Bitcoin halving dilemma: 98% of mining machines will become obsolete, and the scale of electronic waste will exceed 10,000 tons

While Bitcoin mining remains a lucrative industry, its negative impact on the environment cannot be underestimated.

According to new research conducted by Alex de Vries, a blockchain expert at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), 98% of existing cryptocurrency mining hardware will be rendered useless and will likely generate a large amount of electronic waste.

A fierce competition

As the hash rate and mining difficulty continue to increase, the mining industry is becoming increasingly competitive. After the halving (which will happen in about ten weeks), older mining equipment will become obsolete.

TradeBlock recently estimated that after the supply reduction at mining farms, even if 30% of miners upgraded to Bitmain’s latest generation Antminer S17+ miners, the price of BTC would have to rise to $15,062.

“It’s shocking that the average lifespan of a Bitcoin mining machine is a year and a half, because we will have new generations of machines that are much better at doing these calculations,” de Vries wrote.

Tons of electronic waste

De Vries wrote that given that 98% of old ASIC miners have only one use case, mining, they will go straight to the landfill after they become obsolete. Bitcoin already generates more electronic waste than the entire Luxembourg (over 10,000 tons per year), and this number is expected to increase after the halving.

In addition to generating tons of waste, Bitcoin now consumes more electricity than Chile, and a single Bitcoin transaction releases more carbon dioxide than 780,650 Visa transactions.

The energy required to run the cryptocurrency surged to a record annual high of 77.78 terawatt-hours, the same as Chile’s entire electricity consumption.

According to calculations by Alex de Vries, the carbon footprint of one Bitcoin transaction is the same as 780,650 Visa transactions, or the carbon emissions consumed by watching 52,043 hours of YouTube.

“People find it hard to believe, but the numbers are real.”