Forexsuggest has conducted research on the environmental impact of cryptocurrencies. The resource considers bitcoin and ether to be the most “harmful”, and Stellar is the “purest” cryptocurrency.
The authors of the report calculated the estimated carbon emissions and the amount of resources that are used to neutralize the impact of CO2 on the environment. The report says the researchers used data from Statista, Business Insider India, Laptop Mag and other sources for analysis. After compilation, they calculated the level of CO2 emissions and the growth rate of such emissions.
According to the report, Bitcoin and Ethereum are the blockchains that generate the highest hash rates and, accordingly, have the most impact on the ecology of the Earth. In 2021, mining bitcoin released about 56.8 million tons of CO2 into the planet’s atmosphere, which is more than two and a half times more than when mining ether. Forexsuggest estimates that it will take about 284.1 million trees to neutralize the CO2 emitted by Bitcoin miners.
Ethereum pollutes the environment much less, but it also cannot be called environmentally neutral. In 2021, Ethereum miners generated 22 million tons of CO2. Almost 110 million new trees will be needed to neutralize the harmful gases that Ethereum has released into the atmosphere.
Bitcoin Cash ranks third in the carbon footprint with 1.5 million tonnes. However, Bitcoin Cash has the highest annualized emissions growth, increasing its CO2 emissions by 748%.
The report says that in 2021, the level of pollution from bitcoin mining decreased by 5%. This is probably due to the fact that after the ban on mining in China, miners moved from this country, where the main source of electricity for data centers was coal, to the United States, where they use more environmentally friendly electricity.
The report also provides data on the most environmentally friendly cryptocurrencies. In third place in the ranking is Nano. This cryptocurrency does not use mining and is not based on blockchain, but on block lattice technology. The Nano can handle about 125 transactions per second, requiring only 0.000112 kWh per transaction, which is minimal in terms of CO2 emissions. The second most environmentally friendly cryptocurrency, IOTA, is based on directed acyclic graph technology with a probabilistic consensus mechanism. The transaction requires about 0.00011 kWh. According to the study, Stellar, a competitor to Ripple, was chosen as the most environmentally friendly cryptocurrency, which requires only 0.00003 kWh per transaction. Stellar requires 0.00072 oz of CO2 per transaction. This is almost nothing compared to £ 1.060.5 per Bitcoin transaction.
