Impact of Cryptocurrencies
All of a sudden, I wonder about an impact of cryptocurrencies to the environment, because I wrote about environmental issues recently.
【Diary in English】Inconvenient Truth (Oct. 4, 2020)
Cryptocurrencies are not in our daily life, but…
A few years ago, Bitcoin was raised drastically and took a steep dive into the bottom. I heard it required a lot of PCs for calculations and had drastic effects to the global warming. In these days, I hardly see talk about cryptocurrencies around me and on the net. Therefore, I thought it doesn’t have such a huge impact. However, I was totally wrong. Here are some quotes from this article.
Inconvenient Truth, again
“a single Bitcoin transaction could power the average US household for a month, with the Bitcoin network able to process about seven transactions per second.”
“As Bitcoin usage becomes more common, Digiconomist estimates that Bitcoin’s annual energy consumption has risen from 9.6 TWh in February 2017 to 73.2 TWh in January 2020.”
“If Bitcoin was a country, it would be the 40th highest energy-consuming country in the world, ranking above Colombia and the Czech Republic.”
“A single Bitcoin transaction consumes more energy than 100 000 Visa transactions. “
Decentralization…?
Come on… It requires a huge amount of energy! This article mentions about “Bitcoin”. As you know, there are other cryptocurrencies like a number of stars! Also, blockchain technologies will be used not only cryptocurrencies, but also other industries in the future.
“Decentralization”
It sounds like a symbol of justice, but can it be so good after all? We need to put it in perspective. In my opinion, the more important thing is “Balance”.
What do you think?
