Bitcoin and mining use less energy than gambling

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Data shows that the bitcoin mining industry as a whole uses even less energy than the video game sector.

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That’s how much energy Bitcoin currently uses per year

According to a recent report by Arcane Research, bitcoin mining energy consumption has increased significantly in recent years. However, the industry still accounts for a very small proportion of total global consumption.

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Bitcoin miners currently consume around 100 TWh of electricity per year. This figure corresponds to about 0.06% of the world’s total energy needs, which is quite insignificant.

The chart below shows how bitcoin mining compares to some other energy-intensive industries in the world:

Industry demand for energy is lower than in all these sectors Source: Arcane Research’s

How Bitcoin mining can change the energy industry

As you can see in the graph above, the video game industry consumes about 105 TWh per year – just a little more than what bitcoin miners consume.

Gold mining, on the other hand, uses much more electricity. Because: The annual energy consumption is currently around 240 TWh. That is almost 2.5 times the BTC claim.

The chart also includes data on paper production. It requires 2,361 TWh per year, which is 10 hours of gold mining and 24 hours of BTC mining.

The report also notes that BTC miners’ power consumption is different from other energy-intensive industries.

BTC miners are unique consumers of electricity

There are five main reasons that make miners “unique energy consumers”. First, about 80% of BTC mining operating costs come from electricity consumption alone.

This means that miners have a strong incentive to run on as little energy as possible or move to areas with lower prices.

The second difference is that mining is site independent. Miners can set up their rigs almost anywhere, using energy resources that no one else uses due to the location constraints of other industries.

Third, bitcoin miners can turn their machines on and off at any time. And not only that, you can even adjust your consumption by watts. The report notes that this property makes mining particularly suitable as a demand reduction tool, which could help improve power grids.

The fourth exceptional point about BTC mining is modularity. Individual AISC machines can be interconnected in any quantity, allowing miners to precisely scale their rigs based on the amount of power available. This means that the miners can use 100% of the excess energy from the power stations.

Finally, there is the portability of mining rigs. Bitcoin miners can easily transport their machines to other locations since the AISC rigs are portable.

Currently (at the time of writing this article) the price of Bitcoin is fluctuating around $19.6k. It is down 2% in the past week.

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Text credit: Bitcoinist

Last updated September 4, 2022