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Creating and maintaining bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies requires a huge amount of computing power, something that's been a common bitcoin criticism in recent years.

These computers, mostly used to solve the complex mathematical questions that unlock new bitcoin tokens, use a staggering amount of energy, with some estimates putting requirements as equal to a medium-sized country.

Now, amid the coronavirus crisis sweeping the world, thousands of these computers that were mining and maintaining bitcoin and cryptocurrencies have turned their considerable power toward helping to tackle coronavirus.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrency mining farms can house many thousands of CPUs all working to solve the ... [+] mathematical equations needed to unlock new bitcoin--and now some are helping with coronavirus research.

Earlier this month, the largest U.S. creator of ethereum tokens, CoreWeave, said it has redirected the processing power of some 6,000 specialized cryptocurrency computer chips, which had been earning around $3,600 per day, toward coronavirus research.

This week, blockchain development company Bitfury has said it's put some of the computing power it had used for digital currency transaction processing to help fight the coronavirus pandemic.

Elsewhere, decentralized computing network golem and blockchain platform tezos have also donated some of their resources toward coronavirus research.

The bitcoin and cryptocurrency companies have signed up to the Washington University Folding at Home project, created by a consortium of scientific research labs across North America, Europe and Asia to form a distributed supercomputer for disease research and pharmaceutical development.

"To help tackle coronavirus, we want to understand how these viral proteins work and how we can design therapeutics to stop them," the Folding at Home project explained.

"Our specialty is in using computer simulations to understand proteins moving parts. Watching how the atoms in a protein move relative to one another is important because it captures valuable information that is inaccessible by any other means."

The Folding at Home project recently simulated a protein from the Ebola virus and claims to have helped scientists in developing effective drugs.

The results from Folding at Home computations are publicly available, allowing any organization working on a vaccine, treatment or other research to use it in their work at no cost.

The bitcoin price was hard hit by the coronavirus-induced market crash last month.

Bitfury, based in the Netherlands, has said some of its high-powered GPU-enabled computing nodes have been running COVID-19 calculations since March 20.

"To date these nodes have completed more than 1,300 calculations for the Folding at Home endeavor to analyze the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), and the company plans to scale-up its contribution significantly over time," Bitfury said in a statement.

"Our contribution of highly efficient computing power pales next to the selflessness and sacrifice of our medical caregivers and essential staff on the front lines of this virus, but I am confident that this project from Folding at Home, alongside the work of many researchers and doctors, will significantly advance our understanding and treatment of this disease," said Valery Vavilov, Bitfury chief executive.

The number of confirmed coronavirus cases around the world has exploded in recent weeks, hitting 860,000 and causing some 42,000 deaths, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Meanwhile, a United Nations report estimates that around 25 million jobs could be lost around the world as the result of the coronavirus outbreak and the global shutdown put in place to stem its spread.

Excerpt from:
Bitcoin Bros Are Directing Their Powerful Computers Toward Coronavirus COVID-19 Research - Forbes