Is Bitcoin's energy expenditure a threat to the planet?
Some environmental advocates say that supposedly the energy consumption spent on Bitcoin mining would be spending the equivalent of the total on burning carbon that some countries like Argentina consume annually.
This type of news always resonate in the media, especially in times of Bitcoin's high, when of course, energy consumption with mining increases.
They say in a sensational way that according to "studies", the use of currency contributes to the acceleration of global warming, and for this reason, it would be a threat to the planet, the environment, and humanity as a whole.
To understand this issue, the first distinction we need to make is that carbon footprint and energy consumption are two different things.
The problem for the environment is the source of energy generation, renewable energy sources, like solar and wind power, are much less harmful than non-renewable ones, like coal, gas and oil.
Most studies make a generalization when the focus should be on analyzing the power generation of each industry or activity separately.
For Bitcoin mining the only important thing is that the energy spent is cheap and abundant, the energy source makes no difference.
Thus, since miners also have to pay for the energy used, the problem is not in the activity itself, but in the type of energy generation source offered by energy companies to consumers.
As energy generators change and offer clean and renewable energy, any activity that uses energy will become less harmful.
The activities that most harm the environment with carbon emissions in the world today are:
We can see that the real "bad guys" are the auto industry, etc.
This is a subject that seems simple but has many nuances that I intend to try to elucidate in more detail in another article.
For example, the question of considering some activity as waste, which is one of the criticisms, it is a judgment of value. How to determine what is a useless activity?
For example, millions of people in the world pay their energy bills and spend a large part watching soap operas, big brother, or playing video games, could all this spending on pure fun be considered useless? If they pay for your energy, don't they have the right to spend it this way?
So people who believe that Bitcoin is not useless but has an important and valuable role for society, and pay their energy bill on time to mine Bitcoin because they believe in their potential, cannot be considered villains, even more so if they can use energy from renewable sources, as it should be worldwide.
In the next post, we will delve deeper into this subject and we will see that instead of wasting, Bitcoin can quite the contrary help in reducing energy waste, as well as increasing its efficiency.
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