Bitcoin consumes more electricity than these countries.. How is that?
Have you ever imagined that Bitcoin virtual currency can consume enormous amounts of electrical energy than the consumption of entire countries? .. Yes, that's what happened.
A report published by the UK University of Cambridge monitored Bitcoin's electricity consumption using an online tool that estimates the level of electricity used by the digital currency network and compares it to certain entities.
Assuming Bitcoin is a country, it consumes 143 TWh of electric power per year, which is equivalent to 0.65% of global electricity consumption.
When comparing Bitcoin to other countries, its consumption exceeds famous European countries such as Norway, which uses 124 TWh of electricity, while Switzerland consumes 56 TWh per year.
Likewise, it exceeds a densely populated country like Bangladesh, whose electricity consumption does not exceed 71 TWh per year.
To visualize the amount of electricity consumed by Bitcoin, Germany, the world's fourth largest economy, consumes 524 terawatts per hour per year, which means that the consumption of virtual currency is equivalent to 27.3% of German consumption.
According to Visual Capitalist, Bitcoin consumes significantly more energy than the world's largest tech companies.
For example, all data centers in the world, operated by TechBig, Cloud, Internet and the current financial system need around 205 TWh per year.
How has Bitcoin's electricity consumption evolved?
Citigroup said the energy consumed while mining Bitcoin has increased 66 times from 2015 levels, noting that Bitcoin's energy consumption will increase as its value increases.
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At the start of 2017, Bitcoin was using 6.6 TWh, and in October 2020, it had grown to 67 TWh.
Then, at the start of this year, consumption rose to 121 terawatt hours per hour, and with the price of Bitcoin reaching nearly $ 65,000, the volume of digital currency mining increased until the consumption of electricity reaches 143 terawatt hours per hour, and consumption is expected to increase further.
Why does Bitcoin consume huge amounts of energy?
Bitcoin is essentially a virtual currency, which means that it is mined by a huge peer-to-peer computer network.
To keep track of everything and keep the network safe, it uses a system called 'blockchain' which records all transactions, where everyone on the network gets a copy and they are linked to each other. Given this interdependence, tampering with the system can be virtually impossible.
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Anyone can become a member of the network. All it needs is a high-performance and powerful computer designed for this purpose, and the more powerful the computer, the better. Overheating of the equipment should be avoided.
The people who run these computers are called "miners", and they don't get regular salaries, but they have the option of being rewarded with bitcoins, and of course these machines with the electronic network consume huge amounts of money. energy.
environmental damage
Earlier, billionaire Bill Gates warned that the Bitcoin mining process consumes more energy than any other method known to mankind, and that it is not good for the climate, and explained that the process extraction would be acceptable if it relied on electricity from clean energy sources. .
The current metering system causes an increase in carbon dioxide emissions resulting from this large consumption of electricity.
There are criticisms of Bitcoin that many countries suffer from unstable power grids and some cannot handle the growing needs, like Iran, which the government has blamed on mining Bitcoin for them. the country's power outages last January.
Where are the bitcoin miner websites?
China is currently the world's largest bitcoin miner site, with over 65% of bitcoin miners residing in China.
It is followed by the United States and Russia at 7%, according to researchers at Cambridge.