we see a lot of people talking about cryptocurrency as the future of finance but no one talks about the impact it has on our environment.
Bitcoin mining globally consumes over 591 billion gallons of water in 2024, exceeding New York City's 2022 consumption. Water is used for server cooling and indirectly through power plants, impacting areas with water scarcity. Environmental concerns arise as global water shortages persist. Estimates vary, with the UN reporting 255 billion gallons in 2021 and a recent study indicating 591 billion gallons in 2024. Differences stem from varied data sources and methodologies.
- Bitcoin Mining in the U.S.
- In the U.S., bitcoin mining consumes enough water for 300,000 households a year, according to de Vries.
- Texas leads as the bitcoin capital, with over 28% of mining activity, followed by Georgia and New York, as per a September report by Foundry Digital.
- Environmental Efforts and Efficiency:
- A coalition of environmental groups urged the Bitcoin community in 2022 to reduce fossil-fuel-generated electricity use requiring cooling water, with unclear results.
- Despite industry growth, bitcoin mining has become 16% more efficient in energy use from August 2022 to August 2023, according to Perianne Boring, CEO of Digital Power Network.
- Most water used by bitcoin-mining operations is recycled or returned to the environment, Boring stated.
- Legitimacy and Potential Changes:
- Boring defends Bitcoin miners' right to use water responsibly, comparing it to any other industry's water usage.
- Bitcoin could reduce its electricity and cooling water needs by changing its software to require fewer calculations, but this would necessitate consensus among all involved parties, according to Paolo Natali of the Rocky Mountain Institute.
- Natali notes that changing Bitcoin mining methods would be challenging, requiring consensus or the adoption of alternative currencies.
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1 年I respectfully disagree. The impacts of Crypto on the environment are quite negligible considering that at the core of the argument is water usage which is a resource that recycles itself considering is not mixed with any toxic chemicals. Here we talk about water cooling and one know a bit about the cycle of water will point out that water will simply turn into vapours and sooner or later drop down as rain with almost nothing being lost. Also, as long as the miners pay for the resources at a market price, I see it as an actual improvement compared to other industries where the water is polluted in the process and made unusable as result. Lastly, the last part of the argument seems to be written by someone that really doesn't fully understand how BTC works as the main advantage of it is the hardness to crack/cheat the system, by asking to make it simple you just ask to make BTC less attractive and create a precedent of changing the code for no real reason. Is not the fault of BTC that we have unreliable and suboptimal energy systems, there are plenty people that are way smarter than me that provided solutions for cheap electricity, nuclear being the best, but there seems to be no real push towards that, just against crypto..