A recent research by scholars from the Munich Technical University (TUM) evaluated Bitcoin related data and found that its usage gives rise to vast amounts of carbon dioxide, known as CO2. The annual amount of released toxins comes to 22 megatons, which is equal to the total emissions of cities like Las Vegas or Hamburg, raising questions about the ecological consequences of the cryptocurrency.

Environmental costs of Bitcoin

Creation of virtual currency like Bitcoin requires some real energy.

As you may know, the crypto currency itself can be generated by anyone who joins the global Bitcoin network and solves a computational problem.

This process involves computing capacity and high energy consumption, and called mining.

The latest observations prove that the volume of Bitcoin mining keeps expanding faster than the Universe itself: Only in 2018 it quadrupled as compared to the previous year.

The global acceptance of the cryptocurrency raises concerns over its negative impact on the environment due to the way it’s operated.

The answer to this question seems rather obvious and could be easily expressed as the exact amount of CO2 emissions released in the course of Bitcoin mining.

The study to evaluate the impact of mining was done by German scientists from TUV in collaboration with colleagues of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

According to Christian Stoll, one of the researchers, “A few approximations of analysis were quite sufficient for drawing basic conclusions”.

Gathering the data

First of all, a scientific squad needed to gather and interpret miscellaneous quantitative information that would allow to calculate the power consumption of the network. This mainly depends on the hardware employed in cryptocurrency production.

“Bitcoins are gained though the use of special systems called ASIC-based miners that are more powerful and much faster than their prototypes”, clarifies Mr. Stoll.

Three manufactures that controlled ASIC miner market had been planning to go public and release an IPO in 2018.

To determine the market price of shares for certain products, the team used IPO filings compulsory for each proposer.

It was a real detective work which, except for professional knowledge, involved additional skills that helped researchers to get some reliable data.

Scientists also needed to know if the cryptocurrency was generated from home with the use of just one miner or by one of  broadscale ”farms” launched by experienced operators.

“These farms need lots of energy not only for Bitcoin processing, but also for cooling their data centers”, Stoll explained.

The data of computing power, that is required to be disclosed by public pools, allowed experts to assess the orders of magnitudes involved in the process.

The rise of crypto currencies raises concerns about their negative impact on the environment.

Global march of miners

The investigation goals were far beyond mere estimates: analysts also wanted to know how miners are distributed around the world.

Once again, the conclusive information was derived from mining pools’ statistics. “To speed up the reward for solving mathematical problems, miners often combine their computing powers”, explains Mr. Stoll.  The team detected that miners are inclined to join pools of their home or nearby countries, which was proved by their IP addresses.

As the result, researchers were able to determine that 68% of the blockchain computing power is located in Asia, 17% in Europe and 15% within the North America.

These figures were then combined with the data on magnitude of the carbon generation in a number of countries.

This allowed scientists to conclude that the yearly carbon footprint of the Bitcoin system is 22-22.9 megatons. This is equal to footprint of cities like Las Vegas, Vienna or Hamburg.

Bitcoin contributes to global warming

“It is needless to say that climate change is caused by not only carbon emissions. Nevertheless, carbon footprint is not something insignificant that we can miss and act like ostriches hiding behind flimsy excuses. The time is ripe to reconsider the prevailing attitude to this issue and make our authorities to address the current situation with cryptocurrency mining. It should be separately and strictly regulated, especially in countries with high carbon intensity of power industry”, points out Christian Stoll.

“The first step to slow down the climate change on our planet might be linking most mining farms to additional sources of renewable energy”, the researcher concluded.

Read also:

• Cryptocurrency Dating — Communicate with Bitcoin
• Best country for a crypto currency business
• Will Ukraine become the next India for IT outsourcing?
• Global warming was the reason for evolution of life