Making bitcoins requires as much electricity as Greece or Australia

Creating bitcoins requires an amount of electricity annually equivalent to the total consumption of countries such as Greece and Australia. In the United States alone, energy-intensive cryptocurrency mining equates to the annual energy consumption of more than 3 million to more than 6 million households.

This was reported by the US government agency Energy Information Administration based on a preliminary investigation. For this process, companies work with supercomputers to monitor Bitcoin transactions and keep the network running. In return, they can get new bitcoins. Until May 2021, China was very popular for this, but that country banned the process due to concerns about the financial risks of cryptocurrencies and their high energy consumption. After that, a significant part of the production was transferred to the United States.

Texas, Georgia and New York

Many miners are active, especially in Texas, Georgia and New York. Across the country, 0.6% to 2.3% of electricity consumption goes into Bitcoin production. In the lowest scenario, this is already equivalent to Utah.

Worldwide, energy consumption in mining amounts to about 0.2 to 0.9 percent of the total. This means that demand fluctuates somewhere between the consumption of countries like Greece and Australia.

Source: National Police Agency