TL;DR —
Global energy required for mining Bitcoin is between 67 and 121 terawatt-hours a year. Around half of what all data centers - which help power the internet, cloud computing, and the other 4,500+ cryptocurrencies (plus the entire financial sector) - consume. One of the reasons for the high energy cost of Bitcoin and friends is not due to the blockchain at all. 80% of the hash rate - the combined computing power for mining and processing Bitcoins - is provided in Asian countries. El Salvador recently announced that the country had mined 0.00599179 bitcoin using power harnessed from a volcano.
[story continues]
Written by
@therealsjr
Editor-at-Large at Dataconomy, and co-founder at ⅄Oᒋ⅋NOISՈᖵNOϽ - an impact creator house
Topics and
tags
tags
bitcoin|sustainability|energy|bitcoin-energy-problem|volcanos-bitcoin-mining|mining|environmental-impact|bitcoin-mining|web-monetization
This story on HackerNoon has a decentralized backup on Sia.
Transaction ID: sK10AshJrXlJIVwLYMJk5_mtyYBnYmVAAghxLZ1uQPE
