Twitter “Crypto Bros” post links encouraging you to start your investment journey. If you’ve seen them, let’s talk.
For as little as one dollar, you can invest in Bitcoin — right from your Venmo account!
Easy access, low costs, the potential to make thousands from your cell phone – all of these are drawing young people into buying Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
At first, I thought cryptocurrency was a joke. Later, I was green with envy at people that invested in Bitcoin before its value skyrocketed. I only considered investing myself when my friend made $15,000 off of the meme currency Dogecoin before its inevitable value collapse. Seriously, $15,000 for an internet version of this:
A rendition of what a physical DogeCoin might look like, Cyril Ernst.
But, like pretty much everyone else, I didn’t really know what cryptocurrency was. Much like “the cloud” or “the internet,” it was this abstract concept that I know just had to do with computers, processing, and the internet.
Now, I may not have known much about technology before, but as an Environmental Studies major, I did know quite a bit about the environment. When I found article after article reporting on the environmental consequences of cryptocurrency, I started taking it seriously. I repeatedly found that there are actual physical consequences of trading in crypto.
And once I started looking, I learned these were not trivial impacts. Mining and trading cryptocurrencies, alone, might undo the hard work countries are doing under the Paris Climate Accords to stop global warming.
In April, energy used for Bitcoin could’ve powered all of Georgia, USA.
Such intensive energy consumption for cryptocurrency taxes energy grids and raises energy costs for people in Kyrgyzstan, New York, and elsewhere. In some places, Bitcoin mining facilities threaten local air, water, and soil as old coal-fired power plants are reopened to make energy and space for the computers.
That is not all though. Mountains of electronic waste — leftover from cryptocurrency mining operations — poison people in places like Agloboshie, Ghana, where the wealthiest nations dump the majority of their e-waste.
Ghanians working in an e-waste site in Agbogbloshie, Marlenenapoli.
This is just a snapshot of the immediate impacts.
If Bitcoin is commonly adopted, its mining alone could push global temperatures up by 2℃ as early as 2033.
Despite its problems, Bitcoin isn’t going anywhere. That means we must ask the question, how can we make Bitcoin sustainable? Is there another way to do cryptocurrency?
Some countries offer ideas. When El Salvador made Bitcoin a national currency in September, it raised questions about how the increase in energy needs might impact the country’s carbon footprint. It decided on using El Salvador’s volcanoes to produce clean energy to power the government facilities. Even though El Salvador was the first to make it a national currency, it wasn’t the first to use renewable energy. In Iceland and Norway, Bitcoin miners use geothermal energy and hydroelectric power for their Bitcoin mining facilities.
Other nations have taken more stringent approaches. Sweden is pushing the European Union to ban Bitcoin to limit emissions. It still would allow for more environmentally friendly mining forms that other cryptocurrencies use. China outlawed all crypto-related activities, which would free up more energy than Finland produces in a year.
Those bans push miners elsewhere, where energy is cheaper (like in Texas) or dirtier (like in Kazakhstan). Without global action, miners will just run to wherever they can continue to make more money mining. This also doesn’t even begin to address the growing e-waste problem that adds to cryptocurrency’s environmental problems.
And so this begs the question: is it too late to stop it without a global movement to ban mining altogether? Would that even be politically feasible?
As we wait to see what global leaders might do, I have a message for fellow young people drawn into cryptocurrency by the promises of good, quick investment returns:
Please research rather than listen to wealth promises from random crypto bros on Twitter. Just because you want to be Elon Musk doesn’t mean we should take his advice as environmentally conscious. (But also, please reassess your ethics if you idolize him.)
We have made it clear that our generation is dedicated to stopping climate change and protecting the planet. With cryptocurrency, we can make matters far worse. Divest from Bitcoin. Try Ethereum or other “Proof of Stake” cryptocurrencies, which are much more environmentally friendly.
We criticize previous generations for starting environmental problems and then just accepting that “these are how things are,” forcing our generation to fight to change the sins of the past so that we can have a livable planet. Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies, might become our generation’s legacy if we don’t step up now. Let’s not go there.
It’s the least we can do for the future.