Climate campaign pushes Bitcoin network to drop energy-hungry code
by Justine Calma from The Verge - All Posts on (#5XMK4)
This photo taken on April 1, 2021 shows a worker adjusting cryptocurrency mining rigs at a cryptocurrency farm in Dujiangyan in China's southwestern Sichuan province. | Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images Greenpeace and other environmental groups launched a new campaign today to push the Bitcoin network to slash its growing greenhouse gas emissions. The goal of the campaign, dubbed Change the code, not the climate," is to switch up the energy-hungry process of verifying transactions and mining new Bitcoins.
The cryptocurrency uses more electricity annually than global gold mining operations or the entire country of Norway, according to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance. Burning through so much energy generates some serious greenhouse gas emissions, but campaign organizers argue that it doesn't have to be that way. Other cryptocurrencies use just a fraction of the energy Bitcoin requires because they use a different system to...