Elon Musk’s favourite, Dogecoin witnesses a 25% fall in its carbon footprint

The Elon Musk-backed meme coin, Dogecoin, is again garnering eyeballs. However, this time it is not about the price but its energy consumption, which has seen a significant reduction.

By Jasmine Anand:

The crypto industry has attracted a lot of flak owing to its carbon emissions. Apart from cryptocurrency mining, crypto transactions also get their fair share of backlash. Nonetheless, several cryptos have been coming up with sustainable ways to process transactions. One such token which is making headlines for this very reason is Dogecoin.

According to a research, Dogecoin, which kicked off as a silly joke, was better suited for crypto-related transactions owing to its reduced carbon footprint. In fact, Musk’s favourite, Dogecoin’s carbon emissions dipped by 25% in one year. In other words, the meme coin released 1,063 tons of emissions in 2022 as compared to 1.423 tons in 2021. In simpler terms, Dogecoin employs only 0.12 kWh per transaction as compared to Bitcoin’s 1,183.58 kWh per transaction.

The said decline in Dogecoin’s energy consumption can be attributed to Tesla’s boss, Elon Musk. He had earlier revealed working alongside Dogecoin developers to bolster its efficiency.

Bitcoin continues to draw criticism from environmental crusaders

Bitcoin, the world’s largest and most popular crypto, continues to leave behind high carbon footprints. In fact, Tesla, the famous manufacturer of electric vehicles, in 2021, discontinued vehicle purchases using Bitcoin owing to growing concerns over the increased usage of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining.

Further, Bitcoin was followed by Polygon and Bitcoin Cash in terms of high carbon emissions. While Polygon uses 90.18 kWh per transaction, Bitcoin Cash uses 18.96 kWh in every transaction.

Ethereum, Bitcoin’s closest rival, experienced the biggest reduction in carbon emissions last year, after shifting to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. The asset now requires a dainty 0.03 kWh to carry out its transactions.

It must be noted that at the time of writing this article, Dogecoin had advanced by 3.79 percent to $0.08122 over the past week.

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