Are we misguided about Bitcoin mining's environmental impacts? Slush Pool's CMO Kristian Csepcsar explains

It's a arguable taxable successful the blockchain assemblage that comes up from clip to clip — conscionable however overmuch interaction Bitcoin (BTC) mining has connected the environment. Last year, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk brought distant a crisp correction successful the cryptocurrency market by tweeting that his namesake car institution would wantonness plans to judge BTC, citing "rapidly expanding usage of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions." However, a recent study published by CoinShares notes that contempt the wide usage of coal, oil, and state for Bitcoin mining, the web accounts for little than 0.08% of the world's CO2 production.

During an exclusive interrogation with Cointelegraph, Kristian Csepcsar, main selling serviceman astatine Slush Pool, the oldest Bitcoin mining pool, gave penetration connected what helium believes are existent misconceptions regarding Bitcoin mining's biology impact. When asked astir the drawbacks of utilizing energy derived from lipid and state excavation Bitcoin, Csepcsar says determination are much than meets the eye:

We're virtually burning the state into the ambiance conscionable due to the fact that it's not economical to bash thing with it [Flaring]. Instead, we tin enactment it into a centrifugal to nutrient energy and usage that to excavation Bitcoin.

Flaring is the process of burning surplus earthy state during lipid extraction owed to a deficiency of pipeline infrastructure to bring it to market. Recently successful the U.S. and Canada, Bitcoin miners person recovered clever ways to alternatively funnel the earthy state to make electricity, alternatively of simply burning it into the atmosphere, thereby solving a captious biology problem.

But Csepcsar remains skeptical of definite renewable sources of Bitcoin mining, calling them "marketing noise.", specifically, star energy. As tells Cointelegraph:

On our blog, we published probe that we are not large promoters of star mining; erstwhile you cipher the profitability, it's not that good; it's a precise pugnacious business. 

Cespcsar further elaborates that astir 70% of each star panels are produced successful China and that determination has not been a batch of probe connected the biology interaction during their manufacturing process:

Producing them creates a batch of harmful chemicals. And cipher talks astir that. Everyone conscionable thinks that the star panels turn connected trees, and past the prima shines connected them. But, no, the process of creating them is brutal.

On a last note, Slush Pool does not person metrics regarding the root of vigor utilized by its Bitcoin miners. When asked wherefore this is, Cespcsar gave a astonishing answer: (but possibly existent to the doctrine of decentralization and privacy) 

We don't privation to look astatine that arsenic a excavation operator. In bid to person those numbers, we would request to KYC our miners, behaviour audits connected their operations, oregon adjacent filter transactions [for analytics]. That's not the ethos we privation to keep.