Bloomberg New Economy: Central Banks May Soon Be Coming for Bitcoin

While supposedly the leading next-generation currency, the great irony about Bitcoin is that it’s shockingly retrograde in almost every way that matters. To start with, “manufacturing” the cryptocurrency has required burning lots of coal, leaving a massive carbon footprint for a means of exchange that will ostensibly dominate a future, greener world.

Annual emissions tied to the electricity needed for cryptomining “rigs” (high-powered computers that produce digital tokens by solving math problems) are equal to that spewed by all of Argentina, according to researchers at Cambridge University.