Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen Coje_He for the clue delivery! CTOnews.com, Sept. 30 (Xinhua) cryptocurrency mining is energy-intensive because highly specialized computers are needed, and most of the electricity consumed is generated by burning fossil fuels that can warm the planet. A paper published Thursday in Nature's Science report found that the environmental cost of mining in bitcoin, an encrypted digital currency, is close to the environmental cost of producing beef.

CTOnews.com learned that the study calculated the environmental cost of mining Bitcoin against the average market price of Bitcoin and compared it with other commodities such as crude oil, gold or beef. Bitcoin is often compared to gold, and the environmental impact of gold mining accounts for only 4% of its average annual market price, compared with 35% between 2016 and 2021. This means that every dollar of Bitcoin market value produces an average of 35 cents of global environmental damage. For comparison, gasoline produces 41 cents and beef production produces 33 cents of damage. Moreover, as the cryptocurrency market matures, it has a growing impact on the environment, calling into question the overall sustainability of the industry.

Bitcoin, which accounts for about 41% of the global cryptocurrency market, consumes more energy than countries such as Austria or Portugal supplied in 2020. According to the research cited in the document, from January 2016 to June 2018, the mining of Bitcoin, Ethernet coin, Lettercoin and Monroe coins produced 3 million to 1500 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, which is equivalent to the emissions of Afghanistan, Slovenia or Uruguay in 2018.

Bitcoin's carbon footprint also grew over time, as multiple miners competed to validate transactions on the blockchain in order to exploit the new coin. In fact, more and more miners are competing to solve increasingly difficult operations, which means an increase in overall energy use.

Researchers say a bitcoin mined in 2021 will emit about 113 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, 126 times that of a bitcoin mined in 2016. The paper estimates that the environmental damage caused by one bitcoin mined last year is worth $11314, while the total environmental damage caused by all bitcoins mined between 2016 and 2021 could be as high as $12 billion.

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