Blockchain Papers

Juan Ignacio Ibañez, Alexander Freier

No abstract is available for this record.

Yosuke Kakinuma

No abstract is available for this record.

Mohammadhossein Lashkaripour

No abstract is available for this record.

Emanuele Pagone, A. L. Hart, Konstantinos Salonitis

Cryptocurrencies are a digital form of money based on the blockchain technology. Their relatively recent raise in popularity and use, together with the energy-intensive nature of some of their algorithms, has raised environmental concerns about growing energy consumption (and associated carbon dioxide emissions). This paper aims at comparing the environmental impact of the most common cryptocurrency (i.e., Bitcoin) and fiat currencies (i.e. coins, banknotes, credit and debit card networks). Such comparison is carried out assessing and analyzing the life cycle main phases of each currency in terms of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. Results show that Bitcoin has a carbon footprint almost 4 to 5 times greater than the sum of all forms of traditional currency together in one year. Furthermore, environmental impact “hotspots” of fiat currency including raw material production of coins, transportation of banknotes and electric energy consumption of ATMs are identified. Finally, considering future scenarios and the sensitivity of various parameters on the results, some solutions are proposed to reduce the environmental impact of currencies.

Suraya Fadilah Ramli, Zahrul Azmir A. B. S. L. Kamarul Adzhar, Syed Anand Najmi Sayed Abu Bashar, Muhammad Fikri Abdullah

Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter Facebook Reddit LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Reprints and Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Suraya Fadilah Ramli, Zahrul Azmir A. B. S. L. Kamarul Adzhar, Syed Anand Najmi Sayed Abu Bashar, Muhammad Fikri Abdullah; Analysis of Ethereum versus Bitcoin: The GARCH approach. AIP Conference Proceedings 8 February 2023; 2500 (1): 020049. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0112690 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAIP Publishing PortfolioAIP Conference Proceedings Search Advanced Search |Citation Search

Juliane Proelss, Denis Schweizer, Stéphane Sévigny

Abstract Much of the media focus surrounding Bitcoin (BTC) has been on the ‘E’ (environmental) element of the ESG investing approach. Given the amount of electricity consumed by BTC mining, and the resulting large carbon emissions, BTC has faced substantial criticism of its overly negative environmental impact, which is critically reviewed in this article. This one‐sided discussion, however, ignores the ‘S’ (social) and ‘G’ (governance) elements entirely. To remedy that, we explore BTC's positive impact on the ‘S’ (user satisfaction, data protection and privacy, human rights, and criminal activity), and ‘G’ (accounting integrity and transparency, compensation, and principles of good governance) components.

Kin-Hon Ho, Monica Law, Yun Hou, Tse-Tin Chan

No abstract is available for this record.

Anna Papp, Douglas Almond, Shuang Zhang

Environmental externalities from cryptomining may be large, but have not been linked causally to mining incentives. We exploit daily variation in Bitcoin price as a natural experiment for an 86 megawatt coal-fired power plant with on-site cryptomining. We find that carbon emissions respond swiftly to mining incentives, with price elasticities of 0.69-0.71 in the short-run and 0.33-0.40 in the longer run. A $1 increase in Bitcoin price leads to $3.11-$6.79 in external damages from carbon emissions alone, well exceeding cryptomining's value added (using a $190 social cost of carbon, but ignoring increased local air pollution). As cryptomining requires ever more computing power to mine a given number of blocks, our study highlights both the revitalization of US fossil assets and the potential value of financial industry accounting standards that incorporate cryptomining externalities.

