4.5 Review

Beyond Bitcoin: Evaluating Energy Consumption and Environmental Impact across Cryptocurrency Projects

Related references

Note: Only part of the references are listed.
Article Economics

Cryptocurrency and double spending history: transactions with zero confirmation

Kee-Youn Kang

Summary: This study presents a general equilibrium model of cryptocurrency that explores a mechanism for preventing double spending without the need for payment confirmations. By analyzing the transaction histories of digital wallets, agents can verify if a wallet has a history of double spending.

ECONOMIC THEORY (2023)

Article Environmental Studies

Preying on the poor? Opportunities and challenges for tackling the social and environmental threats of cryptocurrencies for vulnerable and low-income communities

Peter Howson et al.

Summary: The rapid adoption of cryptocurrencies has raised concerns among energy researchers and social scientists due to its negative environmental and social impacts. The unsustainability of some cryptocurrencies disproportionately affects poor and vulnerable communities. The paper suggests four potential regulatory approaches to mitigate these impacts, including renewable energy commitments, carbon offsetting, financial regulations, and bans on cryptocurrency mining. However, regulating cryptocurrency mining is a complex task and unlikely to result in win-win outcomes for all.

ENERGY RESEARCH & SOCIAL SCIENCE (2022)

Article Business, Finance

Trade volume affects bitcoin energy consumption and carbon footprint

Samuel Asumadu Sarkodie et al.

Summary: This study examines the impact of bitcoin trade volume on energy consumption and carbon footprint using novel estimation methods and finds that an increase in trade volume has a long-term effect on both energy and carbon footprint.

FINANCE RESEARCH LETTERS (2022)

Proceedings Paper Computer Science, Information Systems

From Bitcoin to Solana - Innovating Blockchain Towards Enterprise Applications

Xiangyu Li et al.

Summary: This survey provides a comprehensive study on recent advances in blockchain technologies, with a focus on addressing issues that hinder enterprise adoption. Scalability and performance have been key obstacles for widespread adoption, but recent progress in Solana showcases the possibility of significantly improving on these issues by innovating on data structure, processes, and algorithms, consolidating time-consuming algorithms and security enforcements, and differentiating and balancing user responsibilities and rights while maintaining the required security and integrity inherent in blockchain systems.

BLOCKCHAIN, ICBC 2021 (2022)

Article Computer Science, Software Engineering

A first look at blockchain-based decentralized applications

Kaidong Wu et al.

Summary: This paper presents the first comprehensive empirical study of blockchain-based DApps to date, based on an extensive dataset of 995 Ethereum DApps and 29,846,075 transaction logs. The study provides insights on the popularity of DApps, patterns of using smart contracts, and issues in deploying and operating DApps, along with recommendations for DApp users, developers, and blockchain vendors.

SOFTWARE-PRACTICE & EXPERIENCE (2021)

Article Thermodynamics

Waste heat recovery from a data centre and 5G smart poles for low-temperature district heating network

A. Khosravi et al.

Summary: The city of Espoo, Finland is planning to develop Kera as a green suburb with high energy efficiency and low CO2 emissions. The study found that the heat pump scenario is an efficient and cost-effective way to retrieve waste heat from the data center and 5G smart poles.

ENERGY (2021)

Article Green & Sustainable Science & Technology

Proof-of-work based blockchain technology and Anthropocene: An undermined situation?

Christophe Schinckus

Summary: The perspective discusses the contradiction of using renewable energy to fuel blockchain technology that mostly relies on the energy-intensive Proof-of-Work (POW) consensus algorithm. It suggests a conceptual framework rejecting the assumption that renewable energy would make the POW-based operations greener, emphasizing a need for standards development to prevent negative environmental impacts of mining operations.

RENEWABLE & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REVIEWS (2021)

Article Green & Sustainable Science & Technology

Hedging renewable energy investments with Bitcoin mining

Carlos L. Bastian-Pinto et al.

Summary: This study explores the strategy of wind farm investors to hedge electricity price risk by simultaneously investing in a cryptocurrency mining facility. By researching the lack of correlation between electricity and Bitcoin prices, optimal output switching is used to maximize revenue and minimize losses.

RENEWABLE & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REVIEWS (2021)

Article Economics

Returns, volatility and the cryptocurrency bubble of 2017-18

Jamie L. Cross et al.

Summary: The research found evidence of a risk premium effect in Litecoin and Ripple during the boom of 2017, and that adverse news effects were an important driver of the cryptocurrency crash of 2018 in all four cryptocurrencies. In terms of forecasting, allowing for stochastic volatility and a heavy tailed distribution provides more accurate return and volatility forecasts compared to a random walk benchmark, suggesting that cryptocurrency markets were not weak-form efficient during this period.

ECONOMIC MODELLING (2021)

Editorial Material Chemistry, Physical

Energy Consumption of Cryptocurrencies Beyond Bitcoin

Ulrich Gallersdoerfer et al.

JOULE (2020)

Review Green & Sustainable Science & Technology

Blockchain technology in the energy sector: A systematic review of challenges and opportunities

Merlinda Andoni et al.

RENEWABLE & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REVIEWS (2019)

Article Telecommunications

Comparative evaluation of consensus mechanisms in cryptocurrencies

Shihab S. Hazari et al.

INTERNET TECHNOLOGY LETTERS (2019)

Article Green & Sustainable Science & Technology

Quantification of energy and carbon costs for mining cryptocurrencies

Max J. Krause et al.

NATURE SUSTAINABILITY (2018)

Article Business

Cryptocurrencies and Business Ethics

Claus Dierksmeier et al.

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS ETHICS (2018)