According to a UN study, generating the cryptocurrency Bitcoin worldwide uses more electricity than many populous countries such as Pakistan. Forecasts from July of this year expected more than 135 terawatt hours (TWh) to be required for Bitcoin mining in 2023, writes a group led by Kaveh Madani from the Institute for Water, Environment and Health at the United Nations University in Hamilton (Canada) in the specialist magazine “Earth’s Future “.
The scientists also warn that the majority of electricity comes from fossil fuels. The cryptocurrency therefore puts an extreme strain on the environment and climate.
Bitcoins are also known as digital gold: Similar to gold mining, the virtual coins are also mined. Production is based on so-called blockchain technology, in which transactions are stored as cryptographically linked blocks of data. The so-called miners use high computing power to verify every transaction and create a data block that is added to this blockchain. This uses enormous amounts of energy.
The water footprint of cryptocurrency production is significant
According to the study, 173 TWh were required for Bitcoin mining in the two-year period between 2020 and 2021 – 60 percent more than in the period from 2018 to 2019. The researchers rely on data from the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index.
67 percent of the mining electricity consumed between 2020 and 2021 came from fossil energy sources. Hydropower, as the Bitcoin mining network’s main renewable energy source, covered around 16 percent of the electricity needs.
Madani’s team emphasizes that the water footprint of producing the cryptocurrency is significant. For the period 2020 to 2021 it amounts to around 1.65 cubic kilometers. This could serve more than 300 million people in rural areas in sub-Saharan Africa or fill more than 660,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. During the same time, around 86 million tons of CO2 were emitted through Bitcoin mining.
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