Hello HODLers,
Guess who is back? Our old FUD friend.
This is probably the most famous FUD we haver had, you guessd it: the one about Bitcoin's energy consumption!
4 months ago I had made and published a video on this specific subject, not much has changed since then I guess.
Debunking Bitcoin Energy Consumption FUD!
What is this Bitcoin's energy FUD cycle about?
According to Bloomberg:
The Bitcoin network was estimated to consume about 67TWh of electricity in 2020, and its total consumption has already surpassed this in 2021
Estimates for the 2021 Bitcoin's energy consumption are around 91TWh which is equivalent to the Pakistan's energy.
Interesting graph as we can clearly see the end of 2020 and 2021 Bull run followed by the Chinese miners exodus. These mining capabilities came back online during the past 2 months.
Since then, mining firms have moved to Kazakhstan and neighbouring countries as well as to US and Europe.
But we mostly use renewable energy, right?
Well... I thought more than 50% was from renewables but the latest datas from the following report: 3rd Global Cryptoasset Bechmarking Study, University of Cambridge estimates that only 39% of the energy used to mine Bitcoin is clean.
Battle around the figures
The truth is: It does not matter if it is 40% or 56%, as explained in my video.
We need to look at the big pictures, yes it is energy consuming BUT what does it bring ?
- Financial Freedom for a large part of the world's population
- Potentially replacing part of the existing Banking and gold systems (especially concerning remittances, etc...) which consume A LOT of energy
- Freedom to hedge against extreme monetary policies and hyperinflation
- First non-government issued currency
- Will push the switch to renewable energies as Bitcoin need constant electricity and can be close to production centers instead of city centers
I do not think that arguing around the % of renewables that would be "okay" is the good strategy. In the end, we will go towards a higher and higher percentage as it will be more profitable for farms to be closer to renewable energy sources.
Sources
Bitcoin’s 2021 Energy Use Has Already Surpassed 2020, Bloomberg
Bitcoin Energy Consumption This Year Already More Than All of 2020