A Bitcoin transaction costs as much water as a backyard pool, study finds | Bitcoin transactions reportedly use 6.2 million times more water than credit cards.
by chrisdh79
A Bitcoin transaction costs as much water as a backyard pool, study finds | Bitcoin transactions reportedly use 6.2 million times more water than credit cards.
by chrisdh79
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Bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, consumes not only a huge amount of electricity but also a lot of water, according to a new study. The [study](https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-sustainability/fulltext/S2949-7906(23)00004-6), published in the journal Cell Reports Sustainability, estimates that Bitcoin mining uses over 1,600 gigaliters (GL) of water per year globally, enough to fill 640,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This water is used primarily to cool down the computers that run the complex calculations to generate new Bitcoins.
The study’s author, Alex de Vries, a financial economist and PhD student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, says that Bitcoin mining’s water consumption is a serious concern, especially in regions already facing water scarcity, such as Central Asia and the U.S.