A single Bitcoin transaction could cost as much water as a backyard
swimming pool

Cryptocurrency mining uses a significant amount of water amid the global
water crisis, and its water demand may grow further. In a commentary
published November 29 in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability,
financial economist Alex de Vries provides the first comprehensive
estimate of Bitcoin's water use. He warns that its sheer scale could
impact drinking water if it continues to operate without constraints,
especially in countries that are already battling water scarcity,
including the U.S.

"Many parts of the world are experiencing droughts, and fresh water is
becoming an increasing scarce resource," says de Vries, a PhD student at
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. "If we continue to use this valuable
resource for making useless computations, I think that reality is really
painful."

Previous research on crypto's resource use has primarily focused on
electricity consumption. When mining Bitcoins, the most popular
cryptocurrency, miners around the world are essentially racing to solve
mathematical equations on the internet, and the winners get a share of
Bitcoin's value. In the Bitcoin network, miners make about 350
quintillion -- that is, 350 followed by 18 zeros -- guesses every second
of the day, an activity that consumes a tremendous amount of computing
power.

"The right answer emerges every 10 minutes, and the rest of the data,
quintillions of them, are computations that serve no further purpose and
are therefore immediately discarded," de Vries says.

During the same process, a large amount of water is used to cool the
computers at large data centers. Based on data from previous research,
de Vries calculates that Bitcoin mining consumes about 8.6 to 35.1
gigaliters (GL) of water per year in the U.S. In addition to cooling
computers, coal- and gas-fired power plants that provide electricity to
run the computers also use water to lower the temperature. This cooling
water is evaporated and not available to be reused. Water evaporated
from hydropower plants also adds to the water footprint of Bitcoin's
power demand.

In total, de Vries estimates that in 2021, Bitcoin mining consumed over
1,600 GL of water worldwide. Each transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain
uses 16,000 liters of water on average, about 6.2 million times more
than a credit card swipe, or enough to fill a backyard swimming pool.
Bitcoin's water consumption is expected to increase to 2,300 GL in 2023,
de Vries says,

In the U.S., Bitcoin mining consumes about 93 GL to 120 GL of water
every year, equivalent to the average water consumption of 300,000 U.S.
households or a city like Washington, D.C.

"The price of Bitcoin just increased recently and reached its highest
point of the year, despite the recent collapse of several cryptocurrency
platforms. This will have serious consequences, because the higher the
price, the higher the environmental impact," de Vries says. "The most
painful thing about cryptocurrency mining is that it uses so much
computational power and so much resources, but these resources are not
going into creating some kind of model, like artificial intelligence,
that you can then use for something else. It's just making useless
computations."

At a value of more than $37,000 per coin, Bitcoin continues to expand
across the world. In countries in Central Asia, where the dry climate is
already putting pressure on freshwater supply, increased Bitcoin mining
activities will worsen the problem. In Kazakhstan, a global
cryptocurrency mining hub, Bitcoin transactions consumed 997.9 GL of
water in 2021. The Central Asia country is already grappling with a
water crisis, and Bitcoin mining's growing water footprint could
exacerbate the shortage.

De Vries suggests that approaches such as modifying Bitcoin mining's
software could cut down on the power and water needed for this process.
Incorporating renewable energy sources that don't involve water,
including wind and solar, can also reduce water consumption.

"But do you really want to spend wind and solar power for crypto? In
many countries including the U.S., the amount of renewable energy is
limited. Sure you can move some of these renewable energy sources to
crypto, but that means something else will be powered with fossil fuels.
I'm not sure how much you gain," he says.

From: <https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231129112406.htm>

On Thursday, 30 November 2023 at 18:31:06 UTC+1, Ben Collver wrote:

> A single Bitcoin transaction could cost as much water as a backyard
> swimming pool
> From: <https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/11/231129112406.htm>

Of course the defamation campaign won't stop until we are all dead.

Retarded cunts and parasites not even good for re-education...

Julio