The journal published on November 5th by Nature journal was written by researchers at the Oak Ridge Institute in Cincinnati Ohio. The paper points out that bitcoin is consumed in dollars. Energy is more than three times the energy required to produce equivalent gold.
According to the report from the beginning of 2016 to the middle of this year the energy required to mine $1 worth of bitcoin is 17 megajoules while the energy required to mine the equivalent dollar of gold is 5 megajoules. Other cryptocurrencies such as litecoin Ethereum and Monero also require more energy than mining the same amount of gold.
The only metal that consumes more energy than Bitcoin and the other three major cryptocurrencies the value of the dollar is aluminum. The extraction of one dollar of aluminum consumes 122 megajoules; rare earth oxides (REOs) require 9 megajoules. . Platinum Group Metals (PGMs) consume 7 megajoules of energy which is equivalent to the energy required to mine Ethereum and Litecoin.
In the quantification section of the report “from the average number of days from January 1 2016 to June 30 2018 we estimate that Bitcoin Ethereum Litecoin and Monero mining require 17mj 7mj 7mj and 14mj respectively.”
In contrast we estimate that mining aluminum copper gold PGMs and REOs requires 122 4 5 7 and 9 megajoules to get $1.
In addition the paper also observes that the carbon footprint left by cryptocurrency mining depends on the country in which the mining activity is located. For example because Canada has cheaper and cleaner energy than China it has been found that encrypted digital mining in China releases four times as much carbon as Canada.
Unlike another recent study that portrays a doomsday scenario projected by the cryptocurrency mining industry and its catastrophic impact on the environment the paper points out that the adoption of new technologies can minimize environmental impact such as Monroe's hard forks and changes in the planned Ethereum consensus mechanism.
Monroe's hard fork plan on April 6 significantly reduced energy demand. In addition Ethereum's future transition to POS consensus mechanism will reduce long-term network energy demand. Therefore the environmental impact of any cryptocurrency in the future based on each coin mined may be greater or less than the impact determined in our current assessment.