Bitcoin has become considerably more polluting over the years. It mine (‘mining’) a bitcoin resulted in 126 times more CO2 emissions in 2021 than in 2016. In 2020, the popular crypto currency consumed a total of 75 terawatt hours of electricity, of which an estimated 61 percent came from fossil sources. For comparison: Austria consumed 70 TWh of electricity that year, the Netherlands 111 TWh. The climate damage associated with the mining of bitcoin is estimated at an average of 35 percent of the market value for the years 2016 to 2021 – for 2020 that is even 82 percent.
Bitcoin ‘mining’ leads to more and more climate damage
