Scientists warn that cryptocurrency mining will lead to climate disaster. Where are the environmentalists?

A new gold rush in the form of bitcoin and other cryptocurrency mining could lead to climate disaster. An exorbitant amount of fossil-fuel-produced energy is wasted every day around the world.

Maintaining the network of the most popular cryptocurrency requires 121 terawatt-hours per year, which exceeds the annual energy needs of an entire Argentina or the Netherlands. Experts note that if bitcoin were a country, it would be among the top 30 largest consumers of electricity and sources of CO2 emissions in the world. In terms of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, mining machines produce about 200 million tons of CO2 annually.

In China, Russia, and Ukraine, where electricity bills are relatively low, cryptocurrency miners create farms of hundreds or thousands of bitcoin mining machines. This fact should not surprise anyone, because currently, the most popular coin has exceeded all historical limits of value, and many “diggers” believe that soon it will exceed the magic limit of $50K. Moreover, finding a productive video card in the market is almost a miracle, and if they appear on sale, their prices exceed the initial cost by 3-4 times. The same thing happens with top-of-the-line laptops. There is no indication that this trend will change in the near future. If bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies continue to grow, we can expect the demand for energy to increase rapidly. For example, Ukraine is already planning to use nuclear power to mine bitcoin. This just goes to show how quickly the virtual coin craze is spreading.

Many people are waiting for the environmental community to move. But there is nothing to indicate that environmentalists are going to take up the issue. Perhaps their leaders themselves are actively involved in cryptocurrency mining and virtual coin speculation, so they are in no hurry to protest en masse. Today, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are a veritable gold mine on which you can make a fortune in a very short time. So why attack something that will help fund other actions of the environmental movement.