© Reuters.
Investing.com – The cryptocurrency’s electricity consumption, and therefore its greenhouse gas emissions, has attracted widespread criticism, with the cryptocurrency consuming more energy than several countries.
However, this is not the only harmful effect of Bitcoin on the environment. Indeed, according to a recent study published in Cells Report Sustainability by Alex de Vries, a doctoral candidate at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, annual water consumption has skyrocketed, with cryptocurrency mining consuming hundreds of billions of liters.
Specifically, the study estimates that bitcoin’s water footprint will reach 591 billion gallons this year, a 278% increase from 2020.
“Bitcoin’s growing water footprint must be viewed in the context of growing water scarcity,” the report points out, citing growing water problems in the western United States and Kazakhstan, two large regions. mining cryptocurrencies.
Let us emphasize that mining operations (which only concern PoW cryptocurrencies) rely on computers to resolve complex calculations, operations that are particularly energy-intensive, but also generate high heat.
Thus, water is used to cool the computer servers that run them and the air conditioning systems, and also indirectly as part of the cooling of the power plants that provide electricity to the miners.
These uses result in a loss of water through evaporation, while increasing pressure on groundwater tables, specifies the study, which adds that “the total water footprint of American bitcoin miners could be equivalent to the annual water consumption average of about 300,000 American households, comparable to that of a city like Washington, DC.
Finally, note that a United Nations study dating from October and based on different data revealed that crypto mining had a water footprint of 255 billion gallons in 2021, much less than the 415 billion estimated by the De Vries’ study for that year.