The emission of the carbon footprint resulting from mining has been one of the biggest arguments that have been used to try to install a narrative that this activity has caused more harm than good to the world in the last decade. A study reveals that the United States concentrates 47.7% of the Bitcoin hashrate.
The pollution generated by the industry dedicated to the mining of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general, by 2022 stood at 0.08% of total emissions in terms of polluting industry. A 2022 CoinShares report already made it clear that, by 2021, the mining industry had generated 41 million tons of CO2, which translated, for the data at that time, into 0.08% of global emissions by all industries.
In other words, this activity is really not more polluting, as skeptics of cryptocurrencies have been led to believe. In fact, a Cambridge University study for early 2022 concluded that the Bitcoin network uses the same amount of energy as a country like Argentina per year.
However, in this context, research published on the Batcoinz portal shows that, By segmenting the energy consumption of the Bitcoin network, it is obtained that 47.7% of the hashrate is concentrated in the United States, but it also shows that 52.76% of that energy used for the mining process is renewable energy..
Calculation of energy consumption of the Bitcoin network in the United States – Source: Batcoinz
The report explains that there is currently an emission of 29,781 Mt CO2-e/yr, and according to the graph above, 11,822 Mt CO2-e/Yr are emitted in the United States. Likewise, it indicates that 53.8% of global miners use less coal-based energy sources, including China and Kazakhstan, and in the case of the United States, only 52.76% use this type of clean energyremaining below the global average.
Despite this, the Bitcoin Mining Council has published a report in which it has shown that global emissions for the last quarter of 2022 were close to 34.8 thousand Mt of CO2 emissions globally, and the Bitcoin network has been responsible for emitting 0.04 thousand Mt of CO2 emissions; which represents the release of greenhouse gas by 0.107% in relation to global emissions.
In the same way, they indicated that the Bitcoin network consumes an average of 275 TwH annually, and that this represents only 0.17% of energy consumption, since the globalized use of energy is estimated at about 165,317 TwH.
These data clearly demonstrate 2 aspects, the first is the growth of the Bitcoin networkand at the same time the effort carried out by the miners in convert the energy they use into sustainable energythus avoiding deepening the greenhouse effect of which he has been accused so much, mainly in the United States.
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