According to the Guardian, it's not only the transactions that require a lot of electricity in order to be completed, but mining the virtual coin is also a very resource intensive process.

In fact, mining Bitcoin already uses as much energy as the entirety of Sweden, but this could be changed within the code of the operation, according to a recent climate campaign.

The campaign is called Change the Code Not the Climate and it is coordinated by Environmental Working Group, Greenpeace USA and a few other climate groups that press Bitcoin to change the way Bitcoins are mined in order to reduce the environmental effects.

Bitcoin uses what is called "proof of work", a software that is operated by multiple powerful sets of computers that are responsible for the validation of transactions.

Ethereum, one of Bitcoin's cryptocurrency rival, uses a system called "proof of stake", which implies that miners declare the amount of coins that they possess in order to verify transactions, which is supposed to reduce energy consumption by 99%.

If miners provide inaccurate information about the amount of crypto they possess, it will result in a penalty.

Michael Brune, campaign director and former executive director of Sierra Club, said that "this is a big problem. In part because of where the industry stands now but also because of our concerns about its growth."

The United States is the world leader in terms of mining cryptocurrency after China took measures against its own miners in order to prevent huge demands of energy due to mining.

The rising popularity of Bitcoin mining in the US revived the activity of coal and gas plants, which became dedicated energy suppliers for miners, experts say.

“Coal plants which were dormant or slated to be closed are now being revived and solely dedicated to Bitcoin mining. Gas plants, which in many cases were increasingly economically uncompetitive, are also now being dedicated to Bitcoin mining. We are seeing this all across the country,” said Brune.

Some miners are aware of the climate effects that Bitcoin mining has, and resorted to using renewable alternatives to power their stations, through wind and solar power.

Brune said that while their effort is "clearly well-intentioned", it is not enough in order to counter the environmental footprint.

According to him, "fossil fuel growth is outpacing renewable growth in Bitcoin mining and that’s the fundamental challenge."

Chris Larsen, founder and executive chairman of crypto company Ripple and a climate activist, also commented on the matter, saying that without a change to the code, the main issue will remain that Bitcoin’s code "incentivizes maximum energy use".

According to him, a potentially dangerous scenario is the one in which economic powers, such as China, the US and the EU, switch to renewable energy sources for the most part, but the countries that benefit from a lot of fossil resources will resort to using them for the Bitcoin mining activity.

"Imagine the Saudis sitting on all that oil, which has a cost of about ½ cent per kilowatt hour – no renewable can match that. Bitcoin mining could be this endless monetization engine for fossil fuels. That would be a nightmare", Larsen added.

Organizers of the climate campaign take matter into their own hands and spread the word about the impact of Bitcoin mining as much as they can, posting their campaign on big platforms, such as Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Facebook.

They hope that this way they will make Bitcoin's biggest investors and influencers to ask for a change in the code.

Recently, the European Union rejected the proposal to ban Bitcoin across the bloc, but instead the representatives proposed new draft rules that would protect consumers and make mining more sustainable to avoid the environmental impact.