While Bitcoin mining is still a lucrative industry, its negative environmental impact remains a concern. And it has been reported that 98% of the current Bitcoin mining rigs will produce enormous electronic waste.
98% of Bitcoin mining rigs to become obsolete
According to new research conducted by PWC’s Blockchain expert, Alex de Vries, 98% of existing cryptocurrency mining hardware will be useless. And most likely, they will generate massive piles of e-waste.
With mining difficulty and continuous increasing hashrate, the industry is increasingly competitive. After Bitcoin halving – which will happen in about ten weeks – the old mining rigs will become obsolete.
TradeBlock recently estimated that the Bitcoin price should at least go up to $ 15,062 after the supply reduction for mining farms to break even if they upgrade 30% of their fleet to Antminer S17 +, Bitmain’s latest-generation model.
Source: TradeBlock
What’s shocking is that the average lifespan of a Bitcoin mining machine is a year and a half, because we have a better generation of new devices in performing these calculations.
The harm to the environment is extremely significant
De Vries said:
“98% of the old ASIC miners will go straight to a landfill provided they have only one use case. BTC has generated more electronic waste than the entire Luxemburg (more than ten kilotons in a year), and this number is expected to increase after Halving.”
In addition to leaving a huge pile of waste, Bitcoin currently consumes more electricity than Chile, and a BTC transaction releases more carbon dioxide than 780,650 Visa transactions.
The transaction with Bitcoin will be checked and verified by millions of users for the validity of the transaction. These checks are not carried out by the bank but by everyone who created the Blockchain and by so-called Bitcoin miners. Storage of Bitcoin transactions alone requires an average annual energy consumption of 30.14 billion kWh / h, equivalent to the yearly output of 4 nuclear power plants. Still, there is also So much more than that. But if millions of computers are connected, the energy consumption is enormous…
Every day, new miners will participate in verifying transactions and adding them to the Blockchain. This not only increases the demand for electricity but also increases carbon emissions.
It was the tradeoff for the use of energy-assisted cryptocurrencies first predicted by Henry Ford a century ago.
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