Research says Bitcoin consumes 64 billion kWh a year more than the whole of Switzerland

Sina US stock news Beijing time on the 5th, according to the latest estimates released by Cambridge University researchers, Bitcoin consumes more energy per year than Switzerland.

An online tool called the Cambridge Bitcoin Power Consumption Index (CBECI), introduced this week, estimates the energy needed to maintain a bitcoin network in real time before calculating the annual energy usage of the Bitcoin network.

Currently, CBECI shows that the global bitcoin network is consuming more than 7 gigawatts of electricity, equivalent to the energy consumption of 64 terawatt hours per year (1 terawatt hour = 1 billion kWh). This is more than the electricity consumption of 58 TWh per year in Switzerland, slightly less than the electricity consumption of 68 TWh per year in Colombia.

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This means that Bitcoin accounts for about 0.25% of the total global electricity consumption. As we all know, Bitcoin requires a lot of power, and miners around the world use this power to run the necessary computer hardware to maintain the network and verify payment.

But it should be noted that these data are estimated. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, which is responsible for the study, also said in a blog post announcing the new index that "a reliable estimate of the power consumption of Bitcoin is rare."

PwC's bitcoin expert Alex de Vries estimates that Bitcoin consumes more energy per transaction than the sum of the energy consumed by a single transaction in all other banks around the world. (Investor Network)

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