Bitcoin mining has been nothing more than a huge energy waste in past years. Now AI is about to surpass Bitcoin’s power demand. Emerging tech is rapidly driving up the power demand of worldwide digital infrastructure with the inevitable consequence being strained power grids and more fossil fuel use

If you’re investing in cryptocurrencies in the EU, you’ll soon be confronted with these environmental costs on a regular basis, as the new MiCA regulation for crypto-asset service providers now includes mandatory disclosure on several key indicators discussed above.

It just gets even worse if you consider electronic waste generation and water consumption as well, since on average one iPhone’s weight worth of e-waste is generated on every single Bitcoin transaction while a full backyard swimming pool worth of water goes up in smoke as well.

As a result, if you’re in London and want to send money to New York, environmentally you’d theoretically be better off taking the plane to manually deliver a bag of cash than sending a Bitcoin transaction. 1 BTC txn on avg consumes as much power as a US household over 1.5 months.

Perhaps even more shocking is that it also exceeds the carbon footprint of the entire traditional financial industry, while Bitcoin has a negligible presence among global cashless transactions. Among more than a trillion digital payments, Bitcoin handles less than 200 million.

Given the network’s continued reliance on fossil fuels, the related carbon footprint exceeds 90 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions. That’s more than global electric vehicles have contributed in reducing CO2 emissions.

Since everyone has mostly moved on to AI (a big energy hog by itself), you’d almost forget that Bitcoin continues to be responsible for significant energy consumption. The BTC network consumes ~170 TWh of electricity per year. That’s half(+) of all other data centers combined.

In case you’re wondering when the environmental concerns surrounding Bitcoin started; this discussion already started weeks after BTC launched. Today marks 16 years of inaction by the Bitcoin community in addressing this massive problem.

The AI hype only just arrived and it has already ruined Microsoft’s climate plan for the current decade archive.is/kJRvG