How much carbon dioxide do bitcoins "generate"

It is no secret that for mining bitcoins require large computing power. Just look at the photo report from the mining farm , which is somewhat similar to a data center, only in a cheap version. In this case, the complexity of calculations is constantly growing. Farms consume a lot of electricity. I wonder if bitcoin causes damage to the environment?



The author of the BitcoinEmissions program wrote a code to calculate the exact value of CO ₂ emissions for generating 1 BTC. The published code is suitable for Wolfram Mathematica 9.





When calculating made several assumptions:

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1. When generating 1 kWh _e, 500 grams of CO _{2 is released} ( source , note: the assessment is controversial and is criticized by experts).



2. The average efficiency of bitcoin miners in the system is 200 Mhash / J ( source ).



3. The hash rate grows exponentially (to predict the complexity of computations in the future).



Calculations show that as of May 1, 2014, each new Bitcoin released about 103 kg of CO ₂ . Given the exponential growth of complexity by May 1, 2015, this figure is expected to grow to ≈1602 kg of CO ₂ .



Now let's calculate how many trees you need to plant in order to compensate for the impact of Bitcoin on nature.







On average, a single deciduous tree consumes about a ton of CO ₂ during its lifetime. This means that today, to “compensate” each Bitcoin, you need to plant one and a half trees.



1 BTC is generated approximately every 24 seconds (1 block with 25 BTC goes out every 10 minutes). So you need to plant a new tree about every 16 seconds, that is, 5,400 trees a day.



Naturally, I immediately want to compare the “harm” for the Bitcoin environment with the same indicator for conventional financial systems and financial exchanges. Indeed, for the production of coins and bills in physical form, the natural resources of our planet, paper and metals, are directly spent. Bitcoin is missing this flaw.



In addition, for the work of stock exchanges are spent obviously excessive resources, which also harm the nature. For example, new communication channels are being laid, including underwater ones. The only purpose of these channels is to reduce ping between exchanges by a few milliseconds in order to speed up arbitrage transactions.



And if you count how much resources are spent on the construction of the buildings of banks, cash vaults, physical transportation of money, the damage to the environment will surely exceed the Bitcoin figures.