The mining of the Ethereum cryptocurrency is designed for a power consumption of about 4.2 terawatt-hours, which is comparable to the energy consumption of such small countries as, for example: Cyprus, Cambodia or Brunei.
A joint extraction of Bitcoin and Ethereum requires more electricity than Jordan, Iceland and the Dominican Republic. Such data leads Business Insider with reference to the Digiconomist study.
According to the founder of Digiconomist Alex de Vries, the reason for such costs lies in energy-intensive graphics cards. The irony is that the production of crypto-currency on the basis of a blockade - the safest and most efficient technology - is an absolutely inefficient process.
Meanwhile, the founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin has already made it clear that in the future the network will abandon the energy-intensive production algorithms and pass to the Casper protocol, which does not require mining.
"Rather than working with the Proof-of-Work algorithm, a hybrid version is created that includes Proof-of-Stake. Simply put, the new protocol will give Ethereum holders the option of mining only through connected computers. In the full algorithm of the Proof-of-Stake, energy consumption will become insignificant" explains de Vries.