In 2017, bitcoin mining generated 69 million tonnes of CO2. That is the equivalent CO2 of putting 14.7 Million new cars on the road or burning 75 Billion pounds of Coal…

Mining is a lucrative business, with one bitcoin currently selling for about $8,300.

Demand for bitcoin could single-handedly derail efforts to limit global warming because the increasingly popular digital currency takes huge amounts of energy to produce, scientists said on Monday.

Producing bitcoin at a pace with growing demand could by 2033 defeat the aim of limiting global warming to 2 C, according to U.S. research published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

But mining, the process of producing bitcoins by solving mathematical equations, uses high-powered computers and a lot of electricity, the researchers said.

As the currency becomes more common, researchers said it could use enough electricity to emit about 230 gigatonnes of carbon within a decade and a half. One gigatonne is equal to one billion tonnes of carbon.

For more information, click here.