The environmental impact of bitcoin in terms of CO2 emissions are 40 times higher than those of common digital payments. He reveals it a study by the Bank of Italy by Title The carbon footprint of the Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) system: a comparative analysis with Bitcoin and other infrastructures, released on May 12. The Tips system, used by Via Nazionale as a term of comparison, is the European platform that regulates electronic retail payments with immediate credit to the beneficiary's account.
According to Bankitalia, the difference between the "carbon footprint" of traditional digital payments and that of bitcoins "is only partially explained by the lower overall volume of transactions of Tips, as the marginal increase in issues per additional transaction is very limited”. In other words, even if payments on Tips increase significantly and those in bitcoin remain stable, the distance in terms of CO2 will remain almost unchanged.
What causes the gap, the Bank of Italy analysts explain, is rather the fact that bitcoin "uses a significant amount of energy in order to generate trust and consensus between network participants, while in the case of Tips this trust is provided by the Eurosystem”.
Basically, not being based on a currency recognized by all and guaranteed by an authority such as the ECB, the bitcoin system must build its own reference community and maintain it, retaining the participants. This operation is based on the "Proof-of-Work", the consensus algorithm underlying the blockchain network, the use of which requires high computing power and therefore electricity consumption.
“Most of the energy comes then dissipated to generate trust among all bitcoin network participants – writes Bankitalia – In the case of Tips, on the other hand, this trust is provided by the European Central Bank, which guarantees every transaction carried out in euros”.
After all, bitcoin is by nature a highly speculative and volatile instrument, capable of creating and destroying fortunes in a very short time. The latest demonstration came from Elon Musk, which in a few hours – with the usual ruthlessness – brought down the quotation by 6%, to 50.900 dollars. For months, Tesla's number one extolled the virtues of bitcoin, gaining the beauty of 110 million dollars in the sale of the virtual currency. But then he remembered that he was an ecologist and suddenly announced on Wednesday that Teslas can no longer be paid for in cryptocurrency. A sensational afterthought, given that Musk's opening to bitcoins had only come last February.
