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Despite suffering a huge price plunge in previous months, bitcoin (BTC) is still a hot commodity within the cryptocurrency community. However, crypto folks are well aware of the fact that mining BTC gobbles up insane amounts of power and this has been the concern of many. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alongside the Dutch central bank recently published a report suggesting that bitcoin mining is producing waste similar to that of a small country.
Bitcoin’s rising e-waste
This was published in the “Resources, Conservation and Recycling” journal by Alex de Vries (Dutch central bank) and Christian Stoll (MIT) as they noted that the lifespan of bitcoin mining devices remains limited to just 1.29 years. Further, it was also stated that because of this, the authors projected an estimate that the entirety of the BTC network is as of late cycling through 30.7 metric kilotons of equipment annually.
Such a figure according to them is in comparison to the amount of small IT and telecommunication equipment waste that is being produced by a small nation like the Netherlands.
It was also noted that at peak bitcoin price levels seen early this year, the annual amount of e-waste is highly likely to surge beyond 64.4 metric kilotons in the midterm. This highlights the dynamic trend in the event the price of BTC rises further. The report went on to state that the demand for mining hardware already as of late impedes the semiconductor supply chain on a global scale.
BTC mining rigs’ lifespan
This bitcoin mining rigs’ lifespan is one of the main reasons for such environmental concern. For the uninitiated, only the latest chips in the market can mine this king token efficiently and profitably. As for the older application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) with no alternative use beyond mining have no purpose unless the price of the said digital currency were to surge.
Bitcoin’s surging energy usage has prompted an intense debate regarding the sustainability of the cryptocurrency. Albeit all these, the majority of the studies have thus far snubbed that BTC miners are cycling through an increasing amount of hardware with short lifespans that could potentially worsen the growth in global electronic waste.
Bitcoin e-waste overlooked
The cryptocurrency community is all too familiar with bitcoin being under scrutiny for the above-mentioned usage of energy including the carbon generated in mining the digital currency. It can be recalled that Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk expressed his concerns about it in a series of tweets as this resulted in bitcoin’s price plunging bigtime. However, according to de Vries and Stoll, the e-waste may well seem to be overlooked by Musk.
Steve Anderson is an Australian crypto enthusiast. He is a specialist in management and trading for over 5 years. Steve has worked as a crypto trader, he loves learning about decentralisation, understanding the true potential of the blockchain.
