New research on Bitcoin mining ecological impact by Galaxy Digital

In the light of (mostly poorly-argumented) eco-shaming that Bitcoin is going through now, the new research made by Galaxy Digital hits the nerve. Taking into account only 4 areas of electricity consumption by the banking system (banks datacenters, braches, ATMs and card network’s datacenters), it appears that its energy consumption is 2 times bigger than Bitcoin’s.Of course, electricity consumption is not bad per se, what’s bad is the energy coming from fossils. Taking into account that Bitcoin farms could be set anywhere in the world, its mining CAN become eco-friendly, and the green mining trend grows strong. The banks, on the other hand, cannot set their offices or ATMs on a river dam and are obliged to take whatever energy comes from the city grid.

On a side note, Bitcoin handles much less transactions than the banking system, sure, but its energy consumption does not depend on the number of transactions, so it’s useless to scale it proportionally.

You can read the study here https://docsend.com/view/adwmdeeyfvqwecj2