Give Bitcoin an environmental impact similar to that of oil

Between 2016 and 2021 the mining of Bitcoin, the most popular of the cryptocurrencies, caused environmental damage of over 12 billion dollars, their use is more polluting than cattle breeding and comparable to oil extraction.

This is confirmed by a new analysis carried out by researchers at the University of New Mexico, in the United States, and published in the Scientific Reports magazine to estimate the environmental impact produced by the extraction of Bitcoin, a technique that requires the use of a lot of electricity.

It may seem strange but despite Bitcoin being a purely virtual currency, the market for this cryptocurrency, the first and most important, has enormous environmental costs.

This is due to the fact that in order to produce new Bitcoins, a mechanism necessary to make the market proliferate and without which the entire Bitcoin system would implode, it requires the use of computers committed to making simple but very long calculations that are gradually more difficult as they grow. the number of Bitcoins in circulation.

Calculations that require a lot of energy, so much so that in 2020, the study found, Bitcoin production used 75.4 Terawatt (TWh) hours of electricity globally, more than what was consumed in a year in a nation like Italy. Austria and a quarter of Italy.

The CO2 emissions produced by their extraction have risen 126 times over time, from 0.9 tons per single Bitcoin in 2016 to 113 in 2021 and overall the emissions produced between 2016 and 2021 would be equivalent to damage estimated at over 12 billions of dollars.

By comparing the emissions produced by Bitcoins with their market value, the researchers estimated that in May 2020, the climatic damage produced by the extraction of a single Bitcoin even exceeded the price of the coin by 50%.

On average, the environmental costs of Bitcoins represent 35% of their market value, a figure close to the impact of oil extraction (41%) and higher than the production of beef (33%).