Bitcoin

Bitcoin Keeps Getting Dirtier & Cheerleaders Keep On Cheering

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Chart: Matthew SparkesSource: Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance Created with Datawrapper

We already knew it was dirty. But it keeps getting dirtier and the guys who cheerlead unfettered “innovation” come across as celebrating the dirty as the unavoidable cost of progress. Something’s gotta give:

Skull of Satoshi, a sculpture by Benjamin Von Wong highlighting the environmental impact of bitcoin. VonWong/Skull Of Satoshi/Greenpeace blog.vonwong.com/skull/

Should nations try to ban bitcoin because of its environmental impact?

Bitcoin miners seem unwilling to take action to curb the cryptocurrency’s energy and water use – so some campaigners argue that it is time for governments to intervene

The amount of electricity used to mine and trade bitcoin climbed to 121 terawatt-hours in 2023, 27 per cent more than the previous year. Continue reading →

Bitcoin’s Carbon Footprint Explained

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Cryptocurrency’s immense carbon footprint has been well known since early on. What to do about it is the question. Getting a good answer to that question depends in part on understanding the nature of the problem. Read below for the clarity of the explanation on this topic, and let the illustrations make it that much clearer:

Bitcoin Uses More Electricity Than Many Countries. How Is That Possible?

Cryptocurrencies have emerged as one of the most captivating, yet head-scratching, investments in the world. They soar in value. They crash. They’ll change the world, their fans claim, by displacing traditional currencies like the dollar, rupee or ruble. They’re named after dog memes. Continue reading →

The Big Carbon Footprint For Mining Virtual Currency

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A computer server farm in Iceland, dedicated to mining Bitcoin. Richard Perry/The New York Times

Thanks to the New York Times for this story on how much electricity is required to create virtual currencies:

SAN FRANCISCO — Creating a new Bitcoin requires electricity. A lot of it.

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An employee at a Bitmain facility in Inner Mongolia, one of the biggest Bitcoin farms in the world. Giulia Marchi for The New York Times

In the virtual currency world this creation process is called “mining.” There is no physical digging, since Bitcoins are purely digital. But the computer power needed to create each digital token consumes at least as much electricity as the average American household burns through in two years, according to figures from Morgan Stanley and Alex de Vries, an economist who tracks energy use in the industry.

The total network of computers plugged into the Bitcoin network consumes as much energy each day as some medium-size countries — which country depends on whose estimates you believe. And the network supporting Ethereum, the second-most valuable virtual currency, gobbles up another country’s worth of electricity each day. Continue reading →