Bitcoin needs its own dedicated four dozen nuclear reactors with dedicated water supply. It doesn’t have that at present. Whatever its financial benefits, surely this is unsustainable: The current greenhouse gas emissions to support this rival that of many small countries, combined. Running at the intensity shown above for a single hour produces 6100 (metric) tonnes of CO₂ at the electrical generating efficiencies the United States had in 2019, as reported by the U.S. EIA. That’s 54 million metric tonnes (“MMTs”) of CO₂ per year. That works out to about 0.3% of a single ppm (*) of CO₂ in atmosphere every year, just for Bitcoin mining!

(*) This is corrected for the fraction that persists in atmosphere, which is about 45% of the original quantity.