Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Matters Arising
  • Published:

Rational mining limits Bitcoin emissions

Nature Climate Change volume 9, page 655 (2019)Cite this article

Subjects

Matters Arising to this article was published on 28 August 2019

The Original Article was published on 29 October 2018

arising from Mora, C. et al. Nature Climate Change https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0321-8 (2018)

The Bitcoin network is criticized for its energy consumption1. Mora et al.2 estimated that the 2017 carbon footprint of Bitcoin was 69 Mt of CO2-equivalent (MtCO2e). We criticize the inclusion of unprofitable mining rigs in their analysis—as a consequence, they highly overestimate emissions.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this manuscript are available in ref. 2 or provided in the Supplementary Code and Data.

Code availability

The code to identify rig profitability and recalculate the 2017 carbon emissions is provided in the Supplementary Code and Data.

References

  1. Krause, M. J. & Tolaymat, T. Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies. Nat. Sustain. 1, 711–718 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Mora, C. et al. Bitcoin emissions alone could push global warming above 2 °C. Nat. Clim. Change 8, 931–933(2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Taylor, M. B. The evolution of bitcoin hardware. Computer 50, 58–66 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lyon, Lyon, France

    Nicolas Houy

  2. CNRS, GATE Lyon Saint-Etienne, Saint-Etienne, France

    Nicolas Houy

Authors
  1. Nicolas Houy
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicolas Houy.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Fig. 1, Table 1 and references.

Supplementary Code and Data

Supplementary code and data: SRC Folder (C++ source code files) and IN Folder (input .csv files).

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Houy, N. Rational mining limits Bitcoin emissions. Nat. Clim. Chang. 9, 655 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0533-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Version of record:

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0533-6

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing