Though bitcoin mining is a very lucrative business, its negative impact on the environment cannot be ruled out. A new research conducted by Alex de Vries of PWC, has revealed that almost 98% of existing crypto mining hardware will soon become obsolete. He said they will probably create massive piles of e-waste.

The bitcoin mining industry is becoming highly competitive as the hashrate and mining difficulty continues to increase. After the upcoming halving which is slated in about 10 weeks, older mining rigs will become useless.

De Vries said, “The shocking thing is the average lifetime of a bitcoin mining machine is one and half years, because we have a new generation of machines which are better at doing these calculations”.

The PWC blockchain expert said these old ASIC miners will go straight to a landfill since they have only one use case. Bitcoin mining currently produces about 10 kilotons of e-waste in a year and this number is expected to increase after the upcoming halving.

Aside its production of high amount of waste, bitcoin mining operations now consume more electricity than Chile. Just one bitcoin transaction releases more carbon dioxide than over 780,000 Visa transactions.

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