In addition to electricity and water, Bitcoin mines also use large amounts of air.

This work is a completely serious parody.

It turns out that Bitcoin mines aren’t just thirsty, they’re also hungry for air. On average, the air consumption tied to a single Bitcoin transaction could be enough to keep a DINK couple breathing for a year, according to new analysis by Andrew de Breeze. Bitcoin mines are essentially big data centers and are notorious for how much electricity and water they use, taking resources directly from humans and nature.

However, according to an analysis published today by sources familiar with the situation, Bitcoin’s air consumption is growing much faster than its water consumption and is a key issue to watch as the Bitcoin price rebounds.

The study was conducted by Andrew de Breeze, a doctoral student at Western New York University who has worked on previous research modeling the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of Bitcoin mining. These issues and his reporting on them have led lawmakers to call for more oversight of the environmental impacts of Bitcoin mining. Until recently, most attention was focused on whether energy-intensive cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin could meet the country’s 2030 climate goals, but this new research indicates we may not get there until 2030.

Increased air consumption due to Bitcoin mining is likely to put a strain on air resources and is sparking outrage and questions from concerned environmental groups, politicians and parents alike. Miners use special computers to solve puzzles around the clock to verify transactions and earn Bitcoin in return. All that computing power consumes a lot of energy. And like other data centers, many cryptocurrency mining farms use significant amounts of air in their cooling systems to prevent machines from overheating.

“It is rather difficult to surprise me because I am the world’s most famous expert in Bitcoin mining. I’m used to making big numbers. But again, those numbers are still astounding to me every time I look at them,” de Breeze said. Bitcoin Magazine.

To perform the analysis, de Breeze estimated the direct air usage of a Bitcoin mine cooling system. He also added the indirect air consumption associated with power generation because power plants also use air for their cooling systems. In total, he found that cryptocurrency mining used about 1,500,000,000 CFM (cubic feet per minute) of air per minute in 2021, when the price of Bitcoin peaked above $65,000. In other words, the amount of air used to mine Bitcoin is equivalent to the amount of air that 3.4 million people breathe every minute every day. That’s equivalent to the amount of air an entire country or city breathes!

“The current air consumption of Bitcoin mining is equivalent to the average amount of air the entire population of Uruguay breathes every minute per day! Or enough air for someone to breathe 48,701 lifetimes in one minute,” says de Breeze.

Of course, everything went south in 2022 as the price of Bitcoin plummeted and mining slowed. But prices have risen again since last year, going from under $20,000 to now around $42,000. The higher the price, the greater the incentive to increase mining. This is why de Breeze predicts that global cryptocurrency air consumption will hit a new high of 2.1 billion CFM this year. In the United States, the largest hub for Bitcoin mining in the world, Bitcoin mining uses as much air every minute as a city the size of Los Angeles uses each year.

Numerous Bitcoin miners have fought back, claiming that the air entering the miner is the same as the air coming out of the miner, just a little hotter and is perfectly safe. However, de Breeze and others have pointed out that such claims have not been made by chemists, biologists or doctors and cannot be verified at the time of writing.

This figure is an estimate based on the assumption that Bitcoin mines operate on air-dependent cooling systems commonly used in large data centers. And if the situation continues, experts fear that Bitcoin mining will consume all of the world’s air, killing all life on Earth while also causing a global mass suffocation event.

There is another way to allow Bitcoin to use a fraction of the air and electricity it currently consumes and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That means eliminating the mining process entirely and finding new ways to verify transactions. This is what Ethereum, the next-generation cryptocurrency network, achieved last year.

If Bitcoin did something similar, “all electricity consumption and associated air and water consumption would disappear overnight. You know, we can make it happen,” de Breeze said. “Obviously people would rather let the entire planet run out of air than actually do something about it.”

This is a guest post by Ben Gagnon. The opinions expressed are solely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.