Miners to turn off equipment in Crypto Hour

Russian Cryptocurrency Miners Set to Turn off All Equipment in “Crypto Hour”

Russian cryptocurrency miners are set to turn off all of their mining equipment for one hour, in a move that’s been dubbed the “crypto hour.” The goal is to draw attention to the amount of energy being consumed mining cryptocurrencies, and follows a similar movement called “Earth Hour,” according to Russian news outlet Rambler.

The Earth Hour movement was created within the World Wildlife Fund, and sees people throughout the world turn off all electrical appliances for one hour to draw attention to their energy consumption. The Earth Hour is an annual event.

The Russian cryptocurrency miners adhering to the “Crypto Hour” called for miners all over the world to join their initiative, asking them to turn off their equipment on March 24, from 20:30 to 21:30 (local time).

Their goal, according to reports, will be to remind the cryptocurrency sphere that there’s a need for more eco-friendly blockchains. Per the Russian news outlet, head of the Crypto Hour campaign Peter Dvoryankin, who’s also a member of the Russian Duma’s expert council for fintech, stated:

“The purpose of the action is to call on the governments of Russia and foreign countries to create maps of “ecological mining” (the possibility of placing mining capacities near renewable energy sources, indicating the temperature regimes of the region), and to stimulate the flow of investments into “ecological mining” projects in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Dvoryankin further added that the “Crypto Hour” campaign would also like to see the creation of “systems to use the heat generated in the process of mining and develop less energy-intensive distributed ledger technologies.”

Adding to that, Rambler noted that Bitcoin’s network currently uses over 50 terawatts-hour (TWh) of energy per year. If the current usage rate continues to grow, the website estimates that by 2020 bitcoin mining will consume as much energy as the rest of the world combined.

Various reports have in the past claimed that Iceland will use more energy to power cryptocurrency miners, than it will in all of its households this year.

While cryptocurrency miners use electricity to run their machines, cybercriminals usually take other people’s machines to mine privacy-centric cryptocurrencies. As covered by Ethereum World News, a researcher recently found nearly 50,000 websites running cryptocurrency mining malware.

Microsoft has also recently been able to thwart an Electroneum (ETN) mining malware campaign that would have reportedly affected as many as 400,000 users. The campaign was being launched in Russia and neighboring countries.