How much electricity Bitcoins use

“Bitcoin mining” is a big power hog.  The  recent sharp rise in the price of the cryptocurrency would motivate more and more people to mine more Bitcoins.

 The  scientists complain that the highly complex computing processes on more and more computers are consuming ever larger amounts of electricity.

Electricity consumption only drops when the price drops

 The  high power consumption of Bitcoins is inherent in the system and will only decline when the rate falls again, according to the scientists in a BBC report. According to calculations by the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance, if the Bitcoin system were a state, it is among the 30 largest electricity-consuming countries.

 The  author David Gerard sees the power consumption of the Bitcoin system continue to rise, and the associated CO2 emissions from the cryptocurrency. “It is very bad that all of this energy is literally wasted on a lottery.”

 The  latest price rally was triggered by an announcement by the electric car manufacturer Tesla that it would invest in Bitcoin. In 2020, Tesla received environmental subsidies amounting to $ 1.5 billion (1.24 billion euros), which the taxpayers financed for the US group. “And they spend 1.5 billion dollars on Bitcoin, the majority of which are generated with electricity from coal-fired power plants.

 The se subsidies have to be checked,” demands Gerard.

Bitcoin compared to Austria

For comparison: According to E-Control, around 63.7 TWh of electricity were supplied to customers in Austria in the corona crisis year 2020 (minus 3.3 percent compared to 2019 and around the level of 2009) – around 10 TWh less than the total domestic electricity consumption which was 73.5 TWh. This difference of 10 TWh was necessary for the system of pumped storage, i.e. the pumping up of water in storage systems, as well as to cover network losses and to draw power plants from the network, e.g. to start up caloric systems. An average Austrian household consumes around 4,400 kilowatt hours of electrical energy per year.

(Those: APA)