Zumian Xiao, Shihao Cui, Lijin Xiang, Pei Liu · 5 authors

This study estimates the environmental impacts of Bitcoin mining. Employing a top-down measurement approach, this paper assesses the carbon footprint of Bitcoin mining in China from 2017 to 2021. The findings reveal that mining activities during this period contributed to a total of 77.84 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in China. By utilizing data at the provincial level, we find that the seasonal migration of Bitcoin mining pools will lead to regional power demand shocks in China. Additionally, this study predicts future carbon emissions from Bitcoin mining in China, projecting cumulative carbon dioxide emissions of 76.40 million tons and 722.18 million tons by 2030 and 2060 respectively, in the absence of any policy interventions. Based on these findings, this paper posits that governments worldwide should make efforts to restrict the carbon emissions from Bitcoin mining and opt for environmentally friendly technological methods to fundamentally alleviate Bitcoin's reliance on energy. The implication for central banks is that carbon emission should be taken into consideration when designing the central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

Agata Kliber, Barbara Będowska-Sójka

This paper examines whether cryptocurrencies are hedging instruments for green and non-green energy instruments. We differantiate between cryptocurrencies with two types of consensus mechanisms, Proof-of-work and Proof-of-stake, which reflect the demand for energy used for the coins' confirmation. We obtained dynamic conditional correlations from SV models and apply them to calculate hedge ratios. Based on the sample from January 2019 till December 2022 we find that clean energy sources are better hedges for oil than clean or dirty cryptocurrencies due to high volatility of the latter instruments. Cryptocurrencies are better hedging instruments for oil than for clean energy assets. We also find evidence that investors in clean crytocurrencies are more environmentally aware than those investing in the dirty one.

Bolun Xie

In recent years, as cryptocurrency has been recognized by more people and the value of the cryptocurrency has increased, many people make money through mining. It leads to mining becoming popular but also creates serious environmental problems. Mining bitcoin will consume much electricity and thus emits more greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which has caused worldwide environmental issues. This paper will focus on figuring out that mining bitcoin will cause how much carbon emission damage in China during these years. The result of this research will provide the change in carbon emission with time and the prediction of the carbon emission trend caused by bitcoin mining in the future. This result of the article aims to focus the society and the government's attention on the damage mining bitcoin does to the environment and also provide suggestions on the measures the governments should take to reduce the unessential energy cost of bitcoin mining.

Orestis Delardas, Panagiotis Giannos

Corporations increasingly consider sustainability as an important goal and set net zero carbon emissions targets, consequently looking towards their electricity procurement to achieve them. Guarantees of Origin (GOs) are widely used as insurances for the renewability of electricity supplies and proofs of compliance to renewable standards; however, they suffer from structural problems. Their transactional history cannot distinguish between those traded among market actors and the ones that come directly from power plants, giving rise to transparency issues. Certificate trading dissuades producers from investing in an increase in renewable capacity resulting in lack of additionality while complex frameworks and administrative structures emerge to keep track of the vast network of GOs. These issues can be resolved through the introduction of blockchain networks which can provide transparency and help incentivise renewable investment while increasing automation and process simplification. This review explores the benefits and challenges of blockchain implementation for GOs and proposes a rethinking of how this scheme may fulfil the future needs of the energy sector.

Murray A. Rudd

Bitcoin critics have argued that energy-intensive Bitcoin production and adoption will exacerbate global warming. Conversely, Bitcoin advocates have been dismayed by critics’ apparent lack of willingness to scrutinize Bitcoin’s potential role in helping to improve the economics of renewable energy investments, reduce net emissions from methane venting and flaring, increase electricity grid efficiency, and provide higher-order environmental, social, and governance (ESG) benefits. Given the disparate views, there is a pressing need to identify key knowledge needs regarding Bitcoin’s net energy use, carbon emissions, and direct and indirect ESG impacts. I used a variation on the ‘key questions’ horizon scanning approach to identify 100 questions that, if answered, could help provide credible evidence to support policymakers’, investors’, and research funders’ decision-making on issues relating to the impact of Bitcoin production and adoption. The questions are distributed across 13 themes (ranging from energy use to social impacts). The breadth of knowledge required to answer key questions highlights the need to build research capacity, encourage collaborative cross-sectoral and -disciplinary research, and develop a prioritized research agenda. Defensible evidence for investors, regulators, and policymakers needs to consider Bitcoin’s complex net impacts on energy use and environmental, social, and governance benefits.

Imran Yousaf, Afsheen Abrar, John W. Goodell

No abstract is available for this record.

