Earth Day 2022: Here’s How the Decade’s Favourite Trend—Cryptocurrency—is Striving to Contribute Towards Sustainability

Although crypto trading is entirely paperless, the concerns stem from ‘mining’, which involves a high amount of electricity and machinery to process complex algorithms.

Bitcoin, one of the most popular currencies, uses around 70,000 computers to run its software and requires roughly 1997.16 kWh for a single transaction, consuming nearly as much electricity as an average family in the U.S. would use for a month.

For this reason, even billionaires, including Elon Musk, stopped accepting payments in Bitcoin at the end of 2021.

Subsequently, sustainable or ‘green’ cryptocurrencies have exploded in the market since the beginning of 2022 in an attempt to march towards a cleaner, greener future. On Earth Day 2022, here’s a quick explainer of how cryptocurrency has the potential to aid in building a sustainable planet.

What is sustainable cryptocurrency?

Sustainable cryptocurrencies mark a minimal carbon footprint, as they do not require vast amounts of energy to process their transactions.

Several other companies have even begun opting for renewable sources for mining their currencies. Research from the University of Cambridge shows that the renewable share of these energy mining reservoirs is already as high as 78%.

Environmentalists have suggested shifting operations next to oil fields, where they can tap waste methane gas or near wind farms to use excess wind energy.

While there certainly are umpteen challenges ahead, crypto definitely has the potential to lead us toward a greener planet.

**

For weather, science, and COVID-19 updates on the go, download The Weather Channel App (on Android and iOS store). It’s free!