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

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

While its analysis is preliminary, the Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that large-scale cryptocurrency operations are now consuming over 2 percent of the US's electricity.

The EIA report notes that, in the wake of a crackdown on cryptocurrency in China, a lot of that movement has involved relocation to the US, where keeping electricity prices low has generally been a policy priority.

One independent estimate made by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance had the US as the home of just over 3 percent of the global bitcoin mining at the start of 2020.

Tracking the history of five of these plants showed that generation had fallen steadily from 2015 to 2020, reaching a low where they collectively produced just half a Terawatt-hour.

To better understand the implications of this major new drain on the US electric grid, the EIA will be performing monthly analyses of bitcoin operations during the first half of 2024.

But based on these initial numbers, it's clear that the relocation of so many mining operations to the US will significantly hinder efforts to bring the US's electric grid to carbon neutrality.

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