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Bitcoin community’s proof-of-work mining consensus has been a subject of evironmental, social and governance (ESG) debates for a very long time and a brand new research might solely add to the rising controversy round BTC’s carbon footprint.
A brand new analysis report titled “Revisiting Bitcoin’s carbon footprint” printed within the peer-reviewed scientific journal Joules has highlighted that the Chinese language crypto mining ban may not have contributed to the discount within the carbon footprint of the Bitcoin community as propagated by many Bitcoiners, quite the opposite, it has elevated by 17%.
China was the first hub for Bitcoin miners earlier than Could 2021 and accounted for greater than 60% of the full Bitcoin community hashpower. Nonetheless, the blanket ban imposed by the federal government led to the migration of a lot of the mining farms overseas. China’s BTC mining hashpower share fell from over 60% in Could to close zero in August, with miners shifting to the US, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Crypto pundits predicted that the migration of miners out of China wouldn’t solely make BTC mining extra decentralized in addition to greener however, the brand new Joule report exhibits in any other case. The brand new analysis report highlighted that the quantity of renewable vitality used to energy BTC mining has declined from 42% to round 25% since final August.
Associated: Georgia punches properly above its weight for Bitcoin mining: Report
The research tracked the supply of electrical energy powering mining operations to calculate the carbon emissions of the BTC community and located that the highest crypto blockchain emits 65 megatons of carbon dioxide yearly. The research concluded that miners in China had been extra renewable energy-focused than a lot of the high mining international locations in the present day.
Alex de Vries, one of many authors of the report, informed Cointelegraph:
“The research basically highlights how Bitcoin mining received even dirtier after the Chinese language mining crackdown of final yr. A variety of the hydropower miners beforehand had entry to right here have now been changed by pure fuel (within the U.S.). On high of that, the coal-based electrical energy in Kazakhstan can also be dirtier than Chinese language coal-based electrical energy. Altogether, that makes proof of labor mining much more carbon-intensive than it already was.”
The Joule journal research additional contradicts a report pushed by the Bitcoin Mining Council led by MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, which claimed that the Bitcoin community makes use of as much as 66% sustainable vitality.
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