Cyber Monday 2017 could set new records, Jeff Bezos breaks the $100 billion barrier, and Bitcoin surges – both in price and energy consumption.
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First up from Twitter is the frenzy of Cyber Monday. Projections from Adobe Digital Insights say that this year’s Cyber Monday could rake in as much as $6.6 billion USD in sales – which is a 16.5 per cent increase over last year’s numbers that also set new records. In fact, this would be the sixth year in a row the day has surpassed previous sales. These projections also blow online Black Friday sales out of the water, which Adobe says amounted to around $5 billion this year. Adobe tracks online spending at America’s 100 largest retail websites, and says online orders tend to peak between eight and 11 pm on Monday because everyone waits until the last minute. Are you one of them?
Trending now on Facebook is news that Jeff Bezos has become the latest tech mogul to join the 12-digit club. The Amazon founder has seen his fortune rise to $100.3 billion USD, jumping almost $33 billion in the last year alone. This makes Bezos the first person to reach $100 billion in the 21st century since Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates hit the milestone in 1999. Unlike Gates, however, who Bezos surpassed as the world’s richest person in October, little is known about what the tech giant plans to do with his money. He’s done little in the way of philanthropy, and sells approximately a billion every year to fund his space business Blue Origin.
And lastly, from Google Trends, Bitcoin is again surging to new heights – but this time, it’s both good and bad. The cryptocurrency has reached a new high, worth $9,770 USD as of Monday morning. With it spiking by more than 1000 per cent in the last 12 months, we’ll probably see Bitcoin hit the $10,000 dollar mark as soon as this week. However, new reports from UK-based PowerCompare say that the global energy consumption used in the production process of the virtual currency, which is known as “mining”, has surpassed the individual consumption of 159 individual countries. Bitcoin consumed about 29.05 terawatt hours of energy this year, or 0.13 per cent of the world’s overall consumption. This exceeds the energy consumed in almost every African nation, Ireland, and 19 other European nations, among others. The study says that in just this October alone, Bitcoin mining energy consumption increased by almost 30 per cent, and if it keeps increasing at this rate, the cryptocurrency will consume all of the world’s electricity by February 2020.
