercrime specific to cryptocurrencies that have been used on websites to hijack a victim's resources and use them for hashing and mining cryptocurrency.
The environmental effects of bitcoin are significant. Bitcoin mining, the process by which bitcoins are created and transactions are finalized, is energy-consuming and results in carbon emissions, as about half of the electricity used is generated through fossil fuels. Moreover, bitcoins are mined on specialized computer hardware with a short lifespan, resulting in electronic waste. The amount of e-waste generated by bitcoin mining is comparable to the one of the Netherlands. Scholars argue that bitcoin mining could support renewable energy development by utilizing surplus electricity from wind and solar. Bitcoin's environmental impact has attracted the attention of regulators, leading to incentives or restrictions in various jurisdictions.
Grayscale Investments is an American digital currency asset management company and subsidiary of Digital Currency Group founded in 2013 and based in Stamford, Connecticut.
GPU mining is the use of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) to "mine" proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. Miners receive rewards for performing computationally intensive work, such as calculating hashes, that amend and verify transactions on an open and decentralized ledger. GPUs can be especially performant at calculating such hashes.
US$388 million (2023)