At the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall points out that Bitcoin transactions now consume a huge amount of electricity:
“Bitcoin – from WSJ”by MarkGregory007 is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Some will take this as proof that the system of Bitcoin shouldn’t exist, even that we should attempt to close it down. For it is, according to these calculations, using vast amounts of energy:
Just one Bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of electricity as a British household for nearly two months, new figures have shown.
The amount of energy needed to run the cryptocurrency has soared to record annual highs of 77.78 terawatt hours the same as the entire electrical consumption of Chile.
The carbon footprint of a single transaction is the same as 780,650 Visa transactions or spending 52,043 hours watching YouTube, according to calculations by Alex de Vries, a blockchain specialist, at PWC.
“People react with disbelief, but the figures are true,” said Mr de Vries who founded the Digiconomist blog to highlight the impact.
All those calculations are over here.
