Initially, a regular home computer would give you a shot at scoring a bitcoin, which as of writing this, is worth more than $55,000 per coin. Today, it’s not realistic. Competitors will run laps around you.
People picked up on the fact that gaming computers are akin to retail supercomputers. Specifically, the graphics cards they sell are perfect for bitcoin mining because of their speed and power. They are the shovels of this ‘gold rush’. In turn, you have bitcoin miners loading up their PCs with five to ten top-end graphics cards, something no gamer ever actually needs. It’s so bad that gamers are finding it impossible to buy the latest graphics cards. The cards are either unavailable or extremely expensive. Nvidia has now installed special software just to limit the effect of bitcoin mining so that gamers can actually buy their hardware.
This introduces the central environmental problem: energy waste. Graphics cards are super energy-intensive. Their high octane processing heats up the hardware, requiring fans just to keep them cool. The pervasive bitcoin mining, with computers groaning 24–7, is consuming more than 77.78 terawatt-hours per year. It is nearly 37 megatons of carbon footprint. For context, bitcoin demands more annual energy than more than the entire Czech Republic. Bitcoin mining is roughly .5% of global energy usage. The energy consumption will continue to rise alongside the price.
Complicating matters more, many large-scale bitcoin mining facilities are now located in China, due to the cheaper availability of hardware and electricity. Remember, the problem with energy is less how it is used and more how it is created. And many of these Chinese facilities rely on coal power, which is twice as polluting as gasoline, and causes disfigurement of the land. Chinese regulators are having to step in due to the drain on their infrastructure.
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Source: https://medium.com/@seanjkernan/is-bitcoin-mining-bad-for-the-environment-a2c7a51cf878?source=rss——-8—————–cryptocurrency
