Cryptocurrency VS Fiat money: Who is more polluting?

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When I wake up after doing my main work, I spend a moment reading the news to find out what is happening worldwide or what important events are having a big impact. I was very impressed by an article published in the BBC WORLD about the great pollution that bitcoin is generating in the environment, and although what I read is partly true, I think that in that article they failed to write a comparison between energy consumption to produce BTC and Fiat money to know which is more advantageous and which generates less pollution.

Since worldwide the impact of the carbon footprint left in the environment by producing fiat money, be it banknotes, coins or electronic money, is much higher than that generated by mining bitcoin. That is why I am excited to write this comparison and I hope it can generate some awareness about the environmental impact left by the dying traditional economy.

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Todo por hacer

The case Bitcoin.

If bitcoin were a country, it would consume more electricity per year than Finland, Switzerland or Argentina.
CCAF

What the Cambridge University Centre for Alternative Finance mentioned is true as per year bitcoin mining combined uses 121.36 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity far more than the energy consumed by Argentina. And if we look at the following chart on the countries that consume the most electricity annually we will find that bitcoin is in 29th place.

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BBC MUNDO

And this is because in order to get the rewards for verifying transactions and solving mathematical puzzles they need more mining power due to the great competition that currently exists, also the machines or computers with which they mine bitcoin work around the clock so the electricity consumption is very high. Now let's look at the magnitude of the impact of Fiat money printing on the environment.

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Fiat money

You know something really surprising that after researching and searching for over an hour for some article or reliable source that would give me real results or even an approximate of how much pollution or the impact on the environment the printing of money by governments and central banks I found nothing concrete.

I could find only how much money costs to produce, cost of a $100 bill or a dime. But I could never find the impact on the environment or the pollution that producing the money generates. And it DOESN'T mean that because I couldn't find an article that gave me those results, Fiat money printing does not generate pollution.

  • Extracting the oil to make the plastic used to manufacture some bills requires electrical energy and the constant oil spills generate a very harmful impact on the ecosystem.
  • The cotton and linen used to make dollars in the United States, needs to be cultivated and to satisfy a great demand, for example that of 2020, hectares of virgin forests are deforested to plant it.

  • The pollution to the ozone layer generated by the transportation of money, whether by road, airplane or ship.

  • The terawatts of energy per hour consumed by the big money printing presses of the countries.

Obviously all this obviously leaves a great negative impact on the environment, but it is easier to blame and discredit the new technologies for all the environmental damage, generated by almost two centuries of pollution by the traditional economy.

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Administración pública

Here you can clearly notice the intentions of governments and central banks, because the fact that people produce their own money through cryptocurrencies leaves them out of the game and makes it unnecessary to use their systems to access the economy, that is why there is such a big campaign of misinformation and discrediting about cryptocurrencies, as they constantly show them as the new instrument of Satan to trap and blind humanity.

Due to the increase of purchases and people's interest in bitcoin more and more pollution will continue to be generated and they also mention that it is just another lottery or fad, that when I reach the limit of mined BTC and no more bitcoins can be mined people will lose interest. But obviously we know that they are simple FUD.

It is simple FUD because apart from bitcoin there are a wide variety of cryptocurrencies that consume less energy and are more profitable, also cryptocurrencies are not a fad or a cyclical asset as mentioned by other giants of the economy as we are seeing how it is changing our day to day life pushing us closer to a solid digital economy. New ways of mining cryptocurrencies without the need for a physical miner that consumes electricity are also being explored, and in Leo finance we have LEOM and LEOMM tokens, both with the same performance, cost and benefit as a traditional miner and the best part without leaving any carbon footprint in the environment.

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In conclusion It is true that mining cryptocurrencies creates an impact on the environment due to high energy consumption which in turn is energy are obtained from burning oil and gases that damage the environment, but also other means are used to obtain electricity, for example some miners in China are using the surplus generated by hydroelectric companies and others capture the discharged burned methane to generate enough electricity for their computers, So those who mine cryptocurrencies know the impact they are having and try to find a better solution.

But something very curious that I could notice in the graph of electricity consumption per year worldwide is that the consumption of bitcoin per year is extremely ridiculous compared to China's consumption, but the interesting thing is that we see governments and banks saying that they should stop all this waste of energy, because at the end of the day no one cares and that exuberant energy they use in China and the United States generates money for more powerful elites. But of course it is easier to blame cryptocurrency mining (which is only 12 years old) for all the environmental disaster that is happening right now.

So we can continue to expect more negative comments from people with their heads in the ground talking about cryptocurrencies and all the evil they do to human society. In the meantime we see new breakthroughs coming out that improve mining performance and leave a smaller carbon footprint.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta



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