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April 5, 2018
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For those in the know, mining cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, demands a lot of processing power from your computer, and will also very quickly rack up your electricity bill.
Students are ‘dropping out’
For this reason, university students in the US have been at an advantage, because their electricity bill is often included in the rent for their dorm rooms.
This hasn’t changed, but what has changed is the increase in mining costs, combined with a fall in many of the cryptocurrencies being mined.
Crypto-miners are not alone in facing these issues – it affects avid gamers too. The rising cost is linked to the graphics cards used in computers, and these graphic cards alone can easily cost as much as the average person spends on a whole laptop.
Is mining still feasible?
Whereas university students were making quite a lot of money off of mining in the past, these days it can yield as little as $100 per month – which, if they paid for the electricity themselves, would not be a feasible business for the students.
One student reported that he last year managed to mine .00027 Bitcoins daily, but that it cost him 24 kilowatt of electricity to mine. With the soaring price in Bitcoin back then, it seemed like a great idea – these days, it’s a less attractive option.
The simple reason why crypto-mining is becoming more expensive is due to the fact that currencies like Bitcoin are inflation-proof: the system is set up in a way that there is a limit to how many Bitcoins can be in circulation at any one time.
This means that mining Bitcoin, for example, becomes more difficult as time passes. The equation computers need to solve to yield Bitcoins become harder the more Bitcoins are in circulation.
As the amount of Bitcoins comes closer to the limit, mining will only be possible for those with the most sophisticated computers – and those who can afford the incredibly expensive energy bill.
Mining costs around the world
The price of mining Bitcoins varies depending on where you are in the world. In South Korea, for example, the price of mining a Bitcoin is double of what Bitcoins are currently worth. Anyone mining in South Korea would therefore have to be very confident that the value of Bitcoin will go up.
In Venezuela, conversely, the government subsidizes the energy, and so the price for mining one Bitcoin is only around $500 – around 1/20th of the current value of Bitcoins.
The US falls somewhere in the middle – depending on which state you’re in, mining a Bitcoin will cost you around $3,000-4,000. So for the US citizens, mining is still a profitable business.
For those considering to begin mining Bitcoins, there are some good news on the horizon, however. Intel is currently working on a solution that will lower the power consumption of computers used for mining.
Have you been affected by the rising cost in mining? Leave your comments below!
March 14, 2018
Over the years, the technology of facial recognition has continued to be applied in several cases. From the collection of consumer data to identification and security, this technology is estimated to hit an industry valuation $7.76 billion by 2022.
The main aim of the Kairos ICO is to introduce their special facial identification methodology onto the Blockchain technology.
The Value Proposition of Kairos ICO
Basically, Kairos is a tech firm that has interest in facial recognition and artificial intelligence. The Initial Coin Offering conducted by Kairos is an opportunity where customers can buy both utility and security tokens for the onchain version of the platform that they currently use for facial recognition.
The system applies machine learning and computer vision to recognize faces in photos, videos, and even the real world. The Kairos utility token is in a very broad scope due to the fact that the architecture is designed to carry out three main duties.
• The first one is identity, which basically helps in searching and also verifying the faces.
• The other facet that this function is built off of is emotions. This is used for the purposes of measuring mood and sentiment.
• The last facet is demographics, which is used to collect demographic data concerning gender, age, as well as ethnicity.
All these three facets are widely referred to as the human analytics. As such, they can either be used at personal levels or in a group to gather information regarding certain persons as they go on with their day-to-day activities.
Apart from helping businesses by gathering for them certain data regarding the kind of customers that visit their stores, Kairos also assists in gathering important information on how the clients react and feel while responding to stimuli. As a matter of fact, Kairos is the only facial recognition service provider in this vast industry.
The Kairos also has a tokenized architecture that is based on two facets.
• The first one is the Kairos Security token {KAIROS}, which offers a great stake in the industry.
• The second one is the Kairos identity token, or utility {FACE}, which assists in gas to powering the main platform.
The holders of the security token will be awarded with one utility token, and this will cause their liquidity to come from the utility token.
The Strengths & Opportunities of Kairos
Kairos is one company that has shown a solid track record for the past six years they have been in service. They had an opportunity of working with IMRSV, an emotion analysis firm, which gave them a technology they included in their product. This is what brought in the branded human analytics item. Its ability to analyze an individual’s ethnic makeup makes it one of the best companies.
The Team
For the six years, Kairos has been operating; Brian Brackeen has been its Chief Executive Officer Brian is the one who founded the company after leaving Apple, where he worked as a Senior Project Manager.
The company’s CTO is Cole Calistra, while the company’s CDO is Ben Virdee-Chapman. Professional guidance to the members of this company is offered by Herwig Konings, who is the founder and the CEO of Invent Ready.