This topic is controversial in the blockchain community. It is often brought up that Bitcoin (BTC), mining has an adverse impact on the environment. Tesla’s CEO Elon Mussert made a sharp correction in cryptocurrency markets last year. He tweeted that Tesla would no longer accept BTC and cited the “rapidly growing use of fossil fuels to Bitcoin mining and transactions.” CoinShares recently published a report that found that the Bitcoin mining network is responsible for less than 0.8% of the world’s total CO2 production, despite its widespread use of oil, coal, and gas.
Kristian Csepcsar is the chief marketing officer of Slush Pool, which is the oldest Bitcoin mining pool. He spoke exclusively to Cointelegraph about current misconceptions regarding Bitcoin mining’s environmental impact. Csepcsar answered a question about the drawbacks to using electricity from the Bitcoin oil and gas mine.
“We are literally burning the gas into our atmosphere because it isn’t economically feasible to do anything with it.” [Flaring]. Instead, we can convert it into electricity to generate electricity and then use that to mine Bitcoin.
Flaring is the practice of burning excess natural gas from oil extraction to make it available to the market. Bitcoin miners in Canada and the U.S. have discovered clever ways to channel the natural gas to produce electricity instead of burning it into the atmosphere. This solves a critical environmental problem.
Csepcsar is still skeptical about certain renewable sources for Bitcoin mining, calling them “marketing hype,” specifically solar energy. According to Csepcsar, Cointelegraph was “marketing noise.”
“On our blog, PublieWe are not big advocates of solar mining. However, when you look at the profitability it is not that great. It’s a very difficult business.
Cespcsar also explains that about 70% of all solar panels are manufactured in China and that very little research has been done to determine their environmental impact during manufacturing.
They can produce a lot of toxic chemicals. This is something that nobody talks about. Everyone assumes that solar panels are made from trees, and then the sun shines upon them. They are actually quite difficult to create.
Slush Pool does NOT have metrics on the source of Bitcoin miners’ energy. Cespcsar answered the question “Why?” with a surprising answer, but maybe true to the philosophy on decentralization.
“We don’t want to view that as a pool operator. To have those numbers, we would need KYC our miners and conduct audits on their operations. Or filter transactions. [for analytics]. This is not the ethos that we want to maintain.”