Cryptocurrencies are famously bad for the environment… but is there a way we can do better? A study titled “Revisiting Bitcoin’s Carbon Footprint” showed how Bitcoin could be responsible for 65.4 megatons of carbon emissions annually, which is about the same amount as the entire country of Greece. China’s crackdown on Bitcoin mining hasn’t entirely made the dent in these numbers it was expected to, mainly since it was later found that mining in China never stopped. Simply put, no amount of restriction will make a difference. Bitcoin was created to resist regulation and censorship, so even if a country banned mining, it wouldn’t stop individuals from building mining rigs in their homes. High energy consumption The high energy consumption of the mining process is not a flaw; it’s a feature. Bitcoin mining is the process of validating token transactions without the intervention of third parties. This validation process uses large amounts of energy, using the computational power of thousands of mining machines. This entire process used to be possible with home computers, but mining hardware has evolved since the early 2000s, giving rise to Application-Specific Integrated Circuits, chips solely made for mining Bitcoin. These machines constantly run, causing vast amounts of consumption close to the energy used by countries like the Netherlands or Chile. Miners buy the electricity they use, most often generated from fossil fuels. Bur...
