Those multimillion-dollar NFT sales you’ve read about come at a high price for the planet, too.īut sometime in early 2022, in an event that’s been rapturously termed “the Merge,” Ethereum will launch its most significant upgrade ever, promising to cut the network’s energy consumption by more than 99%, and positioning the blockchain, launched in 2015, as the big “green” choice for crypto users and developers. household uses in a workweek-and has a carbon footprint equivalent to 140,893 Visa credit card transactions or 10,595 hours of watching YouTube. Currently, a single Ethereum transaction consumes as much electricity as an average U.S. The recent boom in NFTs-digital art and other limited-edition collectibles that are encrypted on a blockchain-has turned the spotlight on Ethereum, where most NFTs are bought and sold. The same month, Greenpeace said it would stop accepting Bitcoin for donations, which it had done since 2014. Citing concerns about “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced this May that the carmaker would no longer accept Bitcoin as payment. Together, these two networks alone consume more energy than the entire country of Thailand (population: 90 million), according to Digiconomist’s Ethereum Energy Consumption Index. As cryptocurrency has become mainstream-and as more people understand how it actually works-its biggest players, Bitcoin and Ethereum, have faced increasing criticism over the Earth-crushing environmental impact of the so-called mining operations that keep their blockchains running.
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