A lot of people are not aware that fossil fuels are indirectly being used to „mine” bitcoin. If you think about it, what is needed to acquire Bitcoin? Mostly electricity.
Currently, the primary source of electricity production is still burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas, oil, etc. Therefore, we have to consider the carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining and other currency mining if we wish to reduce global climate change. This all calls for what we refer to as Bitcoin carbon offset.
Bitcoin: the elephant in the room
Currently, humanity is spending 1% of its electricity production on Bitcoin mining. This doesn’t include other cryptocurrencies, so this value in reality is higher. We are leaving behind a carbon footprint of about 36 million tonnes of CO2. Imagine if we put 2.5 million more diesel cars on the road. Well, it is exactly that much emission. The purpose of Bitcoin offset is to reduce emission on in certain parts of the world, which will decrease global CO2 levels. This is because within months after emission, carbon dioxide diffuses evenly throughout the lower atmosphere.
Since It doesn’t matter where it was emitted, CO2 affects the whole world. That means that solving the local problem can mean solving the global problem. If we offset Bitcoin mining in one area of the world, it can decrease our carbon footprint globally. Aside from Bitcoin, another great movement has started with NFT offset. NFTs are also digital valuables, similar to Bitcoin, but the difference is that they are non-fungible. This means that there are no 2 identical NFTs, where as each Bitcoin is identical to the other. Recently, a Russian musician started to battle climate change with a musical NFT.
NFT offset and awareness
Polarrana is a Russian artist who decided that her next piece of music was going to be an NFT. She noted that it is important for her to be good to the environment. When she decided to release her music as an NFT, she thoroughly researched all aspects of it, including the carbon footprint and she also learned how much energy they used while making her music.
