How do we solve bitcoin’s carbon problem?

The cryptocurrency consumes more energy than Norway. As countries consider copying China's ban, experts disagree on whether a greener version is possible

When bitcoin mining company Bit Digital started shipping its energy-intensive computers out of China in early 2021, eyebrows were raised. A lot of people thought we were being overly paranoid," says chief strategy officer Sam Tabar, who helped relocate all of the company's machines to the US and Canada.

But the company's paranoia paid off. China's bitcoin mining ban last summer, driven partly by environmental concerns, sent the industry spinning into chaos. The announcement sparked a fire sale of the computers used to power bitcoin, with mining companies scrambling to ship more than 2m of the machines out of China. They arrived by the crateload in countries like the US, Russia and Kazakhstan.