According to recent studies by the University of Cambridge, the Bitcoin network consumes more energy than the Swiss population.
Thanks to an online tool launched this week called the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (CBECI), that estimates the amount of energy needed to maintain the Bitcoin network in real time and calculates the annual energy consumption from this information.
Alternative to energy consumption in cryptocurrency mining?
The calculation comes on time, both because of the Bitcoin boom in recent weeks and because of news like the recent one: Energy consumption in Iran has skyrocketed by 7% due to Bitcoin mining.
Myths and facts about the energy consumption of the Bitcoin mining industry
According to CBECI, Bitcoin’s global network currently consumes more than seven gigawatts of electricity. This corresponds to 64 TWh (terawatt hours) of energy consumption over the course of a year. This is more than the whole country of Switzerland consumes in the same time (58 TWh per year), but less than Colombia (68 TWh per year).
This means that Bitcoins accounts for about 0.25% of global electricity consumption.
We already knew that Bitcoin consumes a lot of electricity, which is used by the world’s miners with the necessary hardware to maintain the network and validate the transactions, but it is also important to make it clear that these figures are estimates.
These calculations prove to be very estimative as they show the possible minimum and maximum values. The minimum limit is currently 22 TWh, while the upper limit is around 150 TWh.
The interest in Bitcoin as a store of value and a pretext for speculation is obvious: the market has been seeing for years how the value of Bitcoin goes through a real roller coaster. This generates interest, and the interest leads to the mining fever that increases and decreases depending on the value of Bitcoin.
In addition to the potential environmental problem, Bitcoin is difficult to converge into a payment method because transactions are very expensive, how much? The August 2018 Digiconomist study made it clear that a transaction with Bitcoin consumes as much energy as 100,000 VISA transactions. Irrespective of the exact figures, Bitcoin’s energy consumption is striking. It is increasing rapidly, sometimes even in less than six months, and this energy consumption always has an impact on the environment.
Source: The Verge