Bitcoin mining uses less energy than gaming, report reveals

Data shows that the Bitcoin mining industry uses slightly less energy overall compared to the video game sector.

The energy consumption for Bitcoin mining is at 100 TWh per year right now

According to a recent report released by Arcane Research, while BTC mining energy consumption has grown significantly in recent years, the industry still represents a very small portion of the global total.

Currently, Bitcoin miners consume electricity at a rate of around 100 TWh per year. This figure is about 0.06% of the world’s total energy needs, quite insignificant.

Here’s a chart showing how BTC mining compares to some of the other energy-intensive industries on Earth:

The industry's energy demands are lower than all these sectors | Source: Arcane Research's "How Bitcoin Mining Can Transform the Energy Industry"

As you can see in the graph above, the video game industry consumes approximately 105 TWh per year, just slightly more than what BTC miners consume.

Gold mining, on the other hand, requires much more electricity to run, as its annual energy intake is currently around 240 TWh, almost 2.5x BTC mining needs.

The chart also includes data for paper production, which requires 2,361 TWh per year, 10 times that of gold mining and 24 times that of BTC miners.

The report also argues that the way BTC miners use electricity is different from these other energy-intensive industries.

BTC miners are unique consumers of electricity

There are five main things that make these miners “unique energy consumers”. First, around 80% of the operating costs of BTC mining are electricity alone.

This means miners have a lot of incentive to make do with as little energy as they can, or move to areas where prices are lower.

The other difference is that mining is location agnostic. Miners can set up their facilities pretty much anywhere, and thus can use energy resources that are not being utilized by anyone else due to location constraints in other industries.

Third, Bitcoin miners can turn their machines on or off at a moment’s notice. Not only that, they can even adjust their consumption watt for watt. The report notes that this feature makes mining highly suitable to act as a demand response tool, which can help improve the strength of the power grid.

The fourth exceptional point about BTC mining is its modularity. Individual AISC machines can be merged in any quantity, allowing miners to scale up their facilities precisely according to how much energy is available. This suggests that miners can use 100% of the excess energy coming out of power projects.

Finally, there is the portability of the mining rigs. Bitcoin miners can easily transport their machines to other locations due to how portable AISC setups are.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin’s price is hovering around $19.8k, down 2% in the last week.

BTC has gone down over the past day | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView

Featured image from Brian Wangenheim on Unsplash.com, charts from TradingView.com, Arcane Research