Frederik Rech, Chen Yan, Amon Bagonza, Ľubomír Pintér · 5 authors

The research and investment community seems to ignore the long-term sustainability of Bitcoin, which is reflected in four flaws: transaction fees, miners' revenue, concentration and electricity consumption. While most of the authors have aimed to examine one topic at a time, with a particular interest in electricity consumption and carbon footprint, the aim of this paper is to examine all these issues simultaneously to provide a more comprehensive view on long-term sustainability of Bitcoin. This paper looks at these flaws and reveals why Bitcoin is not sustainable in the long run, how decentralization is being lost, how the design is putting artificial and unrealistic pressure on the ecosystem, while all being powered by an unjustifiable amount of dirty electricity sources. Our main findings are as follows. Firstly, transaction fees are already high and set to increase in time, further discriminating small transactions against big ones. Secondly, miners' revenue comes mostly from the block reward. The block reward is the main income source for miners, but is set to be cut on a regular basis, making miners' revenue not sustainable in the long run. Thirdly, miner concentration is already an issue, with a possibility of deepening even more and diminishing the idea of decentralization. Fourthly, the high electricity demand and the associated carbon footprint thus cannot be justified by any means. We deem our results useful for overall policy and regulatory implications.

Wenshuai Ma, Junjie Hu, Yao Li, Zhuoming Fu · 6 authors

Abstract With global concerns about carbon emissions, the proportion of renewable energy generation worldwide is increasing, and the demand for flexible resources in power systems is growing. In recent years, as a clean means of transportation, the number of electric vehicles has increased, and the optimal scheduling of electric vehicles has become a research hotspot. The rise of artificial intelligence, blockchain, and other innovative technologies has enriched research on optimal scheduling of electric vehicles. To reveal the latest developments in electric vehicle optimal scheduling studies, this paper summarises the application of state‐of‐the‐art technologies, including deep learning, deep reinforcement learning, and blockchain technology in the optimal scheduling of electric vehicles. Moreover, the advantages and disadvantages of various technical applications are highlighted. Finally, considering the shortcomings and developmental status of applications of the above three technologies, some suggestions for future research directions are proposed.

Lucas Francisco, Rodrigo Bonacin, Ferrucio de Franco Rosa

A systematic literature review is presented to understand and analyze the state of the art in Blockchain-based solutions applied to the carbon trading context. The main contributions of the work are twofold: i) updated literature review, emphasizing the contributions of each selected work; ii) classification of the papers based on their main contributions and application domains as well as summarizing and discussing challenges and open research issues. Our results reveal the need for research focusing on understanding the use of advanced technology in complex scenarios of trade and management of carbon credits. This work is intended for researchers who aim to develop methods and techniques that make use of Blockchain technology in the realm of carbon trading.

Qian Wang, Yu Wei, Yifeng Zhang, Yuntong Liu

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a serious threat to investors in the crude oil market. Furthermore, investors have an increasing need to find a safe haven in their investment portfolios when facing unprecedented risks in crude oil markets during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a review of the literature, there are contradictory findings on which investment is the safer haven for the oil market. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate whether bitcoin is a safer haven for the crude oil market than the commonly used gold during the COVID-19 pandemic. Three spillover measurements based on the time, and frequency domains, and a network framework are employed to quantify the return spillover effects among bitcoin, gold and three major crude oil futures markets. We divide the sample into two periods, pre-COVID-19 and post-COVID-19. The results show that bitcoin has a weak safe-haven effect on the crude oil market only over a short period, while gold maintains a good safe-haven ability for crude oil futures across various time horizons (frequencies), both before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this study have important implications for policy-makers, crude oil producers and global investors. In particularly, investors cannot ignore the importance of bitcoin and gold in selecting more profitable portfolio policies when searching for safe-haven assets.

Yusuke Kaneko

Public blockchains are increasing proof-of-work (PoW) workloads and consume more electricity because of the growing use of products, such as cryptocurrencies, security tokens, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Companies are increasingly required to visualize the electricity consumption of the products and services they use to plan and promote measures to reduce Scope 3 emissions to achieve green transformation. However, the electricity consumption of public blockchain-based products and services is not well known to practitioners, and progress in this area has been slow. This study elucidates the electricity consumption of major public blockchains and the share of renewable energy they consumed. In addition, it describes the problems inherent in the blockchain mining process, which is the main cause of this problem, and how to address them. This study also examines possible methods that could be adopted to reduce the environmental impact from the perspective of the public blockchain, miners, and users.

