The carbon footprint of a Bitcoin transaction would represent 780,650 Visa transactions

A transaction Bitcoin would consume the same amount ofelectricity than a British household for almost two months.

In any case, that’s what Alex de Vries, blockchain specialist at PWC, sure TheTelegraph. According to him, at its highest, the first cryptocurrency of the market consumes as muchelectricity that the Chile.

The carbon footprint of a single transaction is the same as 780,650 Visa transactions or 52,043 hours spent watching YouTube, "he said.

To work, Bitcoin uses a Proof of Work validation system which puts network participants in competition. These – the minors – must deploy computer power in order to win rewards in bitcoins. They mainly use dedicated machines called ASICs. This industry today would weigh more than 4 billion euros.

What is shocking is that the average lifespan of a bitcoin mining machine is one and a half years, "added De Vries.

The ASICs are quickly obsolete and would create “a mountain of electronic waste that is difficult to recycle”. According to figures provided by De Vries, the bitcoin mining produces 10.71 kilotons of electronic waste each year, almost the same quantity as that produced by Luxembourg.

In order to reduce their ecological footprint, more and more minors announce that they are turning to renewable energies. However, environmental protection organizations warn that manycrypto-mining infrastructure buy today from coal factory.

The waste of energy overflowing with Bitcoin has become an even more serious problem as many facilities are located in regions with coal energy. This is not only a problem with blockchain technologies, but also a broader challenge for the future of the Internet, "said Andrew Hatton, chief technology officer at Greenpeace UK.

Other cryptocurrencies use much less energy-consuming validation systems, including Proof of Stake. The second cryptocurrency on the market, Ethereum, is considering abandoning the Proof of Work in favor of this method.

According to other experts, the figures provided by De Vries are generally bloated and dependent against this industry.