Economic estimation of Bitcoin mining's climate damages demonstrates closer resemblance to digital crude than digital gold.

Autor: Jones BA; Department of Economics, University of New Mexico, 1 University of New Mexico, MSC 05 3060, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA. bajones@unm.edu., Goodkind AL; Department of Economics, University of New Mexico, 1 University of New Mexico, MSC 05 3060, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA., Berrens RP; Department of Economics, University of New Mexico, 1 University of New Mexico, MSC 05 3060, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Scientific reports [Sci Rep] 2022 Sep 29; Vol. 12 (1), pp. 14512. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Sep 29.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-18686-8
Abstrakt: 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".
(© 2022. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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