{"id":55384,"date":"2020-03-02T03:00:19","date_gmt":"2020-03-02T08:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=55384"},"modified":"2020-03-01T11:41:26","modified_gmt":"2020-03-01T16:41:26","slug":"the-unexpected-electricity-bill-for-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/03\/02\/the-unexpected-electricity-bill-for-bitcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"The unexpected <em>electricity<\/em> bill for Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At the <em>Continental Telegraph<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.continentaltelegraph.com\/environment\/bitcoin-vast-immense-amounts-of-electricity\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Tim Worstall<\/a> points out that Bitcoin transactions now consume a huge amount of electricity:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_49477\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Bitcoin-by-MarkGregory007-CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-49477\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Bitcoin-by-MarkGregory007-CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0-480x313.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"313\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-49477\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Bitcoin-by-MarkGregory007-CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0-480x313.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Bitcoin-by-MarkGregory007-CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0-150x98.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Bitcoin-by-MarkGregory007-CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0-768x501.jpg 768w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Bitcoin-by-MarkGregory007-CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0-853x556.jpg 853w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Bitcoin-by-MarkGregory007-CC-BY-NC-SA-2.0.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-49477\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/97699482@N00\/36475392030\">&#8220;Bitcoin &#8211; from WSJ&#8221;<\/a><span>by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/97699482@N00\">MarkGregory007<\/a><\/span> is licensed under <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/2.0\/?ref=ccsearch&#038;atype=html\" style=\"margin-right: 5px;\">CC BY-NC-SA 2.0<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-sa\/2.0\/?ref=ccsearch&#038;atype=html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" style=\"display: inline-block;white-space: none;opacity: .7;margin-top: 2px;margin-left: 3px;height: 22px !important;\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: inherit;margin-right: 3px;display: inline-block;\" src=\"https:\/\/search.creativecommons.org\/static\/img\/cc_icon.svg\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: inherit;margin-right: 3px;display: inline-block;\" src=\"https:\/\/search.creativecommons.org\/static\/img\/cc-by_icon.svg\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: inherit;margin-right: 3px;display: inline-block;\" src=\"https:\/\/search.creativecommons.org\/static\/img\/cc-nc_icon.svg\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"height: inherit;margin-right: 3px;display: inline-block;\" src=\"https:\/\/search.creativecommons.org\/static\/img\/cc-sa_icon.svg\" \/><\/a><\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>Some will take this as proof that the system of Bitcoin shouldn\u2019t exist, even that we should attempt to close it down. For it is, according to these calculations, using vast amounts of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/science\/2020\/03\/01\/bitcoin-using-electricity-per-transaction-british-household\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">energy<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Just one Bitcoin transaction uses the same amount of electricity as a British household for nearly two months, new figures have shown.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>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.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;People react with disbelief, but the figures are true,&#8221; said Mr de Vries who founded the <strong>Digiconomist<\/strong> blog to highlight the impact.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All those calculations are over <a href=\"https:\/\/digiconomist.net\/bitcoin-energy-consumption\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall points out that Bitcoin transactions now consume a huge amount of electricity: Some will take this as proof that the system of Bitcoin shouldn\u2019t 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,25],"tags":[899,497,1033],"class_list":["post-55384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-economics","tag-bitcoin","tag-electricity","tag-unintendedconsequences"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-epi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55384"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55385,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55384\/revisions\/55385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}