Bitcoins growth since its launch in 2009 has been incredible.

What is Bitcoin Mining?

Bitcoin mining is the process through which new bitcoins are introduced into circulation.

Bitcoin’s Terrible Impact on Energy Consumption and Ecology

The blockchain is one of the most popular inventions in the cryptocurrency industry.

It was popularized by Satoshi Nakamoto after he launched bitcoin in 2009.

How is Energy Consumed while mining bitcoins?

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The mining process does not just involve verifying transactions on a normal personal computer.

Its a more complicated process that involves the use of state of the art hardware.

The hardware machines used are known asApplication-specific integrated circuits(ASICs).

It takes on average 10 minutes to verify one bitcoin block.

Once a block is confirmed, it is added to the blockchain where it cannot be altered.

In most cases, the mining machines fail more often than they succeed in confirming a transaction.

Each ASIC machine consumes a certain amount of energy every time.

Whats the Purpose of bitcoin mining?

Bitcoin was developed as a decentralized, digitized platform.

There is no manager or intermediary to facilitate payments done in bitcoins.

Through the blockchain, thousands of computer owners can take part in helping trigger the bitcoin web connection.

They do this by verifying bitcoin transactions.

The blockchain is also publicly available.

Nevertheless, its undeniable that the mining process does a lot of damage to the environment.

That equates to 13% of all energy consumed by the world as of November 2017.

In the developed world, bitcoin mining consumes more power than the whole of Ireland.

Globally, bitcoin mining consuming much more power than 159 countries.

If bitcoin were a country, it would rank at position 61 among countries with the highest power consumption.

Individually, each bitcoin mining rig consumes 215 kilowatt-hours to validate a single bitcoin transaction.

The total amount of power consumed by bitcoin mining could provide lighting needs to almost 3 million American homes.

This has a negative impact on the environment.

Excessive carbon emission raises weather temperatures by trapping solar energy in space.

Without solar energy, weather patterns change.

Main Effects of Carbon emissions

What can be done to reduce the energy costs?

Some cryptocurrencies use a mix of proof of work and proof of stake systems.

The proof of stake system is what bitcoin and litecoin use to validate transactions.

source: www.techworm.net