updated: Mar 09 2021, 22:18 ist
By Andrew Ross Sorkin,
“Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to mankind, and so it’s not a great climate thing.”
That was what Bill Gates recently told me.
At a time when companies and investors increasingly say they are focused on climate and sustainability issues, some of them may be about to collide with the reality of another financial trend, one currently worth about $1 trillion: Bitcoin.
The cryptocurrency has become inescapable, with big companies like Tesla and individual investors alike rushing to stock up on the digital token.
But depending on which study you read, the annual carbon emissions from the electricity required to mine Bitcoin and process its transactions are equal to the amount emitted by all of New Zealand. Or Argentina.
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Photo: Police News Agency (AP)
The price of bitcoin has hit record prices this month, and that’s bad news for the climate. As the price of the currency shoots up, so does the energy consumption as people are incentivized to mine more bitcoin. And a new paper published Wednesday in the journal Joule estimates that by the end of the year, bitcoin mining could use nearly as much energy as all the world’s data centers combined.
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The paper, authored by data scientist Alex de Vries, who runs the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, examines the implications between what skyrocketing bitcoin prices could mean for energy use, and how high prices could, without regulation, lock the world in to years of increased mining, emissions, use of fossil fuels in areas with high security risks, and resource scarcity. There’s a “fundamental relationship” between bitcoin price and energy use, said de Vries. “Miners are making more money than they ever have before, which i
As companies and investors increasingly say they are focused on climate and sustainability, the cryptocurrency’s huge carbon footprint could become a red flag.
Bird Song of the Day
Owl Week at the Naked Capitalism Water Cooler continues.
#COVID19
At reader request, I’ve added this daily chart from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site.
I feel I’m engaging in a macabre form of tape-watching, because I don’t think the peak is coming in the next days, or even weeks. Is the virus gathering itself for another leap?
I’m holding the vaccination chart in abeyance until I look at data issues at DIVOC-19 and/or Johns Hopkins, after I get the rest of the post done.