CRYPTOCURRENCY TEMPERATURE COROLLARY

BITCOIN can push global warming above 2 degrees C in a couple of decades.
It alone could produce enough emissions to raise global temperatures as soon as 2033.

A new study published in the  peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change finds that if Bitcoin is implemented at similar rates at which other technologies have been incorporated, it alone could produce enough emissions to raise global temperatures by 2 degree C as soon as 2033.

''Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency with heavy hardware requirements, and this obviously translates into a large electricity demands,'' said Randi Rollins, a master's student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and co-author of the paper.

Purchasing with Bitcoins and several other crytocurrencies, which are forms of currency that exist digitally through encryption, requires large amounts of electricity.

Bitcoin purchases create transactions that are recorded and processed by a group of individuals referred to as miners.

Miners are group every Bitcoin transaction made during a specific timeframe into a block. Blocks are then added to the chain, which is the public ledger.

The verification process by miners, who compete to decipher computationally demanding proof-of-work in exchange for bitcoins, requires large amounts of electricity.

The electricity requirements of Bitcoin have created considerable difficulties, and extensive online discussions. about where to put the facilities or rings that compute the proof-of-work of Bitcoin.

A somewhat less discussed issue is the environmental impacts of producing all that electricity.

A team of UH Manoa researchers analyzed information such as the power efficiency of computers used by Bitcoin mining, the geographic location of the miners who likely computed the Bitcoin and, and the CO2 emissions of producing electricity in three countries.

Based on the data, the researchers estimated that the use of bitcoins in the year 2017 emitted 69 million metric tons of CO2.