That’s about the same as the power consumption of the Philippines.
According to a Bloomberg report, the bitcoin network will have consumed 91 TW/h by the end of the year, and it has already consumed more than the 67 TW/h estimated for all of 2020.
A separate study by Science Direct found that bitcoin miners “cycle through a growing amount of short-lived hardware that could exacerbate the growth in global electronic waste.”
The Science Direct report also suggested that “bitcoin could produce up to 64.4 metric kilotons [64,400 tons] of e-waste at peak bitcoin price levels seen in early 2021.”
E-waste generally refers to discarded computer equipment and electronics.
Bitcoin accounts for about 0.11% of the estimated global total for e-waste in 2021, which is 57.4 million metric tons, according to Statista. As a percentage of the total global electricity consumption, bitcoin mining accounts for just 0.43%. That is less than the estimated 104 TW/h used by refrigerators in the US alone, according to Cambridge University.
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