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ONGOING CRITICISM OF THE IMMENSE CRYPTO-MINING CARBON FOOTPRINT
graphics: pixabay
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Bitcoin Client software. Bitcoin transactions then take place without an intermediary, such as a bank. Hence, the technology is innovative, decentralised and transparent. But there is a drawback; the immense power consumption. STUCK IN AN UPWARDLY-MOVING VORTEX Crypto-mining requires immense computing capacities with correspondingly enormous demand for energy. When Bitcoin first saw the light of day in 2009 it could be done on any average-quality home computer. However, as the popularity of the cryptocurrency grew and, correspondingly, the number of computers hooked up to the system, the demand for computing power rocketed. The larger the network of computers and users, the more complex and complicated the computing tasks required to mint new digital coins – and the greater the need for energy. This ever-accelerating vicious circle has led to the need for special breeds of computer, like the Antminer S9,
For the cryptocurrency Ethereum, a drastic reduction of the required energy use is already scheduled.
still capable of computing for such complex encoding calculations. The CBECI (Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index) was developed at Cambridge University in the UK in order to analyse the entire demand for energy generated by this technology. As a consequence, the global Bitcoin network, the entire crypto-miner community, consumes 145 TWh every year. If Bitcoin were a country, it would be globally ranked 29th in terms of power consumption. Put another way, crypto-mining accounts for approximately 0.65% of all the electricity now consumed on the planet. Seen in context, the electricity consumed by all the data centres in the whole world serves a storage capacity of 2 billion gigabytes of data, and Bitcoin mining accounts for 40% of this energy. The staggering rate at which the demand for energy is growing is revealed by figures recently published on the ‘Digiconomist’ website: In 2018, a single Bitcoin transaction generated a carbon footprint it would take 80,000 credit card transactions to fill. Not even four years later that trans action Bitcoin-to-credit-card ratio has now grown to 1 to 453,000. CHINA SWITCHES OFF It was logical that miners raced to base themselves in regions competing to provide ever-cheaper power and accommodation. Until recently 65% of the world’s Bitcoin miners were situated in China, where they benefitted from cheap hydroelectric power in the summer and cheap coal-powered electricity in the winter. China’s considerable surplus of energy
May 2022
06.05.2022 14:01:34
Foto: Glanzer
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ryptocurrencies are based on the basic principles of blockchain technologies. People began working on manipulation-proof digital entries via cryptographical encoding as early as the 1970s. The unique quality of this cryptological and technological endeavour was the generation of an entity in the digital realm which could not be copied or duplicated. The central concept of this building block system is the blockchain, to ensure the cryptocurrency is secure. A blockchain is a complete chronological list of all transactions conducted using a cryptocurrency such as Bitcoin. Every transfer in the currency adds new blocks to the list. Each transaction block also contains a record of all the previous blocks and becomes part of the chain of blocks – or ‘blockchain’. The built-in records of previous earlier blocks make a chain almost impossible to fake. The basic precondition for participation in general crypto-mining activity is a powerful computer equipped with the requisite
Whatever positive properties the most familiar cryptocurrencies may have, the amounts of energy required to mine them are exorbitant. Globally speaking, if Bitcoin were a country, it would have the 29th largest demand for energy.
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For many people, the ever-increasing numbers of media reports on digital currencies are still as unfathomable as the book with seven seals. What Bitcoin, Ethereum and various other originally-named currencies all have in common is that they are generated by computers. Current estimates put the number of such computers at over 2 million around the globe. The myriad interlinked supercomputers used for the purpose of ‘crypto-mining’ consume colossal amounts of energy. The current global power consumption estimate for this task is 145 TWh, slightly more power than the country of Norway consumes in a year. To ensure maximum profitability for this process, the vast majority of Bitcoin servers are currently located in countries offering cheap electricity. Initially, coal-power was the dominant source of energy, the share of which has fallen significantly as the industry strives for a greener image. However, even if more power is now generated by hydroelectric plants, there is still strong criticism of the excessive consumption of energy in general.
