It’s no secret that mining bitcoin consumes an extraordinary amount of energy—in fact, more than the entire country of New Zealand.
Such a level of energy consumption is not only a problem for the existential issue of climate change, but also threatens the sustainability of the entire bitcoin (and crypto) economy. If bitcoin mining becomes too costly from an environmental and economic standpoint, the whole network could have a real crisis on its hands.
Fortunately, miners are doing something about it by leaning into renewables.
Why Bitcoin Matters
Satoshi Nakamoto’s introduction of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system in 2008 set off the next 10 years of innovation in distributed technology and cryptocurrencies. If it weren’t for bitcoin, we probably wouldn’t have ICOs, STOs, crypto exchanges, and CryptoKitties.
The reason bitcoin was so revolutionary was because, for the first time in internet history, reliance on third-party intermediaries (banks) to validate transactions between entities was eliminated.