Many of us have heard the words “blockchain” and “mining” used in the context of earning Bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency) at the so-called “crypto farms”. For some, the definitions were enough to grasp the basic idea and start mining themselves, but for many, the idea is still foreign. Sadly, the future of crypto mining will affect the future of our planet regardless of one’s involvement. And as we come closer to a time when we will need to decide if the benefits of cryptocurrency outweigh its damages to the planet and society, the least we can do is educate ourselves enough to make an informed decision.

The name “blockchain” comes from its core structure: a chain of blocks. Each “block” is essentially a file folder that contains the information of thousands of transactions. Before being added to the chain, a filled block needs to be given a valid “hash” ⁠— a unique identifier, a seemingly random fixed-length sequence of characters. This identifier is determined by the transaction data inside the block (which is never modified) and something called a “nonce”. These two components are used as input to the hashing algorithm to produce the corresponding hash, which has to meet certain requirements imposed by the blockchain before being considered valid. Since we cannot control the output of the algorithm, we can only slightly alter the nonce we feed it until we get a hash that fits the requirements. Essentially, we try to guess the nonce.

This process of guessing is called mining. But mining is a very costly operation in terms of computational power ⁠— you need to guess a gazillion (2256 in the case of Bitcoin) nonce variations to get the one you need, so the more powerful your computer is, the faster it will guess. The logical solution then would be to increase computing power, to get more computers to mine the same block; but first, why? How does that even help earn money?

Let’s recall that each block is a collection of transactions that wait for their block to receive a valid hash to join the blockchain. Every user with a pending transaction therefore needs to wait until the miners guess the needed nonce to send and receive their coins. To encourage people to mine their coin, each cryptocurrency rewards miners for validating a block. The reward consists of a fixed amount of coins that the cryptocurrency itself creates for this purpose and from the transaction fees users pay to speed up the process. The accumulated cryptosum is then split and rewarded to every contributing miner based on how much computing power they provided. The more you mine, the more you earn. This is where cryptofarms originated.

Each crypto farm is just a bunch of machines, or “mining rigs”, designated to mining the same blocks to get more rewards. A mining rig requires a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) among other components. Many serious miners buy out all the state-of-the-art GPUs made from the newest microchips to maximize their profits, with some farms having more than 8,000 GPUs running 24/7. But of course, the GPUs don't run for free; they overheat and consume a ridiculous amount of power to work and cool. According to the University of Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index of June 2021, the global Bitcoin network (only Bitcoin!) annually consumes roughly the same amount of electricity as the nation of Finland, with a population of over five million people. Mining simply encourages you to try to burn the most amount of electricity while you compete with others doing the same — a race to a global power outage and the asphyxiation of all life.

Sure, crypto farming is not solely responsible for the global energy crisis and microchip shortage, but that’s arguably not even the worst of its sides either. Along with enabling almost risk-free drug and weapons trade and sex trafficking due to the absence of a centralized governing entity, crypto exploits the unprepared economy to generate real money profit over nothing — a speculative bubble waiting to burst and line up the society for an even bigger crisis than the one caused by COVID-19. And it all could happen from a single tweet of an out-of-mind billionaire. While doing so, crypto mining burns more electricity per year than Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Google combined. When comparing the benefits and services these companies provide with those of an essentially monopolized and totally unfair cryptocurrency, the next step becomes obvious. But perhaps, the idea of making money out of thin air through a power outlet is too intriguing for the world to forget about crypto… even to just postpone the planet's inevitable doom.