Economic estimation of Bitcoin mining's climate damages demonstrates closer resemblance to digital crude than digital gold.
Sci Rep
; 12(1): 14512, 2022 09 29.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-36175441
ABSTRACT
This paper provides economic estimates of the energy-related climate damages of mining Bitcoin (BTC), the dominant proof-of-work cryptocurrency. We provide three sustainability criteria for signaling when the climate damages may be unsustainable. BTC mining fails all three. We find that for 2016-2021 (i) per coin climate damages from BTC were increasing, rather than decreasing with industry maturation; (ii) during certain time periods, BTC climate damages exceed the price of each coin created; (iii) on average, each $1 in BTC market value created was responsible for $0.35 in global climate damages, which as a share of market value is in the range between beef production and crude oil burned as gasoline, and an order-of-magnitude higher than wind and solar power. Taken together, these results represent a set of sustainability red flags. While proponents have offered BTC as representing "digital gold," from a climate damages perspective it operates more like "digital crude".
Texto completo:
1
Bases de datos:
MEDLINE
Asunto principal:
Cambio Climático
/
Economía
/
Minería de Datos
Tipo de estudio:
Health_economic_evaluation
Límite:
Humans
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Sci Rep
Año:
2022
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Estados Unidos