A new study is in the daily cryptocurrency news, this time for proving something that many have thought but no one decided to research. As the study published by the scientific Journal Nature Sustainability revealed, mining of cryptocurrencies consumes more energy than mineral mining – in order to produce the same market value.
The scientists from the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education researched how much energy is consumed by mining cryptocurrencies in comparison to mining aluminium, copper, gold, platinum and other rare earth oxides.
The results were staggering – the mining of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin and Monero consumed an average of 17, 7, 7 and 14 megajoules (MJ) to generate one US dollar accordingly.
In comparison to this, mining aluminium, copper, gold, platinum and other earth oxides consumed 122, 4, 5, 7 and 9 MJ to generate the same value of one US dollar. As the findings noted, mineral mining draws less energy than crypto.
Moreover, the study also shows that the energy consumption for three of the foud mentioned digital currencies (BTC, ETH and LTC) tends to grow year to year. For example, mining Bitcoin in 2016 required 17 MJ to generate $1 – but now consumes 19 MJ for the same amount.
As everyone knows by know, high energy consumption seems to be the weak point for major cryptocurrencies.
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