Last week, Elon Musk's tweet triggered a fall in Bitcoin, in which he announced that Tesla is no longeraccepts payment in BTC. The reason for the abandonment of cryptocurrency was the environmental damage caused by miners when mining Bitcoin. But how justified is this?
Image Source: StormGain Cryptocurrency Exchange
Galaxy Digital conducted a study comparing the amount of energy consumed by Bitcoin miners with gold mining companies and a banking machine. Bitcoin turned out to be less toxic:
Image source: galaxydigital.io
With a global electricity consumption of 166,071TWh/year Bitcoin consumes 114 TWh/year or 0.07%. At the same time, the banking system requires 264 TWh/g of energy, and the mining and processing of gold requires 241 TWh/g, which is twice as much as Bitcoin consumes.
Bitcoin due to decentralization has a number ofundeniable advantages over traditional systems, especially for people living under authoritarian regimes. Alex Gladshtein of the Human Rights Foundation estimates that about 4.2 billion people need such a financial tool. The backward economy of a number of countries leads to a strong devaluation of national currencies, and for many, Bitcoin is the only way to save their funds.
Image source: galaxydigital.io
At the same time, the strength of the dollar is largely due tointernational politics and US military campaigns. So, the M1 Abrams tank burns up to a liter of fuel per minute at idle, and in hot spots they are not silenced at night. In 2019, a report was published assessing the carbon footprint of the US Army in 140 countries around the world. If the armed forces are presented as a separate country, then their energy consumption will be in 47th place in the global ranking between Peru and Portugal.
Son also did not remain indifferent to criticism of BitcoinJohn Lennon - Sean Ono: "People wear jeans, drink coffee, eat almonds and avocados, drive cars, fly, use mobile phones, buy new computers and complain that Bitcoin uses electricity (70% of which is renewable)." In his opinion, everyone should start with himself and stop consuming resources in irrepressible quantities.
In 2015, the Natural Resources Defense Council(NRDC) estimates that inactive devices connected to the US network consume a total of 1,375 TWh per year. This is 12 times the current capacity of the Bitcoin network.
Analytical group StormGain
