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Author: Admin | 2025-04-28
The waste produced by over 25 million tons of landfilled materials. The water footprint of BTC mining is also significant, amounting to about 1.65 cubic kilometers (km3) from 2020 to 2021. This is comparable to the volume of water required to fill over 660,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, enough to satisfy more than 300 million people in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, the land footprint of BTC mining is extensive, affecting more than 1,870 square kilometers of land, 1.4 times the area of Los Angeles. KEY FINDINGSThe cryptocurrency sector provides valuable opportunities and benefits, but has major, overlooked environmental impacts.Bitcoin (BTC) as the most popular form of cryptocurrency has worrying environmental impacts on climate, water, and land.A substantial correlation exists between BTC price fluctuations and electricity consumption, with a 140% growth in electricity use as a result of a 400% BTC price increase from 2020 to 2021.China, USA, Kazakhstan, Russia, Malaysia, Canada, Germany, Iran, Ireland and Singapore were the world’s top BTC miners of the world in 2020-2021.67% of the electricity consumed for BTC mining in 2020-2021 came from fossil energy sources.Coal, the main source of energy for BTC mining, provided 45% of the total electricity used by the global BTC mining network in 2020-2021.BTC mining emitted about 86 Mt of CO2 eq from 2020 to 2021.The greenhouse gas emissions of BTC mining alone could be sufficient to push global warming beyond the Paris Agreement’s goal of capping anthropogenic climate warming below 2 degrees Celsius.The top ten BTC mining nations are together responsible for 94% of the global carbon footprint of BTCTo offset BTC mining’s 2020 and 2021 CO2 emissions, about 3.9 billion trees need to be planted.Hydropower, an energy resource with major water and environmental impacts, is the main renewable energy source of electricity for BTC, satisfying over 16% of the
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