Paper Title
Energy and Carbon Cost of Mining Cryptocurrencies

Abstract
In 2017, Bitcoin received a lot of attention, after the rush of its price, thus new cryptocurrencies appeared in the market with similar properties. These novelties led to many theoretical questions from which this paper analyses whether cryptocurrencies are an ecological friendly alternative of currently used currencies (cash, digital equivalents etc.) or not.There are several cryptocurrencies in existence and the technological basics of many of these is blockchain which is a digital ledger of transactions. The process of “mining” of new coins, adding blocks to the chain is computation intensive that requires a lot of energy. We would like to examine and estimate the consumption of major cryptocurrencies and compare it to the production cost and ecological footprint of fiat currencies. This sustainability analysis would also help to understand better whether these new currencies are able to substitute the currently used fiat money or not.