Crypto’s Energy Guzzling Sparks an Alternative That Merely Sips
A technology called proof of stake claims to cut power consumption by 99.95%, but opponents say it’s less safe than today’s systems.
In the past five years, the price of a Bitcoin has rocketed from about $1,000 to more than $60,000. That’s great news for newly minted millionaires and billionaires, but it’s a bummer for the environment. The electricity needed to “mine” the coins—effectively deploying vast fleets of computers to solve complex problems—has increased tenfold over the same period, to almost as much as the entire country of Argentina uses.
That power consumption spurred Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk to ban car purchases with Bitcoin, and China prohibited mining in part because of the burden it placed on its power grid. “If Bitcoin continues to be seen as carbon-intensive and energy-hungry, it’s a massive risk,” says Kirsteen Harrison, a sustainability strategist at Zumo Financial Services, a cryptocurrency wallet company in the U.K.