How much CO2 pollution is each transaction responsible for, and how much would it cost to offset that CO2?
It seems like there should be some threshold above which the donation will include within it the funds needed to compensate for its externalities, but I don't know if it's possible to create a smart contract that only allows donations above a threshold amount.
You would also have to factor in the pollution from e-waste generated by miners buying and replacing ASICs, although that's harder to quantify.
But we should also consider whether engaging in such a transaction is worthwhile as a matter of principle. If the organization's goals include environmentalism, does legitimizing Bitcoin by advertising their acceptance of it run counter to those goals?
Bitcoin’s pollution is not strongly correlated with its transaction volume.
It’s a famous rare collectible. People will mine it whether there is a high volume of transactions or not.
369.49 kgCO2eq. https://www.forbes.com/sites/philippsandner/2021/11/19/bitco...
> An average Bitcoin transaction has a size of 670 bytes on the Bitcoin blockchain, representing an estimated carbon footprint of 369.49 kgCO2eq. Given a price of USD 50 per metric tonne of CO2eq, the compensation of one average Bitcoin transaction costs USD 18.47.
Near 0. PoW is about agreeing on what the current state is. A transaction itself doesn't cost very much energy. If you were to process 0 transactions for the next agreed upon state it would take just as much energy as processing thousands of them.