Back in 2021 Elon Musk announced that Tesla no longer accepts Bitcoin payments, citing fossil fuels, and coal burning:

We located the 34 largest mines in the United States in 2022, identified the electricity-generating plants that responded to them, and pinpointed communities most harmed by Bitcoin mine-attributable air pollution. From mid-2022 to mid-2023, the 34 mines consumed 32.3 terawatt-hours of electricity—33% more than Los Angeles—85% of which came from fossil fuels.

Trump has big plans for crypto

While Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at large still wait for mass adoption, the U.S. administration spearheaded by Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a government bitcoin reserve.

AP: “The U.S. will not sell any bitcoin deposited into the Reserve. It will be kept as a store of value. The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called ‘digital gold,’” Sacks said on social media.

The executive order calls for a “full accounting” of the government’s bitcoin holdings, which Sacks said have never been fully audited. He added that the U.S. government has previously sold off about 195,000 bitcoin over the last decade for $366 million. He said those bitcoins would be worth about $17 billion if the government hadn’t sold them.

Sacks said the order allows for the Treasury and Commerce Departments “to develop budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin.”

Once a skeptic who said a few years ago that bitcoin “ seems like a scam,” Trump has embraced digital currencies and leaned into his unofficial role as the “ crypto president ” in ways that can both help the crypto industry and enrich himself and his family. Wealthy players in the crypto industry, who felt unfairly targeted by the Biden administration, spent heavily to help Trump win last year’s election.

Bottom line, if you own or provide bitcoin payments you support indirectly the current U.S. government and the generation of digital currencies through pollution of the environment.

The Study

The abstract of the new study, ‘The environmental burden of the United States’ bitcoin mining boom‘:

Bitcoin mines—massive computing clusters generating cryptocurrency tokens—consume vast amounts of electricity. The amount of fine particle (PM2.5) air pollution created because of their electricity consumption and its effect on environmental health is pending.

In this study, we located the 34 largest mines in the United States in 2022, identified the electricity-generating plants that responded to them, and pinpointed communities most harmed by Bitcoin mine-attributable air pollution. From mid-2022 to mid-2023, the 34 mines consumed 32.3 terawatt-hours of electricity—33% more than Los Angeles—85% of which came from fossil fuels.

We estimated that 1.9 million Americans were exposed to ≥0.1 μg/m3 of additional PM2.5 pollution from Bitcoin mines, often hundreds of miles away from the communities they affected. Americans living in four regions—including New York City and near Houston—were exposed to the highest Bitcoin mine-attributable PM2.5 concentrations (≥0.5 μg/m3) with the greatest health risks.