Bitcoin mining only uses half the energy that the traditional banking system does, a new study claims.
Gold mining also uses up to twice the amount of energy of the bitcoin version, says the report, which was published by cryptocurrency investment firm Galaxy Digital.
The white paper study from the Galaxy Digital Mining team comes after Elon Musk fueled a debate on the energy consumption of bitcoin mining and announced that Tesla would no longer take it as payment for its electric vehicles.
Billionaire former hedge-fund manager Mike Novogratz is the CEO of Galaxy Digital, which made public all of its calculations.
The authors of the study estimate the energy consumption of the entire bitcoin network at 113.89 terawatts per hour, of which 99 per cent comes from the mining computers.
Bitcoin mining is the process of solving complex mathematical puzzles to verify bitcoin transactions and record them in the blockchain ledger.
This figure is lower than the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Alternative Finance, which estimated it at 128 terawatts per hour in March 2021.
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