Assessing the environmental impact of crypto mining
Gold Rush
With climate change wreaking havoc across the planet, we were just beginning to think about how we could use our technology to conserve fuel and reduce our carbon footprint. Then along came crypto mining.
A study of power consumption in IT would not be complete without a look at one of the biggest offenders – and at a problem that has grown exponentially in recent years: cryptocurrencies. To the user, cryptocurrencies are an efficient, decentralized way to send money around the world, but behind the scenes, the infrastructure that supports crypto mining is consuming power at an alarming rate.
Bitcoin mining alone consumes approximately 91 terawatt-hours of electricity per year [1]. A single US home uses approximately 11,000 kilowatt-hours per year, which means that bitcoin mining consumes as much energy as 8 million homes – more than seven times the total amount of used by Google – and that number is growing every year as Bitcoin gains popularity. According to a recent study [2], if you take the total energy cost of bitcoin mining divided by the total number of bitcoin transactions, every bitcoin purchase has an energy cost of over $100 – even if you're just buying coffee or flagging an Uber.
And keep in mind that Bitcoin is only one of several competing crypto technologies. Overall, the electricity used for crypto mining is about half a percent of all electricity used across the globe (or the same amount of energy used to power the state of Washington for a year). That number has increased by a factor of 10 over the past five years. Obviously, this level of power usage is not sustainable – especially if cryptocurrency becomes the dominant form of currency exchange, as some experts predict.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.