The digital currency Bitcoin consumes a lot of computer power and therefore energy. According to a new study, this leads to an annual emission of carbon dioxide that is higher than that of Jordan.
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As of November 2018, computers that generate bitcoins consumed about 45.8 trillion watt-hours per year. According to the study, this leads to emissions of 22 to 22.9 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year, as reported by a team led by Christian Stoll from the Technical University of Munich in the journal „Joule“.
Mining becomes more difficult
The cryptographic currency Bitcoin, which does not need a central institution such as a central bank, was designed in November 2008 by a person with the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Trustworthiness and protection should be provided by a mechanism called Blockchain. In 2017, the cryptocurrency based on the Blockchain technology boomed to such an extent that a Bitcoin unit in the meantime was worth almost $ 20,000 (today almost € 18,000). To avoid over-abundance of bitcoins, complex mathematical puzzles have to be solved in order to „mine“ bitcoins – like precious metal from a mine.
In recent years, the task of adding new blocks to the Bitcoin blockchain has become increasingly complex: „In January 2011, a Bitcoin miner with a current graphics processor (two Gigahashs (GH) / s) could expect more than two Find blocks per day, „the researchers write. „In November 2018, the same bitcoin miner (using the 2011 technique) could expect to find a block every 472,339 years due to the increasing difficulty of the search puzzle.“ Even the most powerful scoring system (44,000 GH / s) provides an expected detection rate of one block every 21 years. Therefore, many systems have to run in parallel. At 12.5 bitcoins per block, as in November 2018, about 1,800 bitcoins per day are mined, which are then available.
Big part in Iceland
Stoll and colleagues use data from bitcoin-mining hardware manufacturers released through IPOs to estimate the energy consumption of Bitcoin mining computers. Using internet protocol (IP) addresses of the pool server, the devices, and the Internet node associated with the mining, they determined the locations of the prospecting computers.
Based on the electricity mix at the site (how much electricity is generated by coal-fired power plants), the scientists calculated the carbon footprint for computer operation. The consumption for cooling and additional devices was included in the calculation. This takes into account that a large part of the bitcoins is mined in Iceland, where the electricity does not come from fossil sources.
Meanwhile, an application of blockchain technology is also being discussed in other areas, such as contract design. Among them are methods that consume significantly less energy than the mining of bitcoins. „We are not questioning the efficiency gains that blockchain technology could offer in certain cases,“ Stoll cites in a Joule journal release. However, the current debate about this technology focuses on the expected benefits. However, according to the researchers, more attention should be paid to costs, including CO2 emissions.
