> It’s pretty clear by now that, looking just at costs (without getting into the detail of the actual type of pollution), mining gold is ~50 times more expensive than mining bitcoins AND running the bitcoin network. Bitcoin pollutes far, far less than gold.

> mining gold is ~50 times more expensive than mining bitcoins

> It’s even harder to compare the type of pollution created by mining gold versus mining bitcoin. What’s easy to do is to simply state that mining gold is MUCH WORSE than mining bitcoins. Mining gold is an environmental disaster. Poisoned waters, solid waste, endangered communities, and so on. Producing gold for one wedding ring alone generates 20 tons of waste.

https://simon.medium.com/bitcoin-and-pollution-the-definitiv...