The bitcoin gold rush comes with dirty baggage.

Mining the virtual currency and its transactions are estimated to cause more pollution than a small country every year – a fact that companies and proponents are beginning to wake up to.

Elon Musk recently tweeted that Tesla will no longer accept it as payment and he believes the cryptocurrency “has a promising future, but this cannot come at great cost to the environment."

What’s the problem, you may ask?

Bitcoin’s virtual, so it’s not like it’s made from paper or plastic, or even metal.

Bitcoin is created when high-powered computers compete against other machines to solve complex mathematical puzzles.

It’s an energy-intensive process that often relies on electricity generated with fossil fuels.

Greater demand and higher prices have led to more miners competing to win coin, using increasingly powerful computers that need more energy.

- Reuters -