Advance research techniques are important to help make searching and finding the relevant information much more efficient. When looking into Cryptocurrency and its Environmental impacts, there are a ton of issues that you run into when just doing a simple search. The first of which is even when using those two words (Cryptocurrency and environment) as keywords you end up with numerous articles talking about economic and business environments, instead of cryptocurrencies impact on the Earth. Below are a few searches to show the power of advanced searches.

I started my research in the ABI/INFORM Collection, a database focused on finance. The first terms I used to start to limit my search were “Cryptocurrencies, mining, Environment, Energy Consumption”, I then used the Boolean term AND as well as limiting the results to peer reviewed articles only. From this point I was left with 116 results with one of those results being “Crypto-currencies Trading and Energy Consumption”. The subject terms for this article are Currencies, Energy Consumption and Digital currencies. This is an article that I my find useful in the future given its purpose is to understand some of the key issues with energy and cryptocurrencies.

Schinckus, C., Nguyen, C. P., & Ling, F. C. (2020). Crypto-currencies trading and energy consumption. International Journal of Energy Economics and Policy, 10(3), 355–364. https://doi.org/10.32479/ijeep.9258

For the next search I used the Applied Science & Technology database. I started this search with similar keywords both Cryptocurrency with the use of a Boolean and as well as Energy, however this time I also introduced a Boolean or with digital currency as my keyword. I then set a publish date range from 2014 to 2021. This narrowed my search down to 83 results with one of them being “Energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining: A study of electricity consumption in mining cryptocurrencies.”. This article focuses on the idea of electric consumption and cryptocurrencies. The subject terms used were Energy consumption, Electricity, Cryptography, Energy industries and Cryptocurrency mining. The main use of this article is to show the Electrical impact of cryptocurrency and create a baseline knowledge to compare with traditional currencies.

Li, J., Li, N., Peng, J., Cui, H., & Wu, Z. (2019). Energy consumption of cryptocurrency mining: A study of electricity consumption in mining cryptocurrencies. Energy, 168, 160–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2018.11.046

I used then GreenFILE database, a database focused on the human impact on the environment. For this search I focused on the potential for E-Waste as a direct result of Cryptocurrency mining. I used both the Boolean and as well as or to for the advanced search “Cryptocurrency or currency and waste”. Then I limited the search to peer reviewed articles after 2010. This left me with 79 results with one of the results being “Bitcoin’s growing e-waste problem.”, an article with the goal of exposing the potential E-waste problem that faces Bitcoin. This article uses the subject terms *Soil leaching, *Electronic waste*Poisons, *Electronics, recycling, Bitcoin, Telecommunication equipment and Electronic money. This article could be a great starting point when looking into the direct environmental impacts of cryptocurrencies.

de Vries, A., & Stoll, C. (2021). Bitcoin’s growing e-waste problem. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 175, 105901. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105901