A new study published in Nature Climate Change finds that Bitcoin use may be tied to global warming. According to a team of researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Social Sciences, if Bitcoin is implemented at similar rates at which other technologies have been incorporated, it could produce enough emissions to raise global temperatures by 2°C as soon as 2033.
A new study published in Nature Climate Change finds that Bitcoin use may be tied to global warming. According to a team of researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Social Sciences, if Bitcoin is implemented at similar rates at which other technologies have been incorporated, it could produce enough emissions to raise global temperatures by 2°C as soon as 2033.
“Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency with heavy hardware requirements, and this obviously translates into large electricity demands,” said Randi Rollins, a master’s student at UH Mānoa and coauthor of the paper.
The electricity requirements to process Bitcoin transactions have created considerable difficulties, and extensive online discussion, 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.
The team found that if Bitcoin is incorporated, even at the slowest rate at which other technologies have been incorporated, its cumulative emissions will be enough to warm the planet above 2°C in just 22 years. If incorporated at the average rate of other technologies, it is closer to 16 years.
Read more at University of Hawaii at Manoa
Image: Associate Professor, Geography, College of Social Sciences, University of Hawaii at Manoa. (Credit: UH College of Social Sciences)
