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By now you've probably heard that #Bitcoin
mining is bad for the environment. @ElonMusk even Tweeted about it yesterday 
.
But why does mining use so much energy? And how big is the impact anyway? 
pic.twitter.com/bCxFrcMI30
Before we get started, some housekeeping:
#Bitcoin = A #cryptocurrency that can be used in transactions or as a store of value
Blockchain = A decentralised database that stores information on transactions
Blocks = A group of transactions
Got it? Let’s move on 
.
Bitcoin mining is energy-intensive 
because of a process called “proof of work.”https://youtu.be/NQTNy_5_gkY
Since blockchains are decentralised, they’re managed by a global network of ‘miners’ who record and verify blocks of transactions for the whole network.
In return for this work, miners are rewarded with newly minted Bitcoins 
.
Before a miner can add a new block 
, they have to play a kind of lottery.
Each block comes with a mystery number, and the first miner to guess the right number gets to ‘mine the block’ and obtain the reward 
.pic.twitter.com/OnEOqz9dhH
The only way of doing this is trial and error, so mining computers 
are iterating through massive numbers of guesses every second. It’s all all of these computations that use a ton of energy.pic.twitter.com/kVE7ED5bVM
But how much energy are we talking about?
There are lots of cryptocurrencies now, and Bitcoin’s alone currently accounts for about 0.5% of global energy consumption 
.
That’s more than Sweden 
, but less energy than is used by household electronics in America 
each year.
We know the energy usage of Bitcoin mining, but to understand its environmental impact we need to know its carbon footprint 
.
Figuring that out is complicated.https://news.trust.org/item/20210513092515-omq8q/ …
Energy consumption alone doesn’t give you a carbon footprint. Each power source emits a different amount of carbon to produce the same amount of energy, that’s its ‘carbon intensity’.
To find the carbon footprint, we need to know where miners are & what they’re plugged into .pic.twitter.com/3IXYtc3Zz4
The available data are incomplete and imprecise, as the exact number of miners and their location around the world is unknown 
.
The most recent research on this comes from a University of Cambridge survey done in Spring 2020.
They found that while over 75% of miners used renewables as a part of their energy mix , nearly 66% of their energy came from fossil fuels.
They also found that most miners were located in these 10 countries 
.pic.twitter.com/EcozZqsBYj
China 
leads in Bitcoin mining by a large margin.
While some provinces like Sichuan and Yunnan use the surplus hydro power, mining in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang uses some of the surplus of coal production there .
Some analysts worry that crypto mining in China threatens the country’s climate targets, and the province of Inner Mongolia has recently banned mining to rein in its energy consumption 
.
In the US , small local communities are even taking a stand against the environmental cost of #cryptocurrency mining 
.https://news.trust.org/item/20210513085242-ca3l6/ …
So what does this mean for the future of cryptocurrencies? And is there a green alternative? Watch our latest explainer to find out more:https://youtu.be/NQTNy_5_gkY
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