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Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Over 2 percent of the US’s electricity generation now goes to bitcoin::US government tracking the energy implications of booming bitcoin mining in US.

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[–] dgmib@lemmy.world 0 points 6 months ago

The economics of Bitcoin mining are a bit weird in that it impossible to make it more energy efficient.

The system auto adjusts the computational complexity of mining bitcoin so that it always costs a little less than one bitcoin to mine a bitcoin, and at scale the only variable expense is electricity so as the price of bitcoin goes up, so does the amount of money that must be spent on electricity.

Current 6.25 Bitcoin are mined every 10 minutes. So globally about $2 million must be spent on electricity every hour.

In a little over 2 months the block reward cuts in half to only 3.125 bitcoin every 10 minutes. That will have the side effect of reducing the money spent on electricity for mining bitcoin so long as the price of bitcoin remains the same.