A co-author of the report told AFP on Friday
that the average life cycle of the powerful computers used to unearth the units
of the world's leading cryptocurrency was only 1.3 years.
Alex de Vries noted that this was
"extremely short compared to any" other electronic devices such as
iPhones.
At 30,700 tonnes, the amount of electronic
waste generated by bitcoin mining in the 12 months to May was "comparable
to the amount of small IT and telecommunication equipment waste produced by a
country like the Netherlands", the report said.
The race to find new bitcoins -- on Friday,
one unit was worth more than $47,000 following a stellar rise this year --
means the mining computers' processing power soon becomes obsolete.
And the more bitcoin is worth, the larger the
amount of electronic waste, according to the study published by scientific
journal, Elsevier.
Alex de Vries works as an economist at the
Dutch central bank, while the report's co-author Christian Stoll is from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Despite the high amount of waste, it remains a
fraction of the global total from throwing away electronic devices, which stood
at 53.6 million tonnes last year.