The price of bitcoin has reachedUS$50,000(36,095) another all-time high.
Its hard to believe that 10,000 bitcoin would only buya couple of pizzasten years ago.
Its even stranger to think that bitcoins are completely virtual.
You cant hold one, except on a hard drive, and theres no underlying asset to them.
Then you needed to take the 3m-wide lump of rock back to Yap without sinking in the Pacific.
No one is quite sure when it started, but the practice is at least several centuries old.
Yapese money had no inherent value.
For everyone to respect the proof-of-work, the process was deliberately inefficient and incredibly resource-intensive, just like bitcoin.
Instead of relying on intrepid voyagers, bitcoin uses a global online grid of competing computers.
The combination changes every ten minutes, and the contest continues.
This might all sound like a harmless game of digital bingo.
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New institutional investors, like thecarmaker, Tesla, are driving the assets price skywards while ignoring bitcoinsclimate-changingappetite.
And to keep the bull market charging, supporters are working hard to argue forbitcoins green credentials.
For the sake of a stable climate, these myths need debunking.
[Read:How do you build a pet-friendly gadget?
In 2011, competing miners could win the bitcoin bingo with an average laptop.
ASICs cant be easily repurposed for general computing.
Redundant units create around11,500 tonnesofhazardous electronic wasteeach year, much of which is dumped on citiesin the global south.
WhileChina cracks downon the industry, 61% of bitcoin mining ispowered by fossil fuels.
Cheap coal in Australia has found new buyers through bitcoin, asformerly redundant coal mines are reopenedto power mining.
Bitcoin miners employ armies of computer servers, not the ex-combatantsthe plant could help.
While bitcoin is currently experiencing all-time price highs,gold hit one of its ownin 2020.
Nor has bitcoin displaced traditional finance institutions.Major banksare vying to get very rich indeed on the back of it.
But miners will always use the cheapest option to maximize returns.
Unfortunately, there is currently no such thing as a green bitcoin.
Not all cryptocurrencies are as energy-intensive as bitcoin, though.
There are alternatives to proof-of-work.
