China's electricity-hungry bitcoin mines that วิธีดาวน์โหลด slotxo power nearly 80 per cent of the global trade in cryptocurrencies risk undercutting the country's climate goals, a study in the journal Nature said on Tuesday (Apr 6).

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are minted by solving puzzles using powerful computers that consume enormous amounts of electricity - much of it produced by coal plants.

The Nature study found that unchecked, China's bitcoin mines will generate 130.50 million metric tonnes of carbon emissions by 2024 - close to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from Italy or oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

Chinese companies with access to cheap electricity and hardware handled 78.89 per cent of global bitcoin blockchain operations as of April 2020, the study said.

This involves minting new coins and keeping track of cryptocurrency transactions.

About 40 per cent of China's bitcoin mines are powered with coal, while the rest use renewables, the study said.

But the coal-guzzling rigs are so large they could end up undermining Beijing's pledge to peak carbon emissions before 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060, it warned.

"The intensive bitcoin blockchain operation in China can quickly grow as a threat that could potentially undermine the emission reduction effort," co-author Wang Shouyang from the Chinese Academy of Sciences told AFP.