Bitcoin's annual electricity consumption is released for the first time: Too scary!

Recently, the Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index released by Cambridge researchers shows that if Bitcoin is regarded as a country, it will be ranked among the top 30 countries with the largest electricity consumption in the world. The annual electricity consumption of Bitcoin mining is about 121.36 terawatt hours (TWh, 1 terawatt hour is 1 billion kilowatt-hours).

This figure has already exceeded the electricity consumption of Argentina, the Netherlands, and the United Arab Emirates, and is expected to soon exceed Norway. If this amount of electricity is used in electric kettles across the UK, it will be enough for all British people to use for 27 years.

Unless the price of Bitcoin drops significantly, power consumption will only increase, the researchers said .

Why does Bitcoin consume so much electricity? It is understood that the computers (mining machines) of the Bitcoin network need to continuously perform calculations, generating a block every few minutes on average. Users who obtain newly generated blocks can win a certain amount of Bitcoin. This process is called "mining."

The stronger the computing power of the mining machine, the faster the mining speed, and the higher the probability of mining Bitcoin. In order to make a profit, investors will naturally buy more mining machines and let them run for a long time, consuming a lot of electricity in the process.

A few days ago, Bill Gates made it clear that he is not a fan of Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin uses more electricity per transaction than any other method known to man, so it’s definitely a very important climate issue,” Gates said. “But if it was using green electricity, then it might not be a problem in the end.”

I don’t think these topics are deeply relevant, even though you might label me a Bitcoin skeptic.

In other words, I didn’t choose to invest in Bitcoin, but used the money to buy malaria vaccines. I invested in companies that produce real products. But if someone else invested in Bitcoin and got rich, I would congratulate them. " (Fast Technology)