Cryptocurrency and its Impact on the Environment
Origins
In 2008, an anonymous person under the pseudonym, Satoshi Nakomoto, published a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer to Peer Electronic Cash System"[3]. On January 3rd, 2009, Satoshi mined the genesis block of the Bitcoin blockchain. The Bitcoin protocol is open source code and has received contributions from numerous developers including, most notably, Hal Finney, Nick Szabo, and Gavin Andresen. In the years since, many other projects have been released that utilize Bitcoin's source code, as well as many other cryptocurrencies that have developed their own blockchain. These are known as altcoins.
Environmental Impact of Bitcoin
Bitcoin is thought to consumer 707kwH per transaction, and according to a University of Cambridge analysis, it is estimated that bitcoin mining consumers 121.36 terawatt-hours a year, which is more than all of Argentina consumes, or more than the consumption of Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft combined [4].
[5].
References
- ↑ https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cryptocurrency.asp
- ↑ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/09/20/bitcoins-impacts-on-climate-and-the-environment/
- ↑ Nakamoto, S. (2018). Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System (pp. 1-9). www.bitcoin.org. Retrieved from https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- ↑ 20, R. C. |S., Cho, R., Dexfolio, J., S, E., Ishita, Nerad, S., Joad, T., & Dallaire, L. (2021, September 16). Bitcoin's impacts on climate and the environment. State of the Planet. Retrieved January 28, 2022, from https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/09/20/bitcoins-impacts-on-climate-and-the-environment/
- ↑ “Bitcoin by Numbers: 21 Statistics That Reveal Growing Demand for the Cryptocurrency.” Bitcoin News, 13 Nov. 2017, https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-numbers-21-statistics-reveal-growing-demand-cryptocurrency/.