Bitcoin miners consumed as much as energy in 2018 as Hungary, according to Alex de Vries.
The researcher at the Netherlands’ PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) branch studied bitcoin’s global energy consumption all across the year. He found that existing hydropower projects were not sufficient in sustaining the cryptocurrency mining operations, adding that the bitcoin network demanded as much as 62.3 TWh power. The power of such scale could single-handedly serve a Hungary or a Switzerland.
More than Banks
The revelation followed years of debates about whether or not bitcoin is anti-environment. Skeptics criticize the decentralized financial network for contributing to global warming because each node in the system requires electricity to sustain itself. That is how machines process mathematical problems – by injecting vast computing power – that eventually mine and confirm bitcoin transactions on the network. As a result, the entire mining operation generates heat, as well as increase power demand supplied by fossil power plants.
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