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| Bitcoin mining requires more electricity than the entire country |
In the past year, the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining has increased. While the cryptocurrency has recently fallen in value to more than $ 50,000, the energy with which it was created increased during the epic boom.
According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Index of Electricity Consumption, which is measured by researchers at the University of Cambridge, the currency's energy consumption has increased by up to Argentina's annual carbon footprint.
The recent interest from major Wall Street institutes eventually led Elon Musk to appreciate and recognize the currency, which brought it to the highest levels.
While the recent downturn has affected Musk's fate, Bitcoin also poses a threat to the company's mission to a zero-emissions future and raises serious questions for governments looking to improve their carbon footprint.
Bitcoin mining is an energy-intensive process. Mining solves complex mathematical problems to create new Bitcoins. Miners are rewarded with Bitcoin.
In Bitcoin's relatively short history, people could use a regular computer to search for the coin.
However, the way the Bitcoin mining process is set up means that the number of Bitcoins that can be mined is limited to a maximum of 21 million.
The more mining, the more difficult it is to solve the algorithm to obtain bitcoins. Regular computers can now no longer search for coins after mining more than 18.5 million Bitcoins.
Instead, the mining process requires specialized computer equipment to handle the powerful processing power required to obtain Bitcoin, and this specialized equipment requires a lot of electricity to operate.
In the past, the amount of electricity used to generate currency exceeded that of the entire country (like Ireland), which means that a large amount of electricity is used only for bitcoin.
Proponents of the currency say that as the price of this energy falls, mining will increasingly use renewable energy to generate electricity and use much less energy than other sources of wasted energy.
According to the Cambridge Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, it could take 1.8 years for Bitcoin to be wasted on degraded but inactive home appliances in the US alone.
According to the index, China is by far the country with the largest number of bitcoin mining companies of any country. Although the country is slowly moving towards renewable energies, about two-thirds of its electricity needs come from coal.
In the absence of an official agency or organization that officially tracks the location of the mining operation and the type of electricity used by miners, it is impossible to know whether miners are using electricity powered by renewable or fossil fuels.
Mining equipment can be moved from one place to another depending on where the electricity is cheap, which makes it difficult to keep up with the mining industry.
The Cambridge Center estimates that Bitcoin's annual energy consumption is 115 megawatts. According to the website, the carbon footprint of a single Bitcoin transaction equates to 680,000 Visa transactions or 5,110 hours of watch on YouTube.
An article published in 2018 by Oak Ridge Institute in Ohio found that mining dollars from bitcoin uses 4.7 kilowatts of energy, more than twice the energy needed to mine dollars from bitcoin. Copper, gold, and platinum.
Another study published in the United Kingdom last year showed that the computing power required for mining tripled in 2019 year on year and that mining affects prices in some energy and utility markets.
As Bitcoin continues to dominate as the largest cryptocurrency and is recognized by well-known companies and investment banks, the environmental impact of the coin could increase.