What is the Carbon Footprint of Crypto?

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A few months ago tech writers started sounding alarms about the massive carbon footprint of cryptocurrency. Apparently since cryptocurrency is built to be self-limiting by increasing the difficulty of algorithms with each use, the amount of energy needed for each transaction goes up. One estimate puts the amount of energy used for Bitcoin alone at 1% of domestic energy production in the United States worldwide. An even more dire estimate says that Bitcoin alone could consume all of the world’s energy by 2020.