Moritz Wendl, My Hanh Doan, Remmer Sassen

No abstract is available for this record.

Anna Borkovcová, Miloslava Černá, Marcela Sokolová

The article provides an overview of academic contributions to blockchain technology over the past three years. A large number of practical implementations are proving the versatility of blockchain across industries. Some of these areas are easy to deduce, but for some, the benefits of using blockchain technology may not be obvious. Real applications of blockchain can be found in sectors such as cyber security and the financial sector, but also in various categories of the public sector, healthcare, and industry. This paper focuses on the use of blockchain technology in the energy industry. The paper aims to present the current trends of blockchain in the energy sector and provide a summary of blockchain technology discussed in academia. The research questions are formulated to correspond to the basic goals of the energy sector today. The core of the paper forms a systematic review based on the PRISMA guidelines. The output of this systematic review brings an up-to-day insight into the issue and introduces potential areas for further research.

Tsan‐Ming Choi

Today, high-tech industries such as consumer electronics commonly face government rules on carbon emissions. Among the rules, carbon emission tax as well as extended producer responsibility (EPR) tax are two important measures. Using blockchain, the policy makers can better determine the carbon target environmental taxation (CTET) policy with accurate information. In this paper, based on the mean-variance framework, we study the values of blockchain for risk-averse high-tech manufacturers who are under the government's CTET policy. To be specific, the government first determines the optimal CTET policy. The high-tech manufacturer then reacts and determines its optimal production quantity. We analytically prove that the CTET policy simply relies on the setting of the optimal EPR tax. Then, in the absence of blockchain, we consider the case in which the government does not know the manufacturer's degree of risk aversion for sure and then derive the expected value of using blockchain for the high-tech manufacturers. We study when it is wise for the high-tech manufacturer and the government to implement blockchain. To check for robustness, we consider in two extended models respectively the situations in which blockchain incurs non-trivial costs as well as having an alternative risk measure. We analytically show that most of the qualitative findings remain valid.

Jiawei Yang, Hongxu Huang, Yiwen Zhang, Jiahong Dai · 5 authors

With the rapid development of renewable energy generation, governments have released various policies to reduce the portion of the energy generated from the burning of fossil fuel, of which the carbon emission tax is one of the most effective methods. Blockchain is considered as the optimal ecosystem to protect and trace the energy transactions with carbon taxes. This paper proposes a distributed Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) public blockchain with a smart contract function to support a double auction based pricing scheme and execute a carbon tax compensation mechanism, which reduce the trading cost of prosumers and improve the social welfare. A 13-prosumer energy trading model is performed in the case study to experiment the blockchain performance. Numerical results prove the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.

Heba Ahmed Kadry

Abstract There is a broad consensus that greenhouse gas emissions management requires coordinated efforts and collaboration in all sectors and at all levels of an organization or within the value chain. However, potential conflicts of interest and lack of trust between stakeholders make this collaboration extremely challenging. Blockchain has opened the door for a series of innovative applications that can propose an efficient carbon footprint traceability and management solution. Blockchain is a distributed secure database, called a ledger, among different parties, used to hold and verify tamper-proof records or transactions without the need to trust any participant of this process except the mechanism. In the race to net zero, the need for an advanced information and communication technology has become vital to global climate change management with increased digitalization, decarbonization, security, and decentralization challenges. Blockchain is proposed as an integrated platform for various applications, such as carbon traceability, carbon trading, certification, and value chain management. This work presents an overview of blockchain technology and its working principles. It describes blockchain's novelty and innovation to the industry and climate action. Also, the paper investigates blockchain's potential for carbon footprint traceability and management. It explores the latest use cases and the current challenges. It concludes that enabling innovation for climate action requires digging further into evolving disruptive technologies such as blockchain.