"But where on Earth does the figure you quoted above come from?
Solar is the only kind of energy that miners can now use, in the highly competive business of Bitcoin mining, which is cheap enough to stay ahead of rivals whilst still turning a profit."
1) You are very badly informed on that
2) You did not read the article completely :
I provide both the figures and the sources :
"In 2020, the carbon impact for mining bitcoins is 36 millions of tons of CO2, for 18 billions $ of revenues for miners. Hence, 40 000 $ value of bitcoins represents 80 tons of CO2."
Source: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
To summarize : more than 60% of miners are located in China, and spread equally between regions powered mainly by coal and regions powered mainly by hydro.
Overall, the usage of renewable is less than 40%, according to the lastest report of Cambridge :
The average carbon footprint of the electricity mix used by mines is 490g/kWh, which is worse than the USA mix.
In total, that's 36 Mt CO2 / year = the carbonn footprint of Nez Zealand.
Bitcoin is a complete disaster and an insane waste of resources and energy.
