We usually say that is not very sustainable, mining certainly causes pollution and we have high energy consumption but rumors a

We usually say that is not very sustainable, mining certainly causes pollution and we have high energy consumption but rumors and articles are enormously catastrophic because the real data tell another story. Bitcoin would pollute because most of the mining farms use gas and coal-fired power plants. This causes global warming due to the high rates of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.

Furthermore, according to the common opinion, the Bitcoin network consumes a high amount of energy which is considered "wasted". In reality, this deployment of energy serves to run the Bitcoin network, a decentralized, incensurable and secure payment network. Energy is used to produce new blocks and validate transactions.

CONSUMPTION OF BITCOIN RELATED TO OTHER SECTORS

How much does Bitcoin consume compared to other sectors?

The banking system consumes 263 TWh (also including data centers and ATM), the industry to extract and process gold consumes 200 TWh. You should consider that gold mining also leads to soil degradation.

Bitcoin consumes around 140 TWh and this number increases as the number of miners increases. You can learn more here: On Bitcoin's Energy Consumption (Galaxy Digital Mining)

Initially, the mining process used rather limited amounts of energy, as Bitcoins were produced using few computers. In recent years, history has changed considerably and we have come to use an increasingly powerful calculation system and consequently more and more in need of energy.

However, even in this case it can be seen that there are sectors and activities that have enormously higher consumption. You can notice how compared to the traditional financial sector, BTC consumes 20 times less and represents 0.16% of the total:

Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index estimated that a Bitcoin transaction requires 1,449 kWh to complete, which is the equivalent of about 50 days of energy for an average US family. In monetary terms, the average cost per kWh in the US is around 12 cents. This means that a Bitcoin transaction would generate an energy bill of around $ 170. This calculation, however, does not make sense because the energy consumption of Bitcoin does not vary as the transactions on the network change. If there are 3 transactions per day or millions of transactions, the consumption remains the same so it is not true that as adoption increases, pollution will increase.

How much is consumed to produce banknotes (fiatcurrency)? An answer came from the European Central Bank. As for the costs, we can report those incurred by the United States for the issuance of new currency. The operating budget for the currency in 2022 is just over $ 1 billion. To produce Bitcoin, the costs in July were $ 13,000, up from $ 24,000 a month earlier.

According to the Q2 Global Bitcoin Data Mining Review, 50% of companies that mine Bitcoin do so with 59.5% of sustainable sources, and energy efficiency has improved by 46% year-on-year.

In addition, the constant improvements to the network and "the relentless improvement of semiconductors" make mining much more energy efficient than large companies such as Facebook, Google or Netflix. The technological efficiency of the global Bitcoin network went from 12.6 exahash per gigawatt (EH / GW) in the first quarter of 2021 to 20.5 EH / GW in Q1 2022. In the first quarter of 2022 the hashrate and related security of the Bitcoin network improved 23% year-on-year while energy use dropped 25%, explains MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor. The improvement in technological efficiency is essentially due to progress in the field of semiconductors, in addition to the increasingly widespread use of sustainable energy and advanced mining techniques. According to Saylor, 99.92% of the world's carbon emissions are due to industrial energy uses other than Bitcoin mining.

Bitcoin's energy consumption is about 10 billion dollars per year (if an estimated $ 0.05 per kWh), however, according to data from the Bitcoin Mining Council, it uses renewable energy much more than all European and world nations.

Even if we analyze the consumption of electricity generated by Bitcoin mining, we realize that shortages and possible blackouts are caused by something else, as the consumption (in proportion) is very minimal. Haters can say that BTC adds pollution to other pollution anyway. It consumes energy. All this is true but it should be considered that now many mining farms are using renewable energy (solar panels, wind energy, hydro-electric energy). What if the thermal energy produced by mining were used to heat a boiler and obtain hot water? I am not a Bitcoin maximalist. I am a cryptocurrency maximalist who believes that the traditional financial system has always been rotten!

Why not use this renewable energy to run a network like Bitcoin? You remember that BTC is financial freedom!

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