According to recent research, despite a ban on Bitcoin in China last year, mining the biggest cryptocurrency has become significantly dirtier, emitting about the same amount of CO2 yearly as a nation the size of Greece.
The collaborative analysis, titled as “Revisiting Bitcoin’s Carbon Footprint”, found that the percentage of renewable energy sources used to power the Bitcoin network might have declined in August 2021.
It also revealed that Bitcoin might emit 65.4 megatons of CO2 each year, similar to Greece’s national emissions. Chinese authorities initiated a crackdown on cryptocurrency mining and trading in May 2021, and officials barred financial institutions from providing cryptocurrency-related services.
Many miners emigrated to Kazakhstan and the United States as a consequence.
Bitcoin Mining Is Bad For The Environment As China Banned It As Per New Research:
Crypto-mining already consumes more power than most nations, accounting for more than the whole country of Finland, having a population of 5.5 million people. According to many studies, renewable energy has long been assumed to be a big component of crypto-mining. Still, new evidence suggests that this is set to alter if present trends continue.
Other organisations, such as the Bitcoin Mining Council, have stated that renewable energy is used in almost 60% of crypto mining. At the same time, digital asset investment firm Coinshares believes that renewables are used in up to 73 per cent of Bitcoin mining.
Prohibiting Bitcoin Mining Isn’t Going To Help:
According to de Vries, Bitcoin was designed to withstand legislation and censorship, but it wouldn’t make much difference if every government prohibited Proof of Work mining. On the other hand, finding a solution is challenging since even moving to renewable energy, which is more costly than fossil fuels, has drawbacks.
You’d have to lower the price of renewables by legislation to ensure that these miners exclusively use renewables. Then the issue is: do you want them to use your renewables because you’d have to subsidise them? But for what are you returning?
Cryptocurrency-related environmental harm has been attempted to regulate world leaders and businesses. Last year, more than 200 firms and people signed the Crypto Climate Accord, pledging to achieve net-zero operations by 2030, mostly via the use of renewable energy sources.
According to the conclusions of the newest investigation, the agreement is not a solution since it is a voluntary agreement. It isn’t functioning since the network has become less green over the year.
They need some enforcement mechanism in there. Then there may be some reward, maybe some penalty, but at the very least something to make it more believable.