Bitcoin mines aren't just energy hungry, it turns out they're also thirsty. The water consumption of a single Bitcoin transaction, on average, could be enough to fill a small swimming pool, according to a new analysis. Bitcoin mines are essentially large data centers, which have become famous for the amount of electricity and water they consume.
Bitcoin's Water Footprint Is Growing, Analysis Published Today in Journal Commentary Cell reports sustainability. This is an issue to watch as the price of Bitcoin recover of spiraling crypto winter.
Bitcoin mines are essentially large data centers, which have become famous for the amount of electricity and water they consume.
The study was led by Alex de Vries, a doctoral student at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam whose Previous search tracked the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of cryptocurrencies. These questions prompted lawmakers to push for more oversight of the environmental impact of crypto-mines. But until recently, most of that attention has focused on whether energy-intensive cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin could undermine countries' climate goals.
Bitcoin mining can also strain water resources in drought-prone areas. Miners use specialized computers to solve puzzles around the clock to validate transactions and earn Bitcoin in return. All that computing power uses up a lot of energy. And like other data centers, many crypto mines also end up using a lot of water in their cooling systems to keep the machines from overheating.
“It's a little hard to surprise me, given the way I've worked on this before, I'm pretty used to seeing big numbers come up. But then again, the numbers are still mind-blowing, even to me, every time I look at them,” de Vries said. The edge.
To conduct his analysis, de Vries estimated direct water consumption from Bitcoin mine cooling systems. He also added their indirect water consumption linked to electricity production, since power plants also use water in their cooling systems. In total, he found that cryptocurrency mining consumed about 1,600 gigalitres of water in 2021, when the price of Bitcoin peaked at more than $65,000. This equates on average to the equivalent of a small swimming pool of water (16,000 liters) for each transaction. That's about 6.2 million times more water than a single credit card swipe, according to de Vries.
Of course, everything fell in 2022 as the price of Bitcoin plunged and mining slowed. But the price has rallied since last year, from less than $20,000 to around $38,000 today. The higher the price, the more incentive there is to scale up mining. This is why de Vries expects cryptocurrency water consumption to reach a new high of 2,300 gigalitres worldwide this year. In the United States, the the largest hub For Bitcoin mining worldwide, Bitcoin mining uses about as much as a city the size of Washington, DC each year.
These numbers are estimates based on the assumption that Bitcoin mines operate on water-dependent cooling systems typical of large data centers. However, some data centers and cryptocurrency mines use a different system that keeps computers cool and reduces water consumption by immerse them in a non-conductive liquid.
There is another way to allow cryptocurrency to use a fraction of the water and electricity it currently consumes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions: get rid of the mining process altogether and find a new way to validate transactions. This is what the next largest cryptocurrency network, Ethereum, accomplished Last year.
If Bitcoin were to do something similar, “all electricity consumption, and associated water consumption, would disappear overnight.” You know, we can make it happen,” de Vries said. “Apparently people still prefer to say that the network is not as bad as we think, rather than trying to do something about it.”