Cryptocurrency mining and carbon emissions.
A single bitcoin transaction has a carbon footprint of 359.04 kgCO2-equivalent to the carbon footprint of 795,752 VISA transactions or 59,840 hours of watching YouTube.
Along with the rise in the price of bitcoin, its negative impact on the environment is also ringing alarm bells louder. Bitcoin mining, which requires a tremendous amount of energy leading to high levels of carbon footprint, is well on its way to equal the annual carbon emission of 98.9 megatons (Mt) CO2 produced by the London city, said cryptocurrency economist Alex De Vries in a research published in the journal Joule citing information from citycarbonfootprints.info. According to the Digiconomist blog, founded by De Vries, a single bitcoin transaction has a carbon footprint of 359.04 kgCO2 — equivalent to the carbon footprint of 795,752 VISA transactions or 59,840 hours of watching YouTube. The energy usage is equivalent to the power consumption of an average U.S. household over 25.91 days. The annual carbon footprints for Delhi and Mumbai have been 69.6 Mt CO2 and 32.1 Mt CO2.
“The record-breaking surge in Bitcoin price at the start of 2021 could result in the network consuming as much energy as all data centers globally…Beyond these environmental impacts, the production of specialized mining devices might exacerbate the global shortage of chips, which could effect the ability to work from home, the economic recovery after the COVID-19 crisis, and the production of electric vehicles,” De Vries said in the research paper. Bitcoin price has jumped from $5,363 as of March 19, 2020, to $58,567 as of March 18, 2021, according to Coindesk data.
However, the energy required is also important to make the bitcoin network safe. “There is a cost and energy required to maintain everything. An increase in computation is necessary to make the network secure for the Bitcoin network. However, if we are to compare it with the existing consumption of the Banking system, it is still much lower. The energy consumption in the existing conventional system including — Central bank, Payment system, Banks, Money, etc., in total result in more carbon footprints.
