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For all its growth in recent years, the crypto market has also had a huge environmental impact. Liquidity mining in most blockchain networks is highly power-intensive, and as such, the major blockchains in the world have often been associated with massive carbon footprints. Here are some shocking statistics.
According to the Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index, liquidity mining on the Bitcoin chain uses more energy per year than in Sweden.
It is also believed that most mining is done in China, a country whose energy systems are highly carbonised.
There is growing pressure for blockchains to start thinking about a greener, more energy-efficient future.
Despite this, there are a few coins that are not only environmentally sustainable but also offer enough upside for an investor to make some decent returns. Here are some of them:
IOTA (MIOTA)
IOTA (MIOTA) is a distributed digital LEDGER that is actually not based on the blockchain system. Instead, the platform uses something called a Tangle, a proprietary technology system that validates transactions the same way a blockchain would.
Data Source: Tradingview.com
IOTA, therefore, does not require miners and it only needs smaller devices to operate efficiently. This makes it less energy-intensive. MIOTA, the native token for the platform was trading at $1.2 at press time.
Bitcoin Green (BITG)
Bitcoin Green (BITG) is a community-driven blockchain initiative designed to address some of the environmental impacts of Bitcoin. The aim is to find a better alternative to the energy-intensive proof of work consensus on the Bitcoin chain.
The project was founded in 2017 with the hope of incentivising a greener shift by Bitcoin miners around the world. BITG, its native token was trading at $0.04787 at press time. The coin also has a very small market cap of around $550,000. There is still some potential here, especially now that calls for greener crypto are growing louder.
