Will Bitcoin’s decline make BTC’s environmental impact better or worse?

with recent Bitcoin Cut in half It is ready for tonightThe world's largest cryptocurrency network is set to undergo the biggest change in years.

Many have predicted how the transition will be It affects the price of BTC And the wide crypto market. But how will the halving affect Bitcoin? Controversial, They often argueAnd Undeniably huge Impact on the environment?

The answer is, it's complicated.

By reducing BTC mining rewards by 50%, Bitcoin's latest will be halved once again Move the goalposts that can and cannot channel large amounts of electricity to create new BTC. At one time, Bitcoin miners could earn 50 BTC per block. Currently you get 6.25 BTC. In a few hours, that sum will be reduced to 3.125 BTC.

As BTC mining rewards get lower and lower, independent miners are ready. Opt out of business– Abandonment of huge, invested institutional players Millions of dollars are undisclosed. In a technology designed to increase the efficiency of mining operations.

“Miners are forced to become more efficient in order to remain profitable,” said Kyle Schnepp, public policy at crypto mining and staking company Foundry. Decrypt. “This means not only more efficient machines, but also the most affordable energy, which tends to be renewable energy in remote locations.”

Big companies are better equipped than independent miners to jump into hard-to-reach renewable energy sources with energy-efficient machines. The halving will push such organizations even further into dominance – and thus make BTC mining extremely efficient and often the result of renewable energy sources.

Isaac Holyoak, Chief Communications Officer at 3.6 billion dollars According to Bitcoin mining giant CleanSpark, the company expects Bitcoin's global hash rate to drop by 15 percent following the halving.

Bitcoin hash rate is a measure of the amount of computing power being used on the network at a given time. The number increases as more miners compete to capture the precious BTC rewards. A 15% reduction in that amount can significantly reduce energy use, Halloak says.

“So this is the important thing [disappearing] 15% consume more energy than the remaining 85%,” he said. Decrypt. “The machines that are still working will continue to monetize uninterrupted power and balance the grid and do it more efficiently.”

So, at least in the short term, the halving could be good news for those concerned about the sustainability of Bitcoin mining's environmental impact. But other industry experts say the improvement may be short-lived.

“The upcoming stripping event will transform the inherently inefficient process of Bitcoin mining into a more energy-efficient operation than ever before,” said Nishant Sharma, founder of Bitcoin Mining Research. Bridge blocksHe told him Decrypt. “Will this result in reduced energy consumption? Maybe temporarily.”

Later, Sharma said: Bitcoin is becoming Increasingly mainstream and others Widely used For different purposes – the number of transactions on the network increases, proportionally increasing the amount of computing power required to run the network. Those increases won't take too long to outweigh the cuts caused by this week's halving, he said.

Therefore, the halving could signal good news for Bitcoin's immediate environmental prospects.

But this event is very different from saying it will bring about the end or even the beginning of the end. It is heated Arguments Still huge power consumption by crypto network. That doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon: Norway earlier this week Law introduced This effectively gives the country's government the power to shut down crypto mining operations on the grounds that they are harmful to the environment.

Edited by Andrew Hayward.