One of the biggest talking points of Bitcoin skeptics revolves around the negative impact of mining on the environment. It is hard to debate against this argument because the competition in the mining community increases despite mounting costs and surging electricity prices. Some people say that the Bitcoin mining community causes massive issues for local electrical grids devastating the infrastructure.
What will happen after the merge?
Three years ago, when Ethereum’s developers announced their plans to shift to the PoS algorithm, many experts immediately jumped on the hype train and started arguing that it is THE change that must happen in the crypto industry to justify its existence to the whole world.
Ethereum is roughly 40% less demanding in terms of energy compared to the Bitcoin network, but it is also the consequence of less competition and a slightly different algorithm. It is still a power-hungry network. The shift to the PoS model should reduce energy usage by more than 99.95% with all validators using staking instead of mining to produce new blocks.
The move is still considered controversial by many members of the crypto community who believe that Ethereum will become vulnerable to majority attacks and centralization. However, the same can be said about the Bitcoin network which can become vulnerable to similar issues related to the centralization of mining power when the last BTC will be mined.
Regardless of how you see the upcoming change to the ETH network, the massive drop in energy usage is quite impressive. It will save electricity equal to what has produced the annual output of 15 large nuclear reactors or 11 thousand highly efficient wind turbines as calculated by a Reddit user. 11.5 TWh of energy will be saved thanks to the switch to the PoS algorithm.
The western world will see the new and improved Ethereum
With recent comments from US officials that Bitcoin poses a threat to ecology and the environment and should start switching to greener sources of energy, the massive reduction in energy consumption by Ethereum should calm down some of the biggest opponents of crypto in the US and Canada. Hopefully, we will see more attention to this improvement from mass media.
