The Carbon Cost of Cryptocurrency

The Carbon Cost of Cryptocurrency is a project that I created in the fall of 2021 for an ATLAS class “Front-End Web Development” during my master’s. The goal of the project was to communicate what the carbon cost of each cryptocurrency was at the time, and hopefully have an emotional impact encouraging users to use environmentally friendly cryptocurrencies (or even better: not use crypto at all).

The user can choose between 3 different crypto currencies to visualize the carbon footprint of: BitCoin, Etherium, and Tezos. They can also choose between 3 different objects to measure that carbon footprint by: a lump of coal, a car, and a city. The lump of coal represents the equivalent carbon emissions of burning an entire ton of coal. That means if those lumps are falling every couple of seconds, that crypto currency network is emitting the equivalent amount of an entire ton of coal burned, just every few seconds. The car represents the equivalent carbon emissions as driving a car on a highway for 10 hours straight. I think you’ll be surprised just how quickly those ones fall from the sky! And finally the city represents the equivalent carbon emissions as powering an entire Denver-sized city for a whole minute (so if those are dropping quicker than once a minute, then that crypto network is using more power than a Denver-sized city).

Tools

• TypeScript
• THREE.js
• Cannon-ES physics engine
• Blender

Process