BitCoin is awesome- the underlying blockchain technology, preventing double spending, universal acceptance for most part, investment medium etc.. But any one thought about environmental impact it's causing. Why BitCoin is bad for environment. Let Me eXplain.
BitCoin mining is an utter waste of energy. Why? Because for mining we are not using that energy for doing any useful calculation or validate any transaction. More than 90% of energy is used to solve a puzzle or called as 'Proof of Work'. So what is proof of work. Its just finding a hash for your block with enough number of zeroes. There it is, no useful calculation, no validating transaction, nothing but just finding a hash for your block with lot of zeroes.( Read more about that in my previous post. Link below).
As per rough mathematics currently bitcoin and ethereum consume more power than Iceland or Syria. For power consumption bitcoin and ethereum together stand in 60-70 position if we place countries based on power consumption in descending order.So for what this power being used. For utter bullshit calculation. That is why BitCoin network is not a sustainable network. BitCoin consumes around 15TWh(TeraWatthour) and Ethereum around 5TWh.In a world where everyone is looking for a cleaner greener source of energy we can see a monster growing consuming huge quantities of it.
Apart from that if you are in tropical climate zone it will increase room temp running all those graphics card and ASICs. For a cold country it makes some sense. Instead of running heater run miner so that this power can be used mine Coin and heat output will help increase room temperature. Apart from that to breakeven it takes around 1-1.5 years, view from financial stand point. Both BitCoin and Ethereum network combined will cost same amount of electricity to run Denmark by 2020. We need some sustainable development for blockchain not this madness. Whoever runs bitcoin network should come up with a different approach to add block to blockchain than these Utopian concept of 'Proof of Work'.
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Thanks for reading
Link to my previous post s
https://steemit.com/en-us/@lmx3881/lmx-bitcoin-adding-blocks-to-a-blockchain-20171023t204742968z
https://steemit.com/mining/@lmx3881/lmx-how-to-mine-a-bitcoin-per-day