Bitcoin has been with us for 10 years, but more than congratulations for its tenth anniversary it has received criticism. If the Popular Cryptocurrency continues with us another 10 years (or even less) could have serious effects on the environment .
Nowadays, when we talk about the main contributors to global warming , cars, factories, homes come to mind … to which we should now add thecryptocurrencies .
A team of universities from the University of Hawaii studied the impact that the creation of bitcoin has on the environment. They discovered that bitcoin emissions could raise the global temperature by 2ºC by 2033 .
So that we take charge of the consumption that supposes the creation of the cryptocurrency: at present the mining of Bitcoin uses more energy than 159 countries of the world . Earlier this year the energy consumption derived from the Bitcoin mining was 29.05 TWh per year, enough to feed 2.4 million households in the US.
Jon Truby, Director of the Center for Law and Development at the University of Qatar, spoke about the sustainability of the popular cryptocurrency, claiming that mining a single bitcoin can consume as much energy as required to ” produce energy for your home for months ” .
To put things in context, the authors of the study warned that to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, warming should be limited to 1.5ºC.
The negative impact of bitcoin on the environment could be avoided in the chaos of finding a more efficient way to mine cryptocurrencies, something that researchers do not rule out.
One way to decrease energy consumption would be to employ methods that do not require the computer to solve as many equations, or increase the number of transactions carried out for each resolved equation. Anyway, you have to find a solution, otherwise ” kill the planet, ” said Truby, according to the Independentnewspaper .
So, it’s not just bitcoin’s problem. Trusting that it has reached its peak , and will now continue to decrease, does not solve the problem, since other cryptocurrencies could arrive with a production process that is just as harmful to the environment.
