PEGA Pool is an eco-friendly bitcoin mining pool dedicated to helping others understand the facts about bitcoin mining.
Is an eco-friendly bitcoin mining pool even possible? Of course it is, just as an eco-friendly YouTube could be possible if Google took care to offset the enormous carbon footprint that YouTube has. YouTube emits more carbon into the atmosphere than all the bitcoin mining combined.
Modern technology requires energy, an enormous problem that must be responsibly solved.
Context is important
When traditional finance points fingers at Bitcoin mining’s carbon footprint, it is a little like the child in a glass house throwing stones.
Before even getting into the numbers, there are a few hard facts that must be faced:
Gold
Gold mining uses twice as much energy as bitcoin. And where does the gold go once it’s mined? It goes into what is called a bullion bank. There it sits until someone wants to buy it.
The world’s largest bullion bank is JPMorgan, which is also a traditional bank. It’s somewhat ironic that JPMorgan’s CEO is a huge cryptocurrency sceptic.
A century of oil
The world’s major banks grew fat on crude oil. Whereas many of them try and “talk green” these days, they wouldn’t be where they are today had it not been for heavily bankrolling oil production in the past.
And it’s not only historical. In 2021, the world’s largest banks pumped $742 billion into fossil fuels.
Lack of transparency
One of the ground-breaking aspects of cryptocurrency is that it is so transparent. Not only do we know what transactions occurred and when, but it’s also possible to calculate bitcoin’s total energy consumption reasonably accurately. That’s because of bitcoin’s open nature.
That’s not true for traditional banking. Reporting obligations now force them to reveal their emissions. However, it’s still quite a challenge to determine their overall energy consumption when considering the companies they fund and the ramifications of their investments.
How much energy do banks use?
One informed estimate puts it at more than double bitcoin’s energy consumption.
Bitcoin’s transparency makes it an easy target for criticism. It also makes it an easy target for improvement. Finally, a financial system exists that can track energy usage and take decisive action to offset that energy usage.
Unlike previous opaque systems, bitcoin offers the opportunity to create an accountable financial system. That’s why PEGA Pool has decided to plant trees to offset the carbon footprint caused when mining bitcoin.
Transparency and accountability are just two of the virtues that bitcoin is trying to bring to the financial world.