Saad Ullah
Emerging Technologies
On any given day, the two technologies of electric care and financial technology would seem to be two entirely different things. On the other hand, these have a lot in common, than one might believe. The technologies are groundbreaking, disrupting the traditional markets. Tesla is famous for making owning an electric car practical. Bitcoin, as the leader of cryptocurrencies, has also disrupted the financial sector with its speed, security and ease of use.
However, the merging of the technologies was not possible. Not until a few crypto enthusiasts from the group Bcoin were able to successfully use the on board computer of a Tesla electric vehicle to run a full Bitcoin node.
Bcoin is a project that seeks to use different means and methods of running Bitcoin nodes. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, uses the proof of work (PoW) protocol to run and secure the whole network. The nodes are designed to run on a variety of machines, but even then, the computers are mainstream ones and having a different kind of setup to run a node, such as a Tesla car’s computer, is particularly difficult.
Tesla Node Not Practical
Successful as it might be, the thought of having an electric car that can secure the Bitcoin network is not practical. In terms of computing power required to run a fully operational node, the on board computer of the Tesla was used near to its limit. The computer needed to download an immense amount of data (since a full node means having the complete Bitcoin ledger downloaded). The Tesla components are also not designed for such heavy operations.
The Bcoin group did not go into much detail, with only a short video clip posted on Twitter. It is unlikely that the team could have run the node for any sustainable period of time. The computing power requirements would probably also interfere in the operations of the electric vehicle. It is even possible with the node running; the car would not have been able to run at all.
Saad Ullah
