The cryptocurrency bitcoin may already be driving greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to a mid-size country, a new study has found. The report, published in Nature Climate Change, says bitcoin alone could bring global temperatures over the 2ºC threshold by 2034.
If cryptocurrencies continue their rapid growth, it could catapult the planet to dangerous warming levels. A new report suggests that bitcoin is as stable as oil and the dollar, so continued growth is expected. Services that offer free forex signals are also offering bitcoin signals, further promoting the trading of this cryptocurrency.
Last year, the emissions produced by bitcoin mining reached 69 million metric tons of CO2. Bitcoin miners are the reason for the grim outlook. Miners use powerful processing hardware to support the software needed to solve the key and verify the bitcoin. Those powerful machines are energy gluttons. But miners get a percentage of the bitcoins they verify, making the venture worthwhile.
Verification takes an enormous amount of energy. As bitcoin adoption expands, the energy demands will increase exponentially.
Current analysis suggests that mining for bitcoin is more detrimental to the planet than mining the planet itself.
Further problems will arise if the price of bitcoin rises. When prices increase, there’s more incentive to mine bitcoin. The way bitcoin is set up, the problems that must be solved become increasingly complex, requiring more machinery and more energy.
But critics warn that the new research “makes much too coarse and even wrong assumptions.” In many cases, bitcoin miners flock to places with cheap electricity rates. That often means setting up shop near a hydroelectric dam, which would mean that the mining operation would not produce greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, there are still miners that tap into electricity grids powered by coal plants.
The problem with the study is that it uses countrywide averages to gauge the greenhouse gas emissions for electricity use. Greenhouse gas emissions can vary, depending on the source of the electricity.
And miners are stationed all over the world. Nearly three-quarters of all bitcoin mining occurs in China, where the government has started limiting power use for digital currency.
It is suggested that changing the difficulty of the problems that should be computed or including more transactions in each computation may reduce energy consumption, too.
Some competing cryptocurrencies are already working on such changes. Ethereum, for example, is working on a model that will use less energy during mining and still securely record transactions to the blockchain.
