Cryptocurrencies and their Energy Consumption

Abstract

The research aims to analyze and compare the energy consumption and carbon emissions of various cryptocurrencies, focusing on aspects like market capitalization, consensus mechanisms (Proof of Work and Proof of Stake), mining devices (ASIC, GPU, CPU, FPGA), and comparisons with the traditional transaction method such as Visa. Since the first cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, which was created in 2009, there is a constant interest in it owing to the fact it offers secure and trustworthy ways of making payments without involving any intermediaries like banks or money systems. Although cryptocurrency and its underlying technology have great potential in finance and various other sectors like agriculture, education, insurance, etc, there are concerns that using cryptocurrencies can contribute to huge energy consumption and carbon emissions leading to adverse environmental impact.