Based on extensive research conducted by experts, we conclude that the Bitcoin network in 2021 alone produced about 57 million tons of carbon dioxide. Experts say 284 million new trees need to neutralize the pollution.
According to Crypto Potato, the issues related to the development of blockchain industry, the extraction of digital currencies and the preservation of the environment often overlapped. But just one tweet from Tesla CEO Elon Musk was enough to make the digital currency community think about what is happening to bitcoin miners and other proof-of-network networks.
Forexsuggest website in a new study using data from Statista, Business Insider India and Laptop Mag platforms Digital currency emissions, approximate carbon emissions and resources required measured to counteract the effects of the pollution produced.
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin Cash Generate the Most Pollution As expected, Bitcoin and Ethereum are the most polluting
digital currency networks. These two networks also have the highest processing power compared to other blockchains.
In 2021 alone, Bitcoin emitted about 56.8 million tons of carbon dioxide, which is 2.5 times more than Ethereum. According to the company, the environmental impact of bitcoin is so great that if we want to neutralize all the pollutants emitted by bitcoin miners, we will need 284.1 million trees.
The Ethereum produces less pollution, but its function is not very healthy. Ethereum's miners have produced 22 million tonnes of carbon dioxide this year. If we are to deal with the effects of this amount of carbon dioxide, we require approximately 110 million new trees.
Bitcoin Cash is one of the Bitcoin forks that was created in 2017 with the aim of extracting larger blocks; Larger blocks, which of course produce more pollution. This digital currency is in the third place with the production of 1.5 million tons of carbon dioxide. However, the highest annual growth rate of greenhouse gas emissions, with a 748% increase, belongs to bitcoin cache.
The results of this study show that this year, probably because bitcoin miners have moved away from China and the thermoelectric energy of its power plants and moved to countries like the United States that use cleaner energy sources, the level of pollution of this digital currency network has also decreased by 5%.
Eco-friendly digital currencies in 2021
Despite the pollution of some networks, the digital currency industry has greener alternatives; Unfortunately, these eco-friendly tokens are less popular than most popular digital currencies.
Nano ranks third in this authoritative list that introduces the greenest digital currencies. This digital currency does not use the extraction process and is created using Block Lattice technology instead of Blockchain. Nano can process 125 transactions per second and requires only 0.000112 kWh of energy per transaction. As a result, the carbon dioxide emissions of this digital currency will be very small.
The second most widely used currency in the market is Iota (IOTA). Instead of using the blockchain, this digital currency network also uses Directed Acyclic Graph technology and Probabilistic mechanism. This technology requires about 0.00011 kWh of energy for each transaction.
The results of this research show that Stellar is the most environmentally friendly digital currency. This currency is known as Ripple's competitor and requires only 0.000300 kWh of energy for each transaction. This is about one-third of the energy required for Iota transactions.
Stellar requires 0.0204 grams of carbon dioxide per transaction, which is almost nothing compared to the 481,034.7 grams of carbon dioxide produced for each bitcoin transaction.