Earlier this year there was a shocking news report about how Bitcoin is basically collapsing power grids all over the world and that every mining operation uses enough energy to power nine U.S. homes for a day for each coin mined. These figures are shocking. Bitcoin was designed to be self limiting, and one of the mechanisms that achieves that is increasingly more difficult problems to solve with each coin mined. It’s a real problem. But it’s also blown out of proportion.
As with all new technologies, unanticipated problems will arise that will need to be addressed. It’s not likely that Bitcoin’s anonymous designers were trying to destroy the world’s power grid when they came up with the concept of the blockchain-driven digital currency. This was almost certainly an oversight, and fortunately it’s one that can be easily fixed before things get too out of hand.
It’s worth noting here that people are starting to use the word “Bitcoin” to mean all types of cryptocurrency, and that is just simply not the case. There are many different kinds of cryptocurrency out there that are not built the same way as Bitcoin, so cryptocurrency is not going to be derailed before it takes off by the oversight of one type of cryptocurrency’s builders.
Bitcoin definitely has a carbon footprint problem, but there are multiple solutions to this problem. Alternative energy is already being used by one crypto mining operation in China, and there are rumors of ties to the solar grid for another. Learn more about crypto’s carbon footprint from this infographic!
Infographic Courtesy of The Merkle https://themerkle.com/the-real-carbon-footprint-of-cryptocurrency/