Bitcoin miners consume more energy than whole countries

Cambridge University has studied the level of energy consumption of mining the oldest cryptocurrency. And the results of the study are somewhat shocking. According to analysts, today mining Bitcoin consumes more energy than the entire population of Switzerland. For easy comparison of electricity costs, developers have created a whole site.

For clarity, the energy consumed by the countries was transferred to the so-called “Cambridge bitcoin power consumption index”. Calculation period is a calendar year. Values are in terawatt hours. Bitcoin has already overtaken Switzerland, Greece, Kuwait, Algeria and Israel, reaching an annual value of 64.15 TWh.

The first lines of the ranking are: China (5564 TWh), USA (3902 TWh), India (1137 TWh), Japan (943 TWh) and Russia (909 TWh).

According to the University of Cambridge estimates, about 0.25% of total world energy consumption is spent on bitcoin mining. Although this data is approximate, it’s undeniable that the cryptocurrency industry consumes more electricity than most individual countries.

Previously, scientists said that mining Bitcoin can lead to global warming.