Bitcoin Consumption In 10 Years Is Equal To What US Drivers Consumed In Just Three Days

Bitcoin Consumption In 10 Years Is Equal To What US Drivers Consumed In Just Three Days

According to data provided by Coin Metrics, Bitcoin (BTC) miners consumed in ten years as much energy as US cars in just three days. Antoine Le Calvez from Coin Metrics informed that S9 miners consumed 1.75 e17 joules, which is equal to 4.2 million tons of oil. Meanwhile, US cars consume 1.3 million tons of oil per day.

Bitcoin Energy Consumption Into Perspective

The data analysis firm was able to measure the number of hashes that were processed by the Bitcoin network using S9 miners. The results were surprising. Miners used 1.75 e17 joules in order to mine the most popular digital asset and protect the network.

Then Mr. Le Calvez compared the joules consumed by the Bitcoin network with how many tons of oil would be required to power these Bitcoin operations. While Bitcoin consumed 4.2 million tons of oil, US cars consume around 1.3 million tons of oil per day.

Bitcoin works with a decentralized network of miners that receive a reward every time they find a block. Each Bitcoin block, which is mined every 10 minutes is currently giving 12.5 BTC as a reward. However, in order to mine Bitcoin, it is necessary to have ASIC miners, that consume large amounts of electricity.

According to the scientific journal, Nature Climate Change, Bitcoin mining could generate enough emissions to push heat 2ºC up by the year 2033. According to the study, if Bitcoin is implemented at a similar rate as other technologies, it would generate a negative effect on earth.

There are different projects in the cryptocurrency market that have been moving towards different and innovative solutions to reduce the negative impact of mining activities. Some projects have also decided to implement Proof-of-Stake (PoS) as a consensus algorithm, which is more energy efficient compared to Proof-of-Work (PoW), the one used by Bitcoin and other digital assets such as Litecoin (LTC).

One of the critics that PoS algorithms receive is the fact that the network could become more centralized than with PoW.

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