The Influence of Cryptocurrency on Climate Change – Bit5ive
You may think that cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, is eco-friendly because it’s paper-free, and people don’t use many natural resources to create it. In reality, though, it has a harmful effect on our environment. But how?
Cryptocurrency consumes a lot of energy and electricity, affects the amount of greenhouse gases power plants produce. Digiconomist says that the cryptocurrency sphere currently needs more energy than some countries, such as Austria and the Czech Republic, while the size of its carbon footprint can be compared to that of Denmark.
Environmental researchers and ecological enthusiasts may not be surprised by the huge amount of energy spent by the crypto industry, but it’s still not easy for them to measure the damage done to the environment and the amount of money invested in the sphere. Therefore, scientists from the University of New Mexico started their own research to establish the amount of money spent on such energy consumption and test how much harm it does to the environment.
Climate change is a global issue, so the subject is crucial to study. Professor Robert Berrens, one of the researchers at the University of New Mexico, has experience in “the estimation of financial damages because of environmental impacts of various economics spheres.” Therefore, he has an understanding of the connection between modern technology and energy use. The scientists have started using the cryptocurrency and energy-consumption data available to get information about the amount of money spent.
The researchers found that in 2018, “every one dollar of each bitcoin value that was created caused damages of no less than 0.49 dollars in the sphere of health and environment in America.” That leads us to the conclusion that in 2018, the bitcoin mining process caused climate damages worth half of the cryptocurrency.
Scientist Benjamin Jones says that what makes the research remarkable is the fact that the creation of cryptocurrency is a lot more harmful to the climate and health than most people realize. When mining cryptocurrency, users consume lots of electricity produced from burning fossil fuels, so the crypto creating process increases the emissions of carbon dioxide and worsens air quality, which has a negative influence on the environment.
Yes, cryptocurrency can be created using renewable energy, but more miners prefer making a profit than focusing on sustainability. Vow released an article that claims that people prefer to mine in spots with low-cost electricity, which leads us to the conclusion that dirty energy sources are used there. They tend to pollute the air, which may result in increasing the risk of early death.
The scientists don’t encourage people to give up mining or ban cryptocurrency all over the world. Their main goal was to increase awareness and call on leaders in the technical sphere to start thinking of new ways to create a cryptocurrency. The researchers are also worried that a small number of miners are doing a lot of harm to innocent citizens by damaging the environment and affecting other people’s health. One more scientist in the economic sphere, Andrew Goodkind, suggested that political leaders create laws or policies that will make miners think about the consequences of cheap cryptocurrency creation.
Cryptocurrency mining could be eco-conscious, just visit https://www.bit5ive.com/ to see how.
Published at Wed, 05 Feb 2020 16:33:32 +0000
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