Investing.com - Bitcoin mining is using increasingly large amounts of energy. In a world concerned about global warming and extreme weather changes, that can be worrisome.
Bitcoin mining is the process of adding new blocks with transaction data to the Bitcoin blockchain.
The Bitcoin blockchain is designed to have a block mined every 10 minutes, on average. As more miners try to solve Bitcoin's cryptographic puzzles, the more difficult and expensive mining becomes.
According to the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, the total annual cost of mining Bitcoins is approximately $1.5 billion. Bitcoin currently only uses 0.13% of the world’s total electricity output, but consumption has increased by nearly 30% in the past month. If that trend continued and no new power was generated, Bitcoin mining would use up all of the world’s electricity by February, 2020.
Today, Bitcoin’s current estimated annual electricity consumption stands at 29.05 Terawatt hours. According to PowerCompare, Bitcoin mining already uses more electricity than 159 countries and 12 US states.
If that’s not enough cause for concern, consider this: An estimated 80% of all Bitcoin mining occurs in China, where energy is cheaper. However most of the electricity in China comes from CO2-emitting fossil fuels, which is terrible for the